Stratford-upon-Avon, 25.11. 2005

(Not strictly speaking an account of a trip but more of a reflection on an arrival).

I met the Prince yesterday. It was a cake day and we sat in a roof-top room (with the exhibit of an Oscar in a glass container) and I stuck next to the radiators not really wanting to talk to anyone, thinking: "if I don’t say anything to the Prince does it still count as though I met him". I sat on a windowsill for a moment holding a porcelain cup of tea and a very delicate slice of carrot cake and said to my companion – "I feel like Alice in Wonderland; all the time"… She said I was ‘bonkers’ and turned her attention to a very heavy photo-camera.

 

I sometimes wonder how different things might have been in a number of ways. I wonder whether I’d’ve always ended up here whatever I’d done, whichever pathways I'd chosen?

 

The Prince was just like he looks on the pictures of himself. He wore a golden ring on the little finger of his left hand and reached for his handkerchief every so often because he had a minor cold. He even sneezed delicately once. You know how bad I am at remembering what people wear, but I remember that he wore a pink tie. He even cracked a joke - about there being 'much ado about the merry wives of Windsor this summer, but that all's well that ends well' - and everybody laughed. 

When I later told this to my friend Saska, she cracked her own joke: So did he say it all in his mother tongue – in Queen’s English?…

 

After I left the room with the Prince – I descended a long, winding staircase and I went into a cellar and cried. I didn’t want to break down, but it took me by surprise, I seriously thought for a moment, perhaps I should just give the whole thing up… Paranoia sets in early in Wonderland…

 

I’m still on my own but I am learning to handle my loneliness, even love it sometimes…