My fifteen minutes of fame?

I took my husband to the hospital this morning for his annual MOT. Every time I see the shop there, it takes me back to my twenties, when I spent almost eight years as a member of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service.

I started out working in their shop in our local hospital's maternity wing on Friday evenings and the Family Contact Centre on Saturdays but, as the youngest volunteer at the time, I quickly got roped into all sorts by their very enthusiastic PR director.

As well as being in their promotional video, I was interviewed for Newsbeat, was a guest on Mr Motivator's breakfast television show and was even on Challenge Anneka. By far the most poignant experience, though, was when some of us went to London after Princess Diana's funeral to help clear the flowers outside Buckingham Palace. We had to put the cards in a box so Princes William and Harry could read them, the toys which could be saved were sent to children's hospitals, and the actual flowers were collected by the Royal Parks gardeners to be composted. I'll never forget the hundreds of people who stood at the other side of the gates, seemingly mesmerised by what we were doing!

Because of everything I'd been involved in, the Queen and Queen Mother, who were the patrons at the time, asked for me to be among a small group invited to have afternoon tea with them at Kensington Palace. I was absolutely thrilled, although I felt a bit of a fraud because I hadn't really done anything special, I was just the youngest of a huge army of volunteers, some of whom had been with the WRVS for decades.

As it happened, I never did meet the Queen and Queen Mother, as something else came up on the day that they had to attend, but their staff still put on a bit of a do for us in Kensington Palace Gardens and we had a lovely day.