Word: queenly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...took a spritz of rain in the face. Recounted Brian Vine, the monocled correspondent of the London Daily Express: "She looked like she had backed a loser at the Newmarket races." Despite such signs of royal pique, her press secretary, Michael Shea, insisted that the Queen was unfazed by the weather. "She loves it," he declared. Then Shea got downright fulsome in finding silver linings: "The Queen's life is so planned to the second that it is a pleasing change for her to have things go awry every so often...
...Queen, according to one biographer, "is a poor sailor," easily made queasy. Even so, the royals had intended to spend most of their time on board her yacht Britannia, the world's largest (412 ft. long), best staffed (a crew of 254) and most expensive (more than $5 million a year to maintain). But even in the balmy Mexican Pacific, the Queen fretted about the rough California seas ahead. The gray, foreboding skies settled in just before Britannia slid up to San Diego's Broadway Pier a week ago last Saturday...
...brimming itinerary called for 20 public appearances before a weekend respite with Prince Philip at Yosemite National Park. "The Queen," said Shea, "wanted there to be a good balance between work and recreation." With a monarch, it is not always easy to know which is which. More than 6,000 San Diego citizens (and transplanted subjects) cheered and sang onshore at her arrival, but the visitor got on with business straightaway. She walked among 200 reporters (a fraction of those covering her) who had been invited aboard the comfortably staid Britannia to drink brandy and warm whisky. Mid-mingle...
...turned out, the synopsis was unhappily apt. As the Queen found her footing in the course of a harbor tour, acting San Diego Mayor William Cleator, trying to be helpful, put his palm lightly, briefly on her back. Some San Diegans were scandalized by the mayor's familiarity, and sensation-hungry Fleet Street reporters pounced. "The Queen was visibly bothered," the Daily Express huffed, "and frowned her disapproval...
...board the aircraft carrier Ranger, she talked to the pilot of a one-passenger A-7 Corsair ("So you are all on your own in there?" said she. "Yes ma'am," said he) and met a sailor called Groucho Marx. The Queen (who is Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom) and Prince Philip, turned out in his Admiral of the Fleet's dress blues, had a wardroom lunch with 50 Ranger officers. The menu included lobster, despite Her Majesty's widely supposed aversion to eating shellfish abroad,* and wine, thanks to a Washington waiver...