No Cameras Allowed

What am I to do?

There is so much to tell
and pictures, as we all know,
are worth a thousand words.

The first thing to say is that I found my black leather gloves
just as I was leaving the house.
It meant that I did not have to use the hand warmers
that were given to you with the programme.

We arrive to be greeted by delightful young people
pressing champagne into our hands.

Then we are shown to our seats in the centre of St. Pancras.
I am sitting next to an elderly French man.
He is bored. He is wriggling in his seat.
Perhaps the orchestra and video display will distract him.
He starts texting.
The speeches are good - they are about
the historic opportunity of the Channel Tunnel
and the High Speed rail line,
the redevelopment of the Thames Gateway
and the Olympics.
The French man does not need to listen to all this
he starts calling his friends "Je suis dans St. Pancras"
I ask him to stop.
He has five more calls to make.
Now we have a choir of children singing
with Katherine Jenkins AND Lemar - all at the same time.
He taps his feet and rocks the row of seats.
I have had enough.
I kick him with the sharp pointy toes of my kitten heel shoes
in the shin.
Please don't hold it against me - it was either that or toss him in front of the train cavalcade that is coming into the station.
He stops wriggling.
Perhaps he is the Station manager at Gare du Nord
realising that his station is going to look
so very nineteeth century.

And here is the Queen in raspberry pink with velvet trim.
She is tiny in that vast space
as she sits under the gleaming new clock.
She says that she is privileged to open this wonderful new station.
We all agree because we have indeed
been witness to the beginning of a new era of travel.