The day I thought about stabbing the Queen

The day I refer to was the day I met the Queen. The thought came a few moments before meeting her.

A thought’s capacity to disturb mostly depends on its context. For example the thought of voluntarily stepping off a cliff without wanting to might only be disturbing if it comes while stood at the edge of a cliff. If it arrives when sat on a train it may not be disturbing at all, though it might seem random.

The title thought was not random and in and of itself it is not disturbing, however its context made it so.

The first part of this blog is perhaps unnecessary, although it does offer a context for the thought. You may prefer to skip my nice little story about meeting the Queen and go straight to the part where I get apprehended by the Thought Police.

***

I met the Queen on the 3rd of December 1992, she had come to formally open the Volunteers’ Room at Oxfam House in Summertown, Oxford. I had recently graduated having done a theology degree and was now working as a volunteer in the Volunteers’ Room.

The Volunteers’ Room was effectively the mail room for Oxfam Headquarters. I would help facilitate and support other volunteers who would typically fold and place letters in envelopes and then seal them ready for mailing. Some people could do all three tasks, others not. Some of the volunteers had learning difficulties while others were suffering some form of personal crisis or ‘mental health’ issue which had made it difficult for them to remain in paid employment.

Although I was there to support and supervise other volunteers I too was in the midst of a crisis. My estranged father had recently died, my graduation plans had spectacularly fallen through due to the broken commitments and pederastic intent of an ex-tutor, and on top of that my faith had all but gone.

***

A student friend of mine who had just started working on one of the Africa desks had introduced me to Pam Gee the manager of the Volunteers’ Room. Pam was just a little younger than the Queen, and like the Queen she showed no signs of retiring anytime soon. Pam was kind, generous and concerned with every volunteer’s welfare. Each year during lambing season she invited everyone to see the lambs at her family farm and would provide lunch for what seemed like an endless procession of people.

In my short time at Oxfam House I met many wonderful people, it took me out of myself and became a sort of convalescence.

***

The announcement that the Queen was to come and officially open the new Volunteers’ Room created an excited buzz amongst the volunteers, it seemed almost everyone wanted to meet the Queen. Pam decided it would be fair to draw people’s names from a hat to give everyone the chance. Pam somehow managed to rearrange the room so we could cram in as many people as possible, she also invented reasons to increase the number of volunteers permitted. My name did not go into the hat as Pam had already suggested it would be helpful if I were there to support anyone that might become overwhelmed by the occasion. My official duty was to open the door for the Queen as she entered the room.

Apparently, as I was soon to find out, the prospect of meeting the Queen can do strange things to people.

Unbeknownst to anyone else one large and prominent volunteer whom I had not met before brought cans of lager into the room and hidden them under the table. When this was discovered he refused to give them up and all that could be done was to encourage him to keep them out of sight and hope he didn’t become too inebriated before the Queen arrived.

The protocol was clear, those sat were told to stay seated, and all of us were instructed not to address the Queen unless she spoke directly to us. The large man was quite animated when the Queen arrived. From his seated position he somehow managed to prevent her leaving by engaging her in a convoluted story about his sister. It was quite a spectacle, the Queen politely listened to his merry story as she discreetly shifted her weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to exit through the door I held open for her. As she hovered over each foot she seemed to be managing a conflict between wanting to exit while remaining polite and giving time to the common man.

Like him, I too broke protocol, though not with the thought: thoughts have no protocol. It was as I opened the door I could not stop myself speaking to the Queen. As is often the case with common men I could not resist being polite: the protocol seemed rude, politeness was so ingrained in me that I could not help myself, I said something like, ‘Hello Your Majesty.’ I also think that by speaking I was trying to distract myself from the dark thought.

The Queen looked a little surprised by my words, she kept her composure and as she looked me in the eye I imagined she was used to having this effect on people. She gave me a half-smile before stepping through the doorway. The thought was now in the distant past of some moments ago, even so I noticed that I instinctively scanned her face and body perhaps looking to see if she had picked up on the thought that had entered my mind just before she had entered the room.

***

It is of course a cliché to remark on how small the Queen is, even though I had anticipated this it did not lessen its impact. The Queen was an immaculately turned out little old woman with perhaps the most recognisable hair-do in the world. She was sixty-six at that time, she seemed old to me which is of course no longer the case. According to my mind’s eye, her eyes are small and dark, though this is also not the case, this incorrect recollection may be due to the sense I had of there being no-one behind them. From within the reverie of my daydream it struck me that if I had stabbed and killed her it might come as a relief to her too. For a moment she appeared to me to be as lost as I was, but then this is how projection works.

Our brief and peculiar moment of intimacy came as a relief. I felt like I had got away with something, as though I were responsible for my thoughts, if that is what they were.

***

When I was finally apprehended by the Thought Police I immediately confessed. I described how the thought came just as her security staff left the room. Although they had apparently searched the room earlier that morning they popped in again a few minutes before she arrived for a final check. I was surprised that they did not remove the box of paper knives on the shelf next to the door. Had they not seen them? Should I have pointed them out? If I had, I would have inadvertently disclosed the thought I was about to have. Telling them about the knives might have made them suspicious of me. Or they might have taken my intervention as criticism for not having done a thorough job. I did not want to antagonise them or arouse their suspicion, so I said nothing.

Though the knives were blunt and had a rounded tip they could be used by a fit young man to kill an old woman. It was this observation that seemed to trigger the thought of stabbing the Queen.

The Thought Police listened intently, taking everything in, their silence encouraged me to continue, perhaps this was an interrogation technique. If it was it was working. It was within their silence that I got the sense of there being no defence for having such a thought, but then all thoughts are indefensible: it is impossible to know where any of them come from and what they mean.

***

Thoughts often come with a chaperone thought, on this occasion it was, ‘Where did that thought come from?’ Like a chaperone on a date, a chaperone thought is there to prevent premature intimacy. Some thoughts, even desirable ones (are there any other?) can be too uncomfortable to get too close to, let alone take ownership of.

From a thought’s perspective a boundary can and generally is also an invitation to transgress. Boundaries are the product of fertile imagination and forbidden desire.

Thoughts do not respect boundaries, to a thought a boundary is solicited enticement. The best way to discourage a thought is to make it permissible, and better still, have a moratorium on all thoughts.

Calling a thought an intrusive thought says nothing: all thoughts are intrusive. Thoughts do not respect boundaries and are able to walk through walls, nonetheless it is reasonable to wonder where a thought comes from and who does it belong to.

***

Was the thought of stabbing the Queen my thought? I think the key to this question lies in the fear and desire that might entertain such a thought.

The closest approximation to the fear I felt was precisely the fear I described earlier of being stood at the edge of a cliff and voluntarily stepping off, despite not wanting to. I felt vertigo, my head swam and my legs felt weak, the thought made me nauseous. It was not the fear of the imagined aftermath, my mind was not there yet. Although when it arrived, I enjoyed the irony of a recent theology graduate killing the head of the Church of England.

I imagined my ex-tutor as they interrogated him, it was known at college that we socialised and that he had appointed me as his research assistant. I relished the thought that as a priest, former tutor and nascent friend people would wonder how he had not seen the signs. Questions would be asked and his life would become very uncomfortable.

***

So what of my desire? It was only when I recognised how I had projected my sense of being lost onto the Queen that I understood the nature of my desire. Since I had not yet come to terms with my recent life circumstances and personal loss it struck me that the thought’s appeal lay in its aftermath. To stab the Queen would mean cracking up, I think there was a part of me that wanted to crack up. I would no longer feel the burden of freedom, I imagined I would never again have to make any decisions about my life, from then on it would be done for me.

If it was fear and desire that triggered the thought, who or what provided the trigger? I think the security staff’s visit planted the thought: they were my accomplices. As I watched them do their job the seed was planted. They sowed the very thought they try to eliminate. If they are complicit then so is the Queen as their employer, and so too are we as part of a monarchy.

Thoughts are indefensible which is immaterial since they do not need defending. I most likely would have had the thought regardless of my state of mind. These later thoughts about how the thought of stabbing the Queen occurred are just more thoughts, in this sense all thoughts are equal, although some are more or less interesting and meaningful than others.

***

It was then that the Thought Police broke their silence.

‘Can you explain why you were thinking about stabbing the Queen?’

‘You make it sound as though I were considering it,’ I counter.

‘We didn’t say that, why would you think that? Thoughts are not ideas, thoughts occur or come to us: we have ideas,’ their rhetorical tone is suggestive of me having implicated myself.

‘We’re not interested in your behaviour,’ the voice cuts in, ‘From our perspective thought is everything: thought is the deed. The so-called ‘act itself’ is of no concern to us.’

‘That sounds biblical: the idea that the thought is itself a crime. I don’t believe that anymore. Thoughts do not commit crimes, though they can be so abhorrant that they get mistaken for them.’

‘Sin,’ the faceless voice interjects. ‘You said crime, if it were biblical it would be sin not crime. You conflate the two, it is you who sound biblical. Besides a thought is only a sin if it comes from the heart, your’s came from the mind.’

‘Hm, sin only exists in the hearts and minds of those who believe in it,’ is that me speaking or the Thought Police? It could be either. Do they know what I’m thinking?

‘Of course we know what you’re thinking, we are after all part of you: a figment of your imagination, what most people describe as having a conscience.’

‘But you’re not that.’

‘Correct. But you knew that already. Right now you’re thinking, ‘If we’re not here to act as your conscience, then why are we here?’’

Before I could respond the voice continued, ‘We don’t know what you’re about to think, but we do know when a thought comes and what it is, and since some of those thoughts follow certain patterns of idiomatic logic we can often predict your next thought.’

‘So how am I able to police myself? That’s corrupt: you’re a bent copper.’

Apparently ignoring my levity the voice calmly announces, ‘We’re here to protect and to serve.’

‘I thought Thought Police were all about policing thoughts: monitoring, assessing, judging, upholding…’

‘We’re what?’ The Thought Police interrupt, ‘We’re not here to judge you, you do enough of that yourself, if anything we’re here to challenge self criticism. We’re not ‘judge and jury’, policing is all about interpreting the law to find value in it, and if there isn’t any it doesn’t apply.’

‘So you are here to protect me from myself.’

‘Not exactly, as we said earlier the so-called ‘act itself’ is of no interest to us, it’s out of our jurisdiction. If you voice your thoughts they become speech acts. We can’t protect you from what you say or do.’

‘So what are you here to protect and serve?’

‘We are here for your playfulness. The only thought crime – if it is a crime – is not playing with your thoughts. Thoughts are like children: they benefit from being played with. There is no such thing as a naughty child or a naughty thought, but with neglect they can become naughty.’ The voice pauses as though to give me space to consider what’s just been said which seems odd given that we share the same mind.

‘You do know we are only the Thought Police because that is what you call us.’

‘Then who are you?’

‘In the same way you used to talk to God, you now talk to us by talking to yourself.’

‘And when I stop?’

‘When you stop there is no guilt. Judgement Day is conducted in silence, it comes whenever you are silent. It does not come in silence, it is silence.’

With this thought my thinking gave way to a smile, and then like the Cheshire Cat, it too disappeared.

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