he Changing of What Guard?

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

While visiting London, Lady Angela of Alpine castle commented to the Baron how nice the changing of the royal guard at Buckingham Palace was. It was a wonderful tradition and the tourists liked to attend the event. “How nice it would be if we had some type of event like this in Lilliland,” she thought.

The Baron asked his chief advisor whether “we could do something for the tourists like the changing of the guard. But since Lilliland has no army and no guard, we have nothing to change, but we could do something.”

Lady Angela said, “Everyday at noon, we could have some event at the center mall in Lilliland. While we don’t have any cannon or guns to shoot off, we could have our musicians plan something in the mall park in the band shell. A half hour would be sufficient during the summer months.”

The Baron and Lady Angela met with the band director to see what might be done.

“Since we are celebrating twelve noon in Lilliland, we should have twelve musicians play something appropriate and have someone sing a song.”

The business leaders with shops near the mall where the event would be held were very interested in the proposal because it might mean more business from the tourists. They decided to donate a special new uniform for the event to the twelve members of the band and their leader.

The program would be one-half hour long, the average song lasted three minutes. Therefore, ten songs would complete the program. The program would feature the official flag and the official song of Lilliland.

The program was started with the chiming of the bells as usual. People gathered in the mall and the music started. When the half-hour program was over, the people enjoyed it so much that they kept applauding for more music. The noontime program also blended into everyone’s lunch hour and they brought picnic lunches with them to the park.

Soon people began writing Lady Angela to request certain tunes be played at future noontime events in the mall.

One Lilliland ladies’ group asked permission to serve free tea and biscuits to the visitors of Lilliland. Lady Angela thought that was a very fine idea.