I Spoke To Her Majesty The Queen

Hi everyone

What a busy week it’s been. I have been to London and saw Matilda the musical, also the film “Now you see me”. I visited Battersea Park Zoo and Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire.

After packing a suitcase full of what I may need, I forgot to pack my toothpaste. Luckily I got 2 for £5 from a shop at the train station. There were delays on the tubes during my first and last day there. When I arrived at where I thought the hotel should be, it was a Tandoori restaurant and on the last day I left my handbag on the Paradise Wildlife Park bus, with my tube and train tickets in it, the keys to my flat and my debit cards and my money in it. Luckily, there was a guy who got off the bus who worked at the park and kindly missed his train to phone the park and get the driver to come back with it. I did have my phone on me as I had been taking lots of photos of the animals but it was gone 5pm and I would have been stuck at Broxbourne train station had Neil, the bus driver, not come back with my handbag.

The absolute highlight of my trip to London was going to St James’s Palace for the Community Service Volunteers (CSV) 50th Anniversary celebration and speaking to Her Majesty the Queen.

Her Majesty was wearing a pretty blue floral dress, she was carrying a black handbag that matched her black patent shoes. She looked even more beautiful in real life than on the TV, with not a hair out of place.

When I spoke to her I said, “I am a Health Buddy for CSV in association with BBC Radio Devon in Plymouth but I live in Exeter. I recently received a Good Citizen award for saving someone’s life.”

Her Majesty responded, “that’s good.”

I was able to quickly ask her how her husband is and she said that he is doing well and in Norfolk at the moment.

There was an official photographer in the Palace as we were not allowed to take any photos. Every guest had to hand their phone in before going up the Palace stairs.

I did manage to take some photos outside of St James’s Palace and of the entrance to the Palace. I also took a few photos just inside. Although these have come out blurry as a police officer was watching me.

Walking towards the Palace.

The photo above is on the opposite side of the road to the St James’s Palace Marlborough Road entrance, where we had to queue.

I quickly snapped this photo just before my phone had to be handed in.

Apologies for the blur but security was tight and these were taken just inside the downstairs part of the Palace. You should still be able to make out the gorgeous decor.

After I got my phone back I quickly took a photo on my way out of St James’s Palace. Police officers were watching me and although the photo is a bit blurred, you can see the CSV sign for the celebration to the left.

Upon my exit of St James’s Palace I was able to take a couple of photos looking into the entrance from afar.

St James’s Palace was beautiful inside, with themed rooms. On my way upstairs to the first room, there was a person playing a harp. The first room was a sword, pistol and gun room. They were displayed in swirls on the wall.

Second room was a tapestry room. Some of the pictures on the tapestries reminded me of the Roman baths as they looked like they were from that era, although history was never my strong point at school. (I was okay at the history of medicine, that thankfully was part of my GCSE exam.) There appeared to be some cherubs in the tapestries too.

The third room was where I met and spoke to HM the Queen. It was the Queen Anne room with crystal chandeliers and gold paint. There were satin curtains and seating throughout the Palace.

Two other rooms I remember, were the picture gallery room, full of paintings, some of them appeared to be Her Majesty’s ancestors and the final room, was a throne room, with a real throne. It was magnificent.

To summarise, St James’s Palace was just like a Palace looks in a fairytale but it was and is, very real. So for anyone who doesn’t believe in fairytales, I want to tell you, that they can come true. Never give up hope of fulfilling your dreams. You are only as big, as you dare your dreams to be.

To those who have met me and sometimes think I live in a fairytale world, I do and I am proud of it.

I am very happy to have had the opportunity to visit St James’s Palace and get to meet and speak to Her Majesty the Queen. I totally believe that anything is possible and there are no limits other than the ones we set ourselves. The world is our oyster, so why set limits but believe in the power of the possible.

Until next time

Write soon

Sandra

 

I Have Been Chosen To Meet HM The Queen

Hi everyone

I am very happy and excited to have been chosen to meet Her Majesty the Queen, at St James’s Palace, on Monday 15th of July.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may already know this and a few of you I have mentioned it to in my comments. For the rest of my lovely blog followers, the last update I gave you, was that I had been invited to St James’s Palace in the presence of HM the Queen. I have since had a letter to say I have been chosen to meet HM the Queen.

I have been sent a map of the inside of the Palace and have been told I am group 10, in the Queen Anne Room, to meet the Queen.

There is a red dotted line to indicate which route HM the Queen will take.

There are instructions of what I should say and do when I meet HM the Queen.

I am going there, to celebrate CSV (Community Service Volunteers) 50th anniversary. I do voluntary work as a Health Buddy for CSV and got nominated by my Manager to go.

If someone had told me a few years ago, that in the future I would be meeting HM the Queen at St James’s Palace, I would have laughed and said they had a vivid imagination, or yes, in my dreams. But I did something very important in my life, I changed my attitude and my belief in myself.

When I was made redundant for the second time in my life, in 2009, this was the starting point of that change. I knew from then on, that I was born 100% to write and to help others who have been made redundant to get back into work. It was the start of my creative journey. However, needing money and taking on a succession of temporary jobs, that I wasn’t happy in, took it’s toll, and although I still had these goals in mind, I didn’t do much about them at that time.

By the end of 2009, I got a job as an Assistant Manager of a shop and a couple of months later I was promoted to Shop Manager. The drawback was, most weeks I would be working 60 hours a week instead of my contracted 40.

In October 2010, I got headhunted to work as a Sales Person for more money doing less hours and so I took it. After almost a year of working there, I decided to take a year out from work, to develop myself, my skills, my knowledge and expertise to grow as a person and to finally fulfil my destiny of writing and helping others to get back into work. During that time, I gained all of those and so much more.

Although I am working again in a retail sales job during the day, I have chosen to be in a job as a Sales Person not as a Manager, so my hours are stable and kept to a minimum. The pay is not great but I can focus on building two businesses around my two goals during the evenings and my time off. I now know what action to take to make progress with those two goals. I still have time to do courses and to develop myself as a person. I am continuing on the path to fulfil my dreams and you can do it too. I am living proof that dreams can come true. Never, ever, give up on your own dreams. Believe they are achievable and that anything is possible.

Be blessed with what you have,
fight for what you want,
believe in yourself,
helps others along the way,
take action,
change when you are able to
and never look back.

Keep looking forward because your future is in your hands.
Treat yourself kindly,
look after those who are important in your life,
allow yourself ups and downs,
you are only human.
Above all, love yourself, live life to the max and do what makes you happy over and over again.

Until next time, keep writing and keep smiling.

Write soon
Sandra

What’s Holding You Back? – Skills and Experience – Beat Redundancy Blues

Hi Everyone

As you may know, I am currently working on my first e-Book about redundancy and helping people to get back into work and I have another WordPress blog to support this mission at http://www.beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com

I wanted to share with you my latest post from that blog, as the information is relevant to any job you go for.

So here it is:

Now that we have settled into the new year, you will probably have noticed a lot of posts about goal setting and how you need to take action in order to move forward with your life. These posts are an invaluable source of information and inspiration and they are absolutely right, if you want to achieve your desired outcome, you need to take the steps to get there by setting goals and then acting on them but in the next few posts I want us to take a look at what may be holding you back from setting goals in the first place.

Sometimes in order for you to move forward you must reflect on the past and assess the present to see what changes need to be made. If you keep doing the same thing then you will always get the same result. If you are not happy with the result then you need to change what you are doing and there is no time like the present, so what are you waiting for?

Let’s consider some of the things that may be holding you back.

Not having the right skills or experience

There is no easy way to say this, if you haven’t got the right skills and experience for the job role that you desire, in these difficult economic times, you need to either obtain them or learn to convert previous experience and learnt skills into transferable experience and skills and if you can’t do that then you probably won’t get a look in because the competition is so tough.

Do not be fooled by a job advert that states: “Previous experience is not essential as full training will be given for the right candidate.”

If the interviewer can get a person with previous experience who has the correct basic skills, the right attitude for the job and is the right fit for the team, then they will go with them instead of someone with little or no experience. When I was a retail manager I recruited my own staff  and I advertised for the experience and skills that I required and yes I still got applicants applying with little or no relevant experience and as time is money in business, usually I would sift theses applications out on first look as I had a large number of applicants. Of the applicants that were sifted out there may have been some that had the right attitude or were a good fit for the team but because I didn’t put them through to the interview stage I would never know this, so having the right skills and experience is essential.

When I wasn’t working, on the odd occasion I would apply for a job that was out of my sector and one that I had little or no relevant skills or experience in, just as I thought, I would get a reject letter or worse, nothing at all. Upon analysis, the reason I got a rejection letter was because I appeared on paper to have some of the skills and experience that were relative to the job and some transferable skills but obviously not as good a offering as someone who blatantly had the skills and experience in that sector and therefore I wasn’t surprised I was rejected and took it on the chin. When I received no reply whatsoever, it was because on paper there were barely any skills and experience relevant to the role for which I had applied, so why should the employer bother to reply to me when it looked like I had randomly decided to ‘give it a go’. An employer wouldn’t like this attitude and to be honest neither do I and when I became a manager I understood that and if I were to apply for a job now I would always tailor my CV and Cover Letter to the Job specification and that’s why I get responses when a lot of other people don’t, so if you are struggling to get responses, now you know the secret, why not try it for yourself?

If you want to gain the skills and experience to get a job you desire, you need to do voluntary work, work experience and you may need to take a course as well.

To read about what else may be holding you back be sure to read the next post on http://www.beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com   and whatever you do, stay positive.

Sandra Bellamy

Tell me how you have got on with job applications?

Still to come on quirkybooks.wordpress.com, The One Lovely Blog Award nominations.

Related articles

• Interview Tips For The Over 40s (savingsavvy.com)
• How to survive life after redundancy: I’m just a job title – help! (yorkshirepost.co.uk)
• Redundancy to self-employment – top tips (simplybusiness.co.uk)
• beatredundancyblues is awarded the Very Inspiring Blogger Award (quirkybooks.wordpress.com)
• 3 Things That Will Get Your Resume Thrown in the Trash (thedailymuse.com)
• Interview for what you can’t change, not relevant experience (vitakis.com)

Join me on BBC Radio Devon

Hi Everyone

Some very exciting news.

I am going to appear as a guest speaker on BBC Radio Devon on David FitzGerald’s show, this Tuesday the 14th of February at 2.40pm, talking about being a Health Buddy for the CSV ‘Stripping it Bare’ campaign.

The ”Stripping it Bare” campaign is run by CSV and takes on volunteers to speak about taboo health topics within their local communities.  Topics covered include Sexual Health, Testicular Cancer, Bowel Cancer and Mental Health.

I have joined  Twitter under the username “beatredundancyb”

I will be tweeting regularly about redundancy and you can see my redundancy blog at beatredundancyblues.wordpress.com

Write soon.  Sandra