The first time I nearly missed a Jubilee was when I was 19 years old and working for the Post Office in Chester in 1970. I hadn't thought to book a half day's leave as I'd assumed that I would just be given the time off to go. After all, that was my birthright wasn't it?

I came from Buckley, therefore, I was entitled to go to the Jubilee. When my supervisor, or overseer as he was called, said I couldn't go, I was devastated. Still, never one to give up easily, I moaned and moped the whole day long until he relented and sent me home.

Of course, the buses couldn't get into Buckley because of the procession, but I got there just as the band was coming over the Daisy Hill. I didn't miss another one until I was lecturing in London in 1975 and, by then, had realised that my bosses hadn't even heard of Buckley let alone its Jubilee.

Still, over the next few years I managed to escape or go sick and travel home several times for the occasion. Over the next years I did everything I could to be home for the Jubilee. The last one I missed was in 1991, three weeks after my daughter was born and I was just too weak to drive home from Cardiff.

My husband offered to bring me but we had three other kids and it was too complicated. Now, I travel all the way home from Singapore and this year will just get in to Heathrow in time to pelt up the M1 and see the start of the procession.

What is it that makes this Buckley girl so devoted to such an event? I always joke that people born in Buckley get some of its clay wrapped around their ankles and it roots them into the ground. This clay is magical - it's invisible and elastic so no-one knows it's there until it starts pulling them home, usually for the Jubilee.

More importantly though, it's an occasion for us exiles to meet up with our old mates and family. Although I haven't actually lived in Buckley for over 30 years, my mates are still there and they all have their places lining the streets to watch the procession. As soon as I arrive at each spot, the appropriate mate is waiting and starts talking to me as though they'd seen me yesterday. No-one's impressed by the international jetsetting and everyone expects me to speak in the faded Buckley accent which they use.

Then, of course, it's Jubilee tea. Now made by my sister because my mum's done it long enough, this tea is wonderful. Cold tongue and ham with salad which has boiled eggs in it; bread and butter, strawberries and cream, trifle, sponge cake and seed cake.

It's all washed down with tea. I never even liked strawberries until I was 19 but the shock of nearly missing that Jubilee made me enjoy all its aspects - except for the seed cake, which I just couldn't eat.

After tea, it's a trip down to the fair to catch up with the mates I'd missed earlier. (And if I ever get my hands on the people who cancelled the fair a year or so back, I'll wring their necks!). Some are ex-boyfriends, even an ex- husband, and they still have a laugh and joke and reminisce about past Jubilees and Jubilee night at the Tiv (nightclub). Don't ask anybody about what went on at the back of Ellis's buses!

Many of the people I see now are grandparents, but to my eyes, they're still the young people I've always known or the older ones who used to tell me off or give me advice. They don't change, yet they're open to change. There's nobody on earth who can beat a Buckleyite and it's true what my dad used to say - 'kick one and they'll all limp'.

By Alison Spencer, April 2003, Singapore

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