In such situations, of which I am thankful to say there have only been
this single instance though by extension one might compare my
predicament to a schoolboy caught in the very act of tipping a large
quantity of laxative into a communal tea urn or a magistrate exposed
at a supermarket till with a large frozen chicken concealed under her
turban, the traditional response is either flight or flight and the act of
freezing, which for the purposes of maintaining the balance of rhyme
may be described as fright. Flight was impossible from the enclosed
space in which I found myself and, considering that to do so would
involve a direct encounter with the sacrosanct person of the monarch
not to mention bursting through the barriers of relatives, dependants
and hangers-on that were included in such numbers at this midnight
feast, for what monarch snoops in the true sense? My act of escape
would in a sense amount to fight and flight combined, and who knew
how many of the royal attendants were trained in martial arts of which
I was totally ignorant, even HM herself I imagined as a practitioner of
a type of bonsai form of takwandoe that allowed her to physically
overpower the most brutal assailant with a paralysing touch to flank
or temple - for surely all those decades of hand clasps, oral manual
greetings and serial accoladings had empowered the royal palms and
digits with a mass unnoticeable to the casual observer yet none the
less lethal when applied with defensive forethought. Even if I were, by
the sheer element of surprise, to break through this pantry party and
regain the safe interior of Louise the entire Balmoral security system,
so inexplicably reposeful until now, would be on full alert and my
faithful elk and I fed to some rare monster nesting on the banks of the
Deva or, worse humiliation still, charged with trespass before the
local magistrate and dismissed perhaps even without the infliction of
a paltry fine - killed by kindness in a manner that could be fatal to my
mission.
I had reached yet another Lagrangian point, unable to replace my
purloined comestibles, unable to continue gorging, unable to address
HM, unable so much as to shift my feet in my wellies - and these last
brought to mind the eccentric state of my dress for surely no palace
intruder had ever been apprehended in such a garb? And never had
any Castle visitor worn a luminous wig! I was aware of HM's presence
before me rather as if I had happened on the Holy Grail itself, and
