Enlarge image
Queen Elizabeth II in a lime green costume: Finally a normal appointment again
Photo: STEVE REIGATE / AFP
To mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Australian Air Force RAAF, Queen Elizabeth made her first public appearance outside Windsor Castle in almost five months on Wednesday.
She garnished the appointment in Runnymede in the county of Surrey with spring-like temperatures with a joke that can be understood as an allusion to Britain's frosty relations with Russia.
During an exchange with an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, she asked him if the jets he was working with had been sent out "to chase after Russians."
He replied: "Correct, ma'am, and this is a lot of fun for us."
"Delighted" to take on obligations again
With this short, joking exchange of words, the Queen could say, as is so often the case: Behind every joke there is a bit of truth.
The British Air Force had actually intercepted an increasing number of Russian aircraft approaching British airspace in recent months against the background of increasing tensions between Moscow and London.
Just a few days ago, Russian fighter jets are said to have come close to British airspace over the Shetland Islands.
In spite of such global political problems, however, the monarch was "delighted" to be fulfilling her obligations again, which also attended a military service in south-east England.
Apparently she is grateful after the anger for connections between Prince Andrews and the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and finally for Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan's break with the monarchy for such normality.
A few weeks before her 95th birthday, the Queen seems to be in a good mood: In pictures, she was seen with a beaming smile.
In keeping with the weather, the Queen, who appeared without a mask on her excursion, wore a lime-green costume with a matching hat to which white flowers were attached.
The Queen had withdrawn with her 99-year-old husband Prince Philip since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and so far only shown in public on a few occasions.
So far, she and Philip have been vaccinated at least one first time, in January.
Buckingham Palace did not provide any information about the administration of the second vaccination.
apr / AFP / dpa
