There are seven hundred and seventy-five rooms in Buckingham
Palace. I know, right?! Spring cleaning must be a nightmare. Any cleaning must
be a nightmare. Anyway, Mrs Poo is nothing but resolute, and off she goes in
search of the room she needs in order to implement her Christmas Cards For
Everyone plan. Up great flights of stairs she climbs, along lengthy corridors
she marches, turning right, then left, then left again, and up another flight
of stairs. It is a good job she is intent on her mission because she is unaware
that her movements are being followed. Is that a mysterious figure in the
shadows? A mysterious figure that knows the walls and corridors of Buckingham
Palace better than most? Well, of course it’s a mysterious shadowy figure
because the Lady Author wouldn’t mention it otherwise, would she? Shadowy
foreshadowing, that’s what this is. Keep up, please.
At last, Mrs Poo finds the room she seeks. At the end of a
small corridor stands a door upon which is a sign – ‘Christmas Card Room.’
‘Finally,’ says Mrs Poo. She checks her pedometer. ‘Three
thousand and twenty-two steps,’ she says. ‘That’s three thousand steps more
than I’d have done back at the Manor by this time of the morning.’
She opens the door to the Christmas Card Room and enters
therein. The room is lined with shelves upon which are neatly stacked boxes and
boxes of Christmas cards labelled ‘2024’, waiting to be signed. Mrs Poo opens
one of the boxes and looks at the image on the card. It shows King Charles and
Queen Camilla perched on the felled trunk of an enormous tree. They are wearing
tartan outfits and one of Camilla’s dogs is resting on her lap. The dog is
giving King Charles a bit of a look. It’s a nice enough image. Just a bit,
well, dull and predictable.
In the centre of the room is a large table upon which is set various
pens, an ink blotter, a franking machine, a biscuit tin containing shortbread
fingers and a tea mug carrying the slogan, ‘Only 849 To Go.’
‘Hmmm,’ says Mrs Poo. ‘This won’t do.’ She pauses and rests
her beak thoughtfully on her wing tips. And then she leaves the room – taking a
couple of shortbread fingers with her for sustenance – and sets off once more
along the corridors in search of another, more useful room.
The mysterious, shadowy figure shrinks back into an alcove
as Mrs Poo passes by…
(N.B There has been some behind-the-scenes speculation that
the mysterious, shadowy figure is none other than Kenneth the Phantomime. Are
you serious? He’s been given the role of impersonating the King of Great
Britain – there is going to be nothing mysterious and shadowy about our Kenneth
this year, that’s for sure. Think again, dear Reader(s)…)
Meanwhile, back in the breakfast room, Mrs Miggins is
organising the troops into working parties.
‘We need to decorate the room where the King’s Christmas Day
Speech will be recorded,’ she says. ‘According to the list, the recording takes
place in the Drawing Room, but according to the house plans there are twenty four drawing rooms…’
‘We can’t decorate twenty four drawing rooms!’ says Mrs
Slocombe. ‘We haven’t got time.’
‘Oooh, we jolly well can!’ says Mrs Pumphrey. Putting up
Christmas decorations is one of Mrs Pumphrey’s best and most favourite activities
of the year, pushed to second place only by her hostessing of the ‘Flamingo and
Pineapple Pool Party’ on Free Range Independence Day. Anyway, give her bags of tinsel, tins of fake snow and
plenty of those 1960’s honeycomb paper baubles and she can conjure up a Winter
Wonderland in an hour and a half.
‘I think,’ says Mrs Miggins, sensing that Mrs Slocombe could
be on the edge of a meltdown before they’ve even got started, ‘that the
sensible thing to do would be to view all the drawing rooms and choose the most
appropriate one, and concentrate on that.’
‘What about me?’ says Kenneth the Phantomime, who would have
joined in the conversation earlier had it not been for the fact he had been
working his way through a particularly spectacular stack of pancakes covered in
some rather resilient maple syrup. ‘Don’t I get a say in the matter? I am,
after all, going to be the STAR of the Christmas Day speech, what with me being
the official AI King.’
Mrs Miggins decides to nip the ego in the bud. ‘Of course,’
she says. ‘But I think you need to remember that His Majesty the King is NOT a
diva and will humbly take advice from his trusted advisor, which, in this case,
is me.’
The Phantomime sighs. Of course, he knows that, as an AI
actor of the finest calibre, he needs to remain ‘in role’ as much as possible.
He needs to channel regal vibes or he won’t be fooling anyone on Christmas Day
that he is King Charles the Third of this Realm.
‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Jolly good show. Lead the way, old
bean.’
‘Good grief,’ sighs Mrs Miggins. She is still concerned
about letting Mrs Poo go rogue with the organising of the Christmas cards, but
she also knows that the BBC film crew will be arriving in the next day or so to
set up their cameras and lights for the recording of the King’s Speech, and
getting the drawing room ready – whichever one that turned out to be – has
become her priority.
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