WHEN charity worker Barbara Larkin went to a royal garden party in the summer of 1998 she never expected to meet the Queen.

But that is exactly what occurred, and it was even more thrilling for the 83-year-old from Atherton as it happened on her birthday of June 26.

Barbara said: “I couldn’t believe it when the Queen came to talk to me. I told her it was my birthday and she wished me a very happy birthday.”

It is a day that Barbara still treasures the memory of.

She was picked to go to Milton Hill House in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, while working, voluntarily, for the WRVS and went to the party with a friend.

“We got changed into all our finery at a motorway service station,” remembers Barbara.

She remembers a Ghurka band playing and not being able to take photographs of her special day.

“It was one of the many rules that you did not take photographs,” says Barbara, who still has the invitation from the day.

“It was a very special day and one I will never forget."

Barbara, who is a widow and has two children and one grandchild, has been a charity worker all her life, helping at Leigh Infirmary and also at Wigan and Leigh Hospice.