The secret of The Queen’s rude health and happy life is, as declared by Boy Seymour at 8.15 this morning, excellent health care.
Marvellous. That is marvellous. I am a big fan of The Queen, and very happy for her. But it did get me thinking…
If castles, carriages, horses, multiple mansions, plenty of money and servants lead to rude health and a very happy life, then what damage might living in a shed with me for a cook do to The Four Little Seymours?
When The Funny Little Bungalow was still intact, shortly before the roof came off, I did start to worry. I was constantly wiping mould off the walls in the winter, constructing makeshift tapestries to ward off the damp, and moving children from one room to the next. The old place was in dire need of a makeover, before it started to make us ill.
Now, away from those damp walls, The Four Little Seymours are sleeping on a ledge, packed in like sardines in the apex of a wooden roof, with spiders for company. They shift tiles for recreation, are experts in the art of Bonfire-Prodding and have learned that if the smoke alarm goes off, as it does bi-daily, they must NOT ignore it, lest it should be something other than Mummy’s lack of cooking prowess. I’m not sure which – The Shed or The Mouldy Bungalow, is the lesser of the two evils…
Thinking about it, maybe Queen Elizabeth and I are not so different. We both have four children, and I am assured by various sources that Balmoral, at least, is rather dated and sparse, so maybe The Shed is not so different, after all. And Queen Victoria‘s children, all nine of them, definitely slept in a shed! I’ve seen it! I’ve been there! It may have had a grand name like Swiss Cottage, but it was and still is simply a large shed, really. Just like ours.
There’s not a lot I can do about the fact that I am not The Queen, but with the NHS doing us proud – to date, at least, The Four Little Seymours have also received, to quote Boy Seymour, “excellent health care.” We don’t have any horses, and who’d want servants anyway? And no, I have not been married for seventy years. Quite. But I am comforted by the fact that our queen seems to spend a lot of time in wellies, trudging around in the mud in her free time, and whilst I probably should have changed out of my manky Hunters and mud-stained bodywarmer when I ventured into The Village on Saturday, at least I can safely say that, since we’ve been renovating, I have lost any vanity that I may once have been fool enough to possess. Rather like The Queen, I’m sure. She is far too busy for such nonsense.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling rather smug that today, we have become the proud owners of a very posh front door. It opens into the Hades of all Interiors, but never mind. The door alone is a huge step in the right direction.
Now we’ve just got to pay for it.
Oh, for some offshore investments…
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