Camilla rewards granny
2005-04-04 11:45
Wellington - An elderly New Zealand woman, who for years has run a "be nice to Camilla" campaign, was reported on Sunday to have been rewarded with an invitation to next Friday's festivities in London when Prince Charles finally marries Camilla Parker Bowles.
"I'm still having trouble believing it, the 73-year-old grandmother told the Sunday Star-Times when she showed them her gilt-edged invitation.
The woman, from the small South Island town of Greymouth, refused to be identified but her invitation showed she will be among 800 guests invited to the "service of prayer and dedication" at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle after the couple marry in a private civil ceremony.
Fed up with negative media coverage about Charles and Camilla, the woman said she began sending clippings and letters to Parker Bowles nine years ago when "somebody wrote something nice".
Her pen-friendship was rewarded four weeks ago when the invitation arrived by Royal Post.
"I cried all day to think just because I'd tried to be ordinarily kind and caring I'd made Camilla Parker Bowles feel grateful enough to invite me," she said.
"And I had said to everybody I wasn't going to travel anymore. I was never leaving Greymouth until I was in a box, but when you get an invitation like that ..."