Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll  

We are deeply saddened by the death of Her Majesty. We thank her for her many years of dedicated service to our country and extend our heartfelt sympathy to The Royal Family.

The Queen visited the Isles of Scilly in 2011, she and the Duke of Edinburgh toured the main island of St Mary's and opened the new school building. Both Ben and I had the chance to meet her and her famous warm smile and humour were very much apparent as she greeted the assembled groups and crowds of well-wishers.

The rather bizarre thing was that we had also been invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party that took place a few weeks later.  As tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall, we were ushered forward to be presented to the Queen.

We started to make noises that someone else might like to take our place. It seemed a little daft to meet the Queen twice in one month but equally we didn't want to make a fuss or look as if we somehow objected to being presented!  So we stood in line and when the time came we were introduced as, 'Ben and Zoe Julian from the Isles of Scilly', Quick as a flash and with a wry smile the Queen enquired if we had met recently, we slightly awkwardly confessed, 'yes', the amusing absurdity of the situation not being lost on any of us.