THERE are many privileges of my job, and one is being able to attend some of the major state functions held in St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey.

So, on Monday it was off to the Abbey to take part in a very special service of thanks and commemoration.

The Queen was crowned in the same place, on the same day, in 1953.

I reflected on three sets of thoughts. The first was how lucky we have been that fate and an accident of history should have given us a monarch as admirable and dignified as The Queen (the accident being the sudden assumption of the Crown by her father George VI when her uncle Edward VIII abdicated in 1936).

In a half century of huge change, for our country and also for the world, she has been one of the few constant beacons, providing a sense of continuity and security for the United Kingdom which we too often take for granted.

She has seen ten Prime Ministers in her time - from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair - and remember, he was not even born when she became Queen in 1952.

I am neither a dogmatic monarchist, still less a dogmatic republican. What works for a country is what suits them.

But I am in no doubt that it is a constitutional monarchy which is what suits this county - and even for some of the newer European democracies like Spain, where I was later on Monday.

There, almost everyone will tell you that the re-establishment of their monarchy has been one of the keys to their very successful transition from the dire years of Franco's dictatorship to their modern, free society.

My second thought was to reflect on how my life had changed in those 50 years.

I am just old enough to remember the coronation and the great excitement at school. Every child got a full copy from the local education authority of "Royalty in Essex".

On the day, the whole family got the bus a few miles to my grandmother's next-door neighbours who, wonder of wonders, had a real, working television.

I can still remember the flickering black and white picture (we didn't get a TV at home for another eleven years, when I was 16).

I also recall that, as I was five, my friend and I got bored, as young lads do, and so disappeared out to play. But it was a great day.

And then I thought more locally about East Lancashire and Blackburn.

Our area is one which has faced more change in this half century than many regions in the country.

In 1953, although the writing was on the wall for the textile industry, it was still dominated by textiles and the culture which had made the area the prominent weaving centre of the world.

It was still resignedly the town of Woodruff's pre-war youth. And, it was to be a decade before people from India and Pakistan were asked to come to the town by some of the mill owners facing, ironically, a labour shortage in the mills and foundries as other newer industries began to flourish.

Now we are much more diverse, in every way.

The area has adapted to this profound change, as has the country.

The Queen's contribution to the relative harmony we have achieved cannot and should not be underestimated.