A DESERVING ACCOLADE..

It`s a rare event for a town or city in this country to be honoured with the prefix "Royal."  There are only a handful of them - Windsor, Leamington, Tunbridge Wells along with some chunky London Boroughs like Greenwich, Kensington and Richmond.  Most of those were as a direct result of royal patronage, but today has seen the addition of the small Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett for quite different reasons.

The four years long association of Wootton Bassett with the repatriation of service personnel lost in middle east conflicts has come to an enforced end with the closure of  nearby RAF Lyneham and the subsequent transfer of repatriation to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.   Those four long years have seen 355 occasions when the town of Wootton Bassett, its townsfolk, bereaved relatives and service associations come together to pay respect to the heroic departed.

It seems to me that all the other `Royal` towns and boroughs became so for reasons so much less legitimate than this small town in Wiltshire.   No-one asked them to do it, nothing was organised, but what we have had are 355 examples of the quiet dignity, the essential decency of ordinary folk wanting to do something to show their gratitude and sadness for the loss of life and to show their support and understanding to the grieving families and friends of those who gave their lives.

The story is well known now, so it doesn`t require me to add to it,  but here is a brief reflection of the spontaneous beginnings, the steady growth and the essential Englishness that has seen Wootton Bassett become perhaps the most deserving of all the `Royal` towns and cities- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14691139