The Queen And Me

The Queen’s ninetieth Birthday has set me thinking.

Me and the Queen, we’re like that, we are. (I just crossed my first two fingers of my right hand to show how close we are) just in case you didn’t get it. We’re not really like that. I ain’t never met her. Got quite close once at the Trooping the colour thing. I was only little. I remember someone lifting me up so I could see her better, but all I saw was the back of some bloke’s head and an ‘orse having a shit.

I have got a bit of a theory as to why I like Her Majesty. I was brought up in care. Maybe I am grateful to her for giving me a roof over my head and three meals a day? I say meals but it’s a moot point. Maybe I think of her like a mother? I wrote to her once asking if she could make my mum come and get me out of the children’s home. She never wrote back. I remember being quite upset by this. One of the housemothers told me the Queen got hundreds of letters and couldn’t possibly answer them all. She also pointed out that I didn’t put a stamp on the envelope. A poor excuse, that one. The queen surely didn’t expect a kid who only got threepence pocket money to buy a stamp?

We used to sing, God save the Queen at school assembly. I never actually found out what we had to save her from or why she wanted to rain all over us. But I wasn’t worried. I was fairly intelligent and I had worked out that some things only make sense to grown-ups and in the fullness of time I would understand. Although to be honest I still don’t know. And I’m still not worried. Oh and I never had the thought, ‘in the fullness of time.’ I was a kid and kids don’t think like that. You have to stand up to sing ‘God save the Queen’ I don’t know why that is either. What I do know is, when a boy ain’t got no meat on his bones and wears short trousers it is not much fun getting up and down off a hard floor.

I ain’t no further along in my quest to find out why I like Her Majesty. I just don’t know. Although, brain-washing just came to mind. That’s a bit sinister. Perhaps I like the Queen because ‘they’ said I had too. That has to be it. I don’t have another real explanation. I am kind of mystified by the whole Queen thing.

My uncles George and David along with millions of others, gave their lives for the King in the second world war. Well, I tell you, I like the Queen but I ain’t ready to die for her. But, if it came to it, maybe I wouldn’t have the choice? Funny old world. There is ‘them’ and there is us. Us sheep.

I have gone off her a bit now.