I used to live on the other side of the world, actually it was in England in the old days. We English are very proud of our history – of the very old days. Up and down the country there are hundreds of old houses which claim that the Virgin Queen slept there. Often it’s true – Elizabeth I used to save money by turning up with hundreds of hangers-on to be fed by the local Lord until supplies ran out, when she would move on to “honour” another loyal subject. Some districts used to pretend to have outbreaks of the bubonic plague just to deter royal visits.

I am by way of being the village historian, and I did some research on the Queen’s visits to our area. There is no doubt that she came at least twice, to visit the Hall, the great house in the area. One of her cronies lived there. In fact he knocked down his old house and rebuilt it in the modern Elizabethan style just so he could entertain her royally. He paid for all this by the profits of being a royal supplier – for example cutting down all the oak trees for miles around to sell the wood at inflated prices for making warships.

The Hall is now an exclusive girls’ school, and not open to visitors, but that’s not so at the Manor House, which is an expensive hotel and restaurant.

The Mitchells who own the Manor not only claim that Elizabeth visited them, but that you can still, if you pay a huge room rate, sleep in the very bed she slept in. When I visited the Manor, having found no record of such a visit, I pointed out that although the house was old enough to have hosted the Queen, it was too small for all her court.. John Mitchell smartly said “Yes but she was forced to sleep here as an emergency measure when the Hall was being rebuilt.” I then pointed out that the famous bed, though made of old oak, was king size and much too big for the tiny Elizabethans.  Again John Mitchell showed his entrepreneurial skill. He changed the name to “The Great Bed of Queen Elizabeth” and started to spread the story that the not-so-Virgin Queen had not been alone in it. They were able to sell models of the great bed for a hundred pounds a time, and some American tourists even paid a fee to lie in the bed for an hour – just like in a naughty motel.

Why didn’t my historian’s conscience make me denounce the story? Well, I could defend myself by saying that I never actually supported it. But maybe you foreigners don’t understand the power of a really good restaurant in England. I just couldn’t bring myself to put the Mitchells out of business and lose all that good food – especially at they were kind enough to invite me for regular free meals.

So when you visit England, beware of fake beds!

Isn’t it an odd world that we live in?