A 4-year-old boy who released a balloon not long ago with a message
hoping to find a pen pal in a
foreign land ended up having a correspondence with the Queen.
Tom Stancombe let go of his helium balloon in Hampshire, but rather
than flying to France or half way around the world, it ended up just 20
miles (32 km) away, landing inside Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail
reported.
The Queen instructed her personal assistant to reply and so the monarch
and the boy, helped by his parents, exchanged a series of letters, mostly
about the fact that one of the boy's ancestors, an artist, had works in
the royal art collection.
"She (the Queen) was delighted to find that your balloon had travelled
all the way to the gardens at Windsor Castle," the monarch's assistant
wrote.
Asked if he thought his son would be exchanging any more letters with
the Queen, Tom's father said: "I don't expect we'll get another one, but I
think it's incredible they bothered replying at all."
(AP)