Memory of a Poacher: Royal Archers on the Meadows by Bob Redwater

A familiar sight for Edinburgh folk heading home from work across the Meadows on a late summer’s afternoon. I have always admired those splendid chaps in their green uniforms and eagle feathers in their bonnets. The Queen’s Bodyguard in Scotland, practising the noble art of archery in an effort to keep her majesty safe when she does her annual flying visit to distant Caledonia, God bless her.

Archers on the meadows
I even attended her tea party at Holyrood one year after being slipped a borrowed invitation ticket by Patrick, an Irish friend who was a social worker and a firm Republican who would not bend his knee to our monarch. I did get a cup of tea and a couple of cucumber sandwiches without getting rumbled by the polis on security duty at the main gate. It would have been interesting to see how those elderly archers would have responded if they had needed to respond to protect the Queen from a terrorist attack in the garden of Holyrood Palace.

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