From dreadful heights to lakeside drear
Abandon hope all ye who enter here

And this was not the best of times. It was April and the rest of the world was full of daffodils, blossoms, and Easter bonnets. At Castle Rannoch it was snowing—not that delightful powdery stuff you get in Switzerland but wet, heavy, slushy snow that sticks to the clothing and freezes one in seconds. I hadn’t been out for days. My brother, Binky, having been conditioned to do so at school, insisted on taking his morning walks around the estate and arrived home looking like the abominable snowman—sending his son Hector, affectionately known as Podge, screaming for Nanny.

It was the sort of weather for curling up with a good book beside a roaring fire. Unfortunately my sister-in-law, Hilda, usually known as Fig, was trying to economize and only allowed one log on the fire at a time. This was surely a false economy, as I had pointed out on several occasions. Trees were being felled by gales on a daily basis. But Fig had a bee in her bonnet about economizing. Times were hard everywhere and we had to set a good example to the lower classes. This example included porridge for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs and even baked beans as the savory after dinner one night. Life is drear, I wrote in my diary. I was spending a lot of time writing in my diary these days. I knew I should be doing something. I was itching to do something, but as my sister-in-law reminded me constantly, a member of the royal family, however minor, has a duty not to let the family down. Her look implied that I was liable to become pregnant or dance naked on the lawn if I went out to Woolworths unchaperoned. My duty apparently was to wait until a suitable match was made for me. Not a happy thought.

How long I would have patiently awaited my doom, I can’t really say, if I hadn’t been sitting on the loo one April afternoon, trying to avoid the worst of the driving snow that was blowing in upon me by holding up a copy of Horse and Hound. Over the moan of the wind, I became aware of voices. Owing to the eccentric nature of the plumbing at Castle Rannoch, installed many centuries after the castle was built, it was possible to overhear conversations floating up from many floors below. This phenomenon probably contributed to the delusions and fits that overcame even the sanest of our guests. I was born to it and had used it to my advantage all my life, overhearing many a thing that had not been meant for my ears. To an outsider, however, lost in contemplation on the loo, and staring in horror alternately at the dark crags outside the window and the tartan wallpaper within, echoing voices booming hollow from the pipes were enough to push them over the edge.

“The queen wants us to do what?” This was enough to make me perk up and pay attention. I was always keen for gossip about our royal kin, and Fig had given a horrified shriek, quite unlike her.