I FAILED to fill this space last week because I was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Well, from the brief glimpse I got of the top of her blue hat as she nibbled on a cucumber and fresh mint sandwich in the Royal Tea Tent, I presume she was enjoying the company of my wife and I at her Garden Party at Buckingham Palace.

From start to finish, our afternoon at the palace was a grand, quintessentially British, experience. It started with us queuing in our finery in orderly fashion in the light rain outside the palace walls – a vanload of prisoners banging out their appreciation of our posh hats and suits as they were driven past to jail – and it finished at 6pm, the Queen having departed, when a military band segued seamlessly from Popeye the Sailor Man into the National Anthem to announce that it was time for the ordinary people to leave.

Inbetween, we took tea, and we watched people.

The garden party action takes place on a striped lawn the size of a small cricket ground. Ringed by a screen of mature trees in a hundred shades of green, it is an olde worlde oasis in the middle of the unceasing hubbub and the 24-7 movement of modern London – only the tall, red, building site cranes peering over the treetops suggested there was another world outside.

Those-in-the-know formed an avenue across the grass so that, when the National Anthem at 4pm announced the Queen’s arrival, she could come down the palace steps and walk between them, greeting them as she moved to her tea tent.

Those-not-so-in-the-know craned their necks to see above the fancy fascinators, and were kept informed of the royal progress by the ripple of polite applause that greeted her every step.

The people’s tea tent – cream and mint green stripes – served an immaculate finger tea: a little chicken wrap, a sliver of tasty ham sandwich (no crusts), and a tiny smoked salmon bagel, topped with crème fraiche and black pepper. There was a delicious array of mini-cakes: a coffee éclair, a strawberries and cream Battenberg, a sharp lemon tart, a fruity Dundee Cake and an exquisite Chocolate and Praline Croustillant with a crown on the top.

Then we strolled around the lake, under the trees, through the flowering rhododendrons and azaleas, past the cow parsley and up to the giant Waterloo urn.

Queen Victoria started palace garden parties in the 1860s – she called them “breakfasts” even though they took place in the afternoon – and Queen Elizabeth holds at least three a year in London and one at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. I don't know why I was invited – “it helps that I’ve just been appointed to the Cabinet”, said Michael Fallon, the former Darlington MP who is now Defence Secretary, explaining his presence.

Standing in the evening sunshine on the palace balcony, the honeyed stone warm to the touch, we watched as a posse of Beefeaters beat a retreat across the lawn, accompanied by a military band playing Against All Odds by Phil Collins.

After the 6pm anthem, we filed out through the palace Music Room. I thought Her Majesty’s deep pink carpet was surprisingly sticky until I realised that the bottom of my shoe was falling off.

A pebble crept in through the hole as we crunched across the gravel towards the ornate gate which took us back into the ever-moving crowds and the always noisy traffic of real world. A truly memorable day and, yes, I left a little piece of my sole in Buckingham Palace.