Right royal surprise for Wolverhampton charity pair invited to London for coronation
It will be a royal weekend for two Black Country charity leaders who have accepted invitations to attend the coronation of King Charles III.
Kim Hatton and Claire McKen from Wolverhampton-based children's charity Let Us Play will take their seats in Westminster Abbey alongside royals, world leaders and other dignitaries for the coronation on Saturday, May 6.
The pair, who help provide between 300 and 400 sessions per year of craft, leisure and sport activities for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), were both sent invitations over email about the coronation, with Kim saying that she had wondered if it was a scam until news came that Claire had also received it.
She said: "What happened was that they invite you and you have to accept first before you get the official invitation sent over, which kind of came out of the blue on email and which, initially, I was thinking might be junk, mostly because you get so many spoof emails.
"However, I checked with Claire and she told me she'd had the same email come through, so we checked it and saw it had come from a gov.uk email address, so realised it was the real thing.
"We then did a lot of correspondence going backwards and forwards and, eventually, we got the really nice invitations in the post last week."
Ms Hatton said the feelings were of excitement and also wonderment about why they had been picked to go, and spoke about how she was looking forward to the event.
She said: "We're going down the day before as you need to be at the abbey for 9am on the day, so rather than rush down, we're going to have a nice night in London and soak in the atmosphere, then get there for the coronation nice and early.
"I'm going to be sat there watching royals and politicians and everyone and I'll be sat there trying to work out who everyone is.
"I've had the most amazing reaction as well, with even my dentist talking about it when I went in recently, and I'll have friends in London who've said they'll cheer me on when they see me walking into the abbey with Claire.
"It's a once in a lifetime thing, so we're both going to just soak it up and enjoy it."
