Memories Of My Time Living In Edwardian Britain
"... we also missed the other horses who’d done quieter jobs that you hadn’t noticed so much at the time, such as the Data Entry Horse, the Tax Horse, and the Listening Horse, whose job it was to bear witness to your innermost troubles and interject every few minutes with a calming neigh."
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It never gets any less remarkable, the speed at which time flashes by, as you get older, and perhaps this is the main reason that I find it almost impossible to believe that it is now over 113 years since I was living in Edwardian Britain. I remember the day it ended like it was yesterday, us all watching The King’s coffin as it was carried through the streets of London prior to its transportation to Windsor by steam train. Everyone was there and if they weren’t, they had better have had a damn good reason not to be. It was said that so many people had travelled down for the occasion that every other place besides the capital was a ghost town, the only people left there being the terminally ill or those missing a minimum of three limbs.
“Nothing will ever be the same now,” we all remarked as we gazed upon the King’s lifeless body, that once stylish vessel unwilling to succumb for so long but finally trounced by heart attacks, bronchitis, cancer, dandruff and hiccups. And we were correct: it wasn’t the same. Just the next morning the difference was already palpable. The most noticeable initial sign was women’s skirts. Overnight, they had all been cut to less than a quarter of their previous length. And while that seemed briefly radical and interesting, it wasn’t long before all of us - not least the women themselves - missed those extremely long flowing skirts of the Edwardian era, all that lovely fabric and the magic memories that went with it, such as the many times when you’d see a lady abruptly stop walking on a street for no apparent reason then watch the confused look on her face dissolve into a smile as she realised that the cause of her hampered progress was someone in a meadow 200 yards to her rear who had stepped on the hem of her garment.
