‘Dialogue with the Queen’ by Jan Moran Neil
Last night I dreamt the Queen said to me,
“Oh Janet, weren’t you in the crowd at Jubilee
in … nineteen-seventy-seven?
Wasn’t it that little town in Devon?”
“Falmouth,” I replied.
“Ah yes, and in nineteen-eighty-two
at Regent’s Park, we remember asking you -
‘how has been the weather?’”
I said“I replied to you, ‘not bad’ but I lied.
In fact the weather could not have been wetter.”
“Janet,” said she,
“you were the invisible voice of Puck’s fairy.
This, I believe, is what you have always been …
a little one doing good deeds unseen,
It’s always so nice to see you
and we are always so interested too
to know how you are in particular.
And so is the Duke of Edinburgh.”
This is called ‘illusions of grandeur’.
It’s true – I was in the crowd in Falmouth in 1977 when the Queen had been Queen for twenty-five years. Then I did meet her and the Duke of Edinburgh, as I was an invisible First Fairy in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in Regent’s Park in 1982. But the dialogue is all fiction as the last line states. In my dreams.
If you are one of the 220 writers from across the world who contributed to the pandemic anthology ‘When This Is All Over …’ for the Rennie Grove Hospice then send me a photo of yourself with the anthology so I can post on social media to boost sales.
Haiku for Jan
THE MID-SUMMER DREAMER
Have we met before?
Are you Queen of the Faries?
Or mid-summer’s Puck?
Our daughter was born in 1977- a Sliver Jubilee baby. Almost 20 years later she came home from work and said quite casually … I had lunch with The Duke of Edinburgh today.