THE QUEEN & I

Last night I had dinner with the Queen. Strictly speaking it was a pre-show supper, but it was lavish enough to have been a full-blown, top-notch, pukka dinner…

We were going on to attend a gala performance of something and since I don’t know what it was, I’d best come clean and say that this was in a DREAM!

There was a big screen in the corner of the room relaying images of the crowds gathering and the stars arriving. We were a select group: the Queen and I and two men who, at the time, I seemed to know very well, but who, I now realise, were total strangers!

The others were clearly involved with organising the event in some way and kept excusing themselves and dashing in and out, leaving HM and myself to keep each other company.

The Queen was dolled up in a sparkly evening gown and was wearing a tiara, but the most striking feature was her hair, which was swept up into a great wave of green and white stripes.

I admired the effect and the Queen said she was glad that I liked it as she felt it was an improvement on her usual hair-do. Then she turned slightly in order to show me that the hair at the back of head was raven black. “The trouble is,” she confided, “It’s started growing out, so I’m going to have to get it redone soon.”

We chatted on (some elements of the dream are crystal sharp, others hazy) and, apropos of nothing, the Queen asked if I had seen a list of the people she was going to have to meet. When I said that I hadn’t, she sighed in a slightly world-weary way and said with a smile: “Oh well, I expect they’ll show me one eventually…”

A butler was serving the food and, at one point when he had left the room, the Queen leaned forward and asked, sotto voce, if I had any money with which she might use for a tip. Unfortunately, I hadn’t so she handed me her purse and told me to have a look inside. “It’s no good my looking,” she said, “I haven’t got my specs.”

I rootled through the purse (which seemed to contain very little except a lipstick and large quantity of different-sized Band-aids) and eventually found a ten-pound note carefully folded to display the portrait of herself - though, oddly, without green and white hair.

I expressed some surprise, saying that I’d always heard that the Queen never carried any money.

“Oh, yes!” she replied, “I make it a rule to have a note of the realm handy at all times in case of emergences. In fact, I always say, I never go anywhere without ‘Ten ME’s’!”

WHAT UTTERLY RIDICULOUS, IDIOTIC NONSENSE!!

If it had really been the Queen, she would have said: “In fact, I always say, I never go anywhere without ‘Ten ONE’s’!”

But that’s dreams for you…


[Image: Royal menu from Royal Insight Magazine; Ocean of Dreams by Josephine Wall]