Where: Buckingham Palace

Who: Queen Victoria

I must be seen to be about, to wave at my people, and so: here I am, being readied to go to Parliament again for the State Opening with the Princess of Wales and Princess Beatrice. Such a rush, always such a rush, the people need to see me. I am such public property. I look at them from the carriage, such a dark miserable day, really it is not to be borne. How the carriage does bump and tumble, as if the ground were most uneven. Whatever is going on? It is the strange weather, they say, the sleet, that and a peculiar collection of filth and objects all over the ground.