There was a meeting of familiar faces from the North-East on Buckingham Palace steps when, after 41 years, man and boy, in the Inky Trade, you columnist was invited to London to receive an MBE.

IT'S Her Majesty who has the honour in the end, and she bestows it with ageless dignity and consummate grace, as if she's been holding investitures most of her life.

"Mr Michael Amos," announces the Lord Chamberlain, "for services to journalism in the North-East of England."

The Queen wonders if I am indeed a journalist, asks about the paper and the Inky Trade, receives an answer which includes the words "man" and "boy", offers her hand and, still smiling, moves on.

The occasion is an extraordinary, inimitable and utterly unforgettable piece of pageantry and of panoply, the company humbling. They are there for services to science and to medicine, for gallantry and for heroism, for long lifetimes of charitable devotion, for - in one case - services to Afro-Caribbean people with mental health problems in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Mr Michael Amos: for turning a phrase.

THE family, all four of us, have headed down the previous day. We travel first class and all its perks, stay in some style in the Royal Horseguards Hotel in Whitehall, where old Scotland Yard once answered to 1212.

Though morning suit is optional, it seems only proper, save for the problem of morning suit becoming mourning suit and looking like the Co-op undertaker. If the question is "Why does everybody call him big head?", the answer's that the topper is seven and five-eighths.

The lady of the house has bought herself the beginnings of a hat which, had a spuggie built it for her young, would probably have resulted in a judicial referral to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The little 'un reckons he'll probably have the cheapest suit in Buckingham Palace ("£70, including shirt and tie") and may also be the only person there wearing football referee's socks or whose shoes are held together with duct tape.

The big 'un has bought a new suit, £109. Somewhat inexplicably, he thinks it makes him look like John Major.

The previous evening, we spend a couple of hours in a pleasant pub called the Coal Hole, in The Strand, once home to an organisation called the Wolves' Club for men (so it was said) whose wives objected to their singing in the bath.

Once liberated, they changed their tune. Historians mention "hard drinking and high jinks" and leave the rest to the uxorial imagination.

The boys recall long gone nights around the fireside when The Strand could have been bought for £240. There are times when you think you might just have brought them up right.

THE Prime Minister's office writes about six weeks before the announcement of the honours list, invites intended recipients to accept or decline, advises saying nowt, or next to nowt, to anyone. Nor is anything said about which member of the Royal Family will be conducting the investiture.

With some difficulty, the news stays in-house, as it were, the bairns gratifyingly delighted and anxious to see how royalty make out.

All manner of embossed correspondence follows, several letters from the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, one from the Clerk of the Bath, others seeking money for memorabilia.

Benefits include use of the Chapel of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in St Paul's Cathedral for family occasions, which is why Mr Jasper Carrot's daughter was married there last weekend. For the moment, our two have no such proposals.

The day dawns fine. Though the hired morning suit includes shirt and tie, the lady of the house had forgotten to pack a clean hankie.

Were Buckingham Palace to be like Timothy Hackworth infants school, where failure to parade an immaculate handkerchief each morning would incur a sharp slap across the knees from the formidable Miss Vint, we may never get across the doorstep.

Even the Polisher of the Royal Fire Grate will be carrying something more pristine and presentable than I am, a dilemma most definitely not to be sneezed at.

THE palace is decorated for Christmas, no Winterval for the Windsors, huge trees hung with little crowns. Officials are everywhere; lifeguards seemingly lifeless in their intensive immobility. Even the cloakroom attendant wears a morning suit.

Though there are 22 investitures each year, 20 of them at Buckingham Palace, every courtier and every official conveys the effortless impression that you could be the only person in the world ever to have received the MBE, never mind the only one from Shildon with the same surname as an Old Testament prophet.

Guests are directed one way, recipients another. The briefing's by an officer in full military fig, spurs and all, who announces that the investiture is to be in the ballroom. "If you want to know where the ballroom is," he adds, "I'd say about half way to Victoria station."

As an ice-breaker it's pretty effective, though not as good as the young 'un's graduation when each recipient found a tub of bubble mixture beneath his seat and was invited to let it blow. It is not a ploy of which the Queen would be likely to approve.

Her Majesty, we're told, will be on a low dais accompanied by Gurkhas, Yeomen and sundry other functionaries. We're to stand close to the dais. "If you don't," says the spurs supporter, "Her Majesty might fall off when she's trying to give you the medal."

A little chap at the back is thoughtfully invited to come forward in order to get a better view. We are reminded of Zaccheus who, as the Good Book records, could not get nigh unto Jesus for the press.

A lady asks if curtseying to the Queen is compulsory and is assured that it is. "We'll be watching you," says the military man, cheerfully.

The Band of the Grenadier Guards plays The Ugly Duckling - "Quack, get out of town" - and, even more worryingly, The King's New Clothes. It's doubtless good for the imposture.

On the tinkling stroke of 11, they strike up the National Anthem and Her Majesty appears. That's the moment when the hairs rise, and when you wonder if you've arrived, as well.

THE new knights are first, among them veteran BBC correspondent Charles Wheeler and Philip Green, founder of the Next clothing chain. "Tell you what," says the big 'un to his sibling, "I'll ask him if he'll let you have a new suit."

Among other North-East recipients are Hughie Malone from Consett, Peter Sotheran from Redcar - many will be delighted to hear that to the Palace it's still "Redcar, North Yorkshire" - and John Race, coxswain of the Teesmouth lifeboat until the station's contentious closure in the summer.

John's father had 25 years' service with the RNLI, his brother Peter had 39 but received his own MBE, in 1993, for services to the Gas Board.

John had been a lifeboatman for 41 years, coincidentally equal to my time in journalism, but altogether more arduous (though there was, of course, the unfortunate case of the indiscriminate Jack Russell terrier outside the Turks Head in Barnard Castle).

Hughie Malone, with whom we fail to catch up, is an entertainer and concert party organiser who's worked for donkeys' years for worthy causes in Derwentside. Peter Sotheran receives his MBE for services to the Sir William Turner Almshouses in Redcar and to the community in general.

He'd also met the Prince of Wales a few years back when HRH toured the Almshouses, looked into the chapel and inquired if they did weddings. "I did wonder," says Peter, "if we were going to get Camilla."

Her Majesty beams upon us all. Honoured? Oh aye, absolutely.

THEREAFTER there are official photographs in the inner quadrangle, a chance to shake a few hands and to josh with the polliss. It's all over by 12.30, Peter Sotheran and his family off for lunch at the Dorchester.

The Queen inexplicably having failed to ask us backstairs for a plate of chips and a glass of something, we return to the Royal Horseguards, change in the disabled toilet from morning suit to mufti.

Superman having re-emerged as Clark Kent, we head inevitably, inexorably, for the Coal Hole.