Peggy, Jack and I walked down to Holyrood Palace at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, just so that Peggy could see what it looked like, if you want to see more photos of it have a look here.

Somehow when you’re on the other side of a big fancy set of gates and railings peering inside you just can’t help but feel like one of the underlings, the suppressed masses! Anyway, I admit it, I was a wee bit excited when I saw that the palace was flying the Royal Standard from its flagpole. That usually means that the Queen is in residence, I did think it a bit early in the year for her to be visiting mind you, but there was a posh black car parked just out of the photo and it had NO number plate.

Then when a whole load of kilted soldiers came out of an adjacent building and marched towards us and the gate I felt sure they must be some sort of escort but after a lot of shouting, stamping and bugling, they turned around and marched off in the direction they had come from. I think they must put on a performance like that every night at 6 o’clock, how disappointing. I thought that Peggy would be getting a glimpse of royalty but the standard was apparently flying because the Church of Scotland were having their annual General Assembly in Edinburgh that week and the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was there representing the Queen.

Anyway, it turns out that Peggy was more thrilled with the Scottish soldiers than she would have been of royalty. I think she managed to get a video of them performing but you’ll have to wait until she gets back to the US before she can blog about that.