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Into London for lunch and we had some time to kill so we took the kids to see Buckingham Palace. Sometimes things in London are further apart in your mind than in reality and I was surprised to find out how close the Palace was to Green Park tube station, which feels like it's in a totally different part of town.
I tried to tell the kids the story of how
I got lost in Buckingham Palace which I have bored you with enough I am sure, though I am still annoyed that I don't get all the buzz that Michael Fagan managed, even though I got away undetected. And I didn't wank in the Queen's ear, like Kevin Adams from Fairlands MIddle School Cheddar said Fagan did. Though if you've listened to my recent chat with Craig Brown you'll know that he hadn't heard that story. But why would someone make something like that up?
We also told Phoebe that
we'd been to dinner here exactly one month after she was born (almost exactly ten years ago to the day), so this time I got to go into that same courtyard, but with an invitation (although one we didn't deserve as I'd done nothing for the charity involved) and an equally bemused Greg Davies (who also had no connection to the charity).
According to @JarofSnokes on Twitter I've also been in to be decorated by the King for all the work I do for charity. If not eating Soleros can be classified as work.
We joined the other tourists looking through the gates that had once welcomed me, but now remained closed and watch the guards in bearskin hats standing to attention, and a couple of armed policemen chatting in a doorway and a janitor with a broom sweeping the path. He left his hoodie scrunched up on a window ledge while he did it which didn't feel like it followed protocol. I told the kids I thought he might be a clever assassin trying to sneak into the building and he was going to attack the guards with his broom. But as we've already seen, the guards just let you through, even if you're walking along nervously and carrying something that looks as much like a bomb as possible, without it having a fuse coming out the top and BOMB written on it.
It's weird that so many people were gathered to look at nothing really happening. So when one of the guards suddenly took it upon himself to start marching up and down in front of his bit of the Palace it was a real piece of theatre.
I wondered with Ernie what would happen if I tried to scale the fence and run towards the Palace. At what point would I be shot? Or would they just tackle me to the ground? Or maybe I could get through for an ear wank - though I don't want to do that with the current so-called Queen. I'm not sick. Though I guess if you like wanking in ears that the King would be your ultimate fantasy. Watching the sperm cascade round those huge pinnas would be like a spunk-based game of Marble Run.
Please feel free to quote that sentence and put it on notes on Substack! I bet I am the first person to ever write that sentence. Even if the Universe is infinite.
It's weird to think there's this huge house in the middle of London, owned by one family and it's weird to think of all the people they employ to keep it running and safe. And it's weird to think that we pay for that. And yet if you climb the fence and run for the courtyard with a suitcase full of ear pornography, they will shoot you.
