Just as The Duchess of Cambridge boards the Royal Train for a whistle-stop tour of the United Kingdom, new details have emerged about Kate’s volunteer efforts during the pandemic.
As revealed exclusively in The Sun, Kate was paired with an 85-year-old full-time carer named Len Gardner through the Royal Voluntary Service and made two phone calls with him during the first lockdown earlier this year.
Gardner said of the phone calls, in which the Duchess urged him to call her Catherine, that he was flabbergasted when he found out who he’d been paired with, and that “never in my wildest imagination did I think I would be talking on the phone to the future Queen of England.
“I will treasure our conversations for the rest of my life. Those calls helped me because they gave me something to look forward to.”
Gardner, who has been taking care of his 84-year-old wife who is living with Alzheimer’s, is also battling bladder cancer. The first call with Kate came on 13 May, and Gardner said: “After the first two sentences, I didn’t feel like I was talking to someone so important.”
Kate, who was isolating with William and the children at Anmer Hall, told Gardner that she was watching Prince George and Princess Charlotte play outside while they chatted. Gardner told her all about his love of Italian food and cooking, and the Duchess asked if he made his own pasta.
Gardner told the royal that he didn’t have a pasta maker or the special flour needed to make the dough, and revealed to The Sun: “About three days after our conversation, a brand-new pasta machine arrived from the Duchess. Two days later I got two kilos of ‘00’ (the Italian grading system) flour from Buckingham Palace.
“I can tell you, this lady you see on television that goes into the crowds and talks to people—what you see is what you get. She is a very, very nice person.”
Gardner wrote to Kate thanking her for the gift and didn’t expect to get another call from her when she called again about a month later.
“We spoke for about 40 minutes and I learned more about the Duchess’s children,” Gardner said.
“Apparently they have thousands of sheep down at Sandringham and her eldest children couldn’t understand how we get wool without killing the animal. So she took them down to the sheds to watch the sheep being sheared.
“It was the sort of conversation I might have with anyone about their family. She didn’t mention William much. But I gabble on a lot.”
He also revealed his hopes of meeting the royal in person, saying, “The Duke and Duchess are a brilliant couple for doing this kind of thing. They really seem to want to reach out to people.
“I think the Duchess felt she wanted to speak to other people outside the Palace and in the north.”
The head of the Royal Voluntary Service said, “We are incredibly grateful to The Duchess of Cambridge for kindly supporting the NHS Volunteer Responders programme.
“Her ‘check-in-and-chat’ call to Len has meant the world to him. It’s so important to highlight the power of conversation . . . you really can make someone’s day.”
