Flick 🇬🇧 on Nostr: Just before we glide away from embarrassments in royal palaces, a friend told me of ...

Just before we glide away from embarrassments in royal palaces, a friend told me of one far worse. Her parents were friends of Queen Elizabeth and the whole family was invited to Balmoral for a weekend. After tea, in a place where ‘tea’ means a banquet of hot buttered everything and rich chocolate cake, games were proposed – indoors because it was pelting with rain and blowing a gale even harder than usual up there.

As various younger royals were present, they began with hide-and-seek and my friend shot off to find an obscure corner where she might escape for hours. She got lost several times but eventually went along an upstairs corridor and chose a door at the farthest end, which opened into a bedroom, clearly unused, complete with a four-poster. Pushing aside the draperies, she crept thankfully beneath it. As she did so, someone who had got there before her sneezed. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather dusty under here,’ said the Queen.