Irene Seaton told the Comet about her experiences of watching the Queen's coronation on TV in the 1950s.

It dawned a grey day on Tuesday, June 2 1953.

I, with my parents, an aunt and a cousin watched the coronation on a 12” Pye Television bought especially for the occasion.

We had prepared for the great day as carefully as if it had been our day. The windows were decorated with EIIR cut out in silver cardboard with the Royal Coat of Arms and the Union Jack.

My mother had set a table with plates of sandwiches and little cakes and special coronation napkins had been bought.

The furniture in the living room had been carefully arranged to make viewing comfortable for everyone – the souvenir programme was ready to help us follow the route of the procession.

The Radio Times informed us when we would expect to see the Queen and her family.

We had our next-to-best dresses on and we settled down with great excitement to tune in our new television for this great event.

The tuning signal faded and at 10.15am we were outside Buckingham Palace.

It had rained all night but the enthusiasm of the crowd hadn’t been dampened.

The gold coach appeared pulled by eight beautifully turned-out horses with four postillions. It was a wonderful sight as the procession gradually stretched through the streets of London.

There were more carriages, marching bands, mounted soldiers and still they came proud to be doing their duty on this special day.

When such moments that the Queen was out of view we rushed into the kitchen to make tea and savour the special food that we had prepared.

The crowning ceremony was very moving especially with Richard Dimbleby’s commentary. The Queen looked so small in her beautiful dress and how could she possibly bear the weight of that heavy crown.

When it was time for the Queen to return to Buckingham Palace the rain came down, but no-one seemed to notice – especially Queen Salote of Tonga who refused to have the hood of her carriage up and smiled and waved to everyone.

We had a lovely view of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, their children Charles and Anne and all the family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. They looked as though they had had a happy day – we certainly had.

Our new television had done us proud and the evening was rounded off with a fireworks display. It didn’t maker they were in black and white – in our minds’ eye we could see the colours.