I tipped forward, one leg curled round the metal bar and the sky spun under me, rocking into place at my feet. I hooked my free leg onto the bar, trailed my arms close to the ground, blew my hair out of my face and examined the world upside down. I had finished my story and been allowed out of class early so I was temporarily queen of the climbing bars and all I surveyed. The vast sandy parade ground of RN Verdala was my sky and I could see the two storey flat-roofed classroom blocks in each corner of it on the periphery of my vision, pale honey constructions the same colour as the ground, in which my classmates laboured under the cool eye of the real Queen.
Her portrait adorned all the classrooms, a beautiful young woman in a white satin dress with a blue sash and a diamond star, and an even shinier diamond tiara. She had two children, Charles and baby Anne with the platinum curls. Our headmaster, Captain Morgan, saluted her portrait whenever he left the room. We sang God Save The Queen on special days, her birthday, Malta GC Day and if anyone died, though hardly anyone did. She was like a fairy or Father Christmas to us. We never thought of being Her in our pretend games; to do so might have brought down some awful un-stated retribution, worse than Captain Morgan’s occasional roaring fits…