Читать книгу The Lost Diary of Queen Victoria’s Undermaid - Alex Parsons - Страница 11

What a day! The gun salutes started at 4am and no one’s had a wink of sleep since. Today the Queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey. It has been a wonderful day, the whole of the country has taken the young Queen to their hearts. Not surprising, considering what our last three kings were like. Sir Somebody Something described them as ‘an imbecile, a profligate and a buffoon’. I’ve asked around and apparently that means a madman, a ladies’ man, and a fool. Why don’t people say what they mean?

Apparently the Coronation didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned, and that’s probably because nobody planned it. Nobody understood the long, boring service and no-one noticed when the Archbishop turned over two pages at once.

All the Lords of the Realm had to go up to the Queen and kiss her hand. Lord Rolle, who is eighty-two and very frail, tottered up the altar steps, overbalanced with the weight of his robes, and fell over backwards. It’s a day he’ll not forget in a hurry!

A couple of the Lords started in on the champagne and cucumber sandwiches before the ceremony was over and were seen staggering about with their coronets over their noses and their stockings wrinkled round their ankles. One day, someone’s going to invent stockings that stay up, just you wait and see.

After the Coronation celebrations were over, the new Queen rushed up the stairs to her room in the Palace to give her little spaniel, Dash, a bath. There’s no telling how excitement takes people, is there? I think, if I’d just been crowned Queen, I’d be bathing in milk, swigging down the champers and inviting all my friends over to party, party, party.