Queens Park cont.

Thank God for Mr and Mrs Davidson, respectable and devoted couple downstairs. Mrs Cruickshank admits that poor Beverley is a bit plain, horsy even, but she’s never hesitated to lend those broad shoulders and strong arms on clean-up days - her deep voice most effective in shooing away charity collectors.

You may laugh at the lives of these people. But isn’t there a bit of us in all of them? How much of our lives are spent in living a falsehood? We think there is safety in the camouflage we create to meet what we believe to be other people’s expectations. But - in the words of another literary pitcher, Will Shakespeare, ‘To thine ownself be true and it must follow as the night the day that thou canst be false to any other man’.

These words were not lost on our Mrs Cruikshank who after one too many champagnes at the annual general meeting, and inviting the young ones to call her “Dolly”, confessed that the true love of her life was in fact Vera Jarmaine, manager of linen in David Jones.

In conclusion I would like you to consider the complexities of life for our Queens Park residents. They are really no different to those of the residents of another literary Park two centuries ago. As you all know, Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’ has only endured as a classic because its heroine Fanny Price remained true to herself. In this Queens Park story, I hope that readers will take Dolly Cruikshank into their hearts as a 21st century version of Fanny Price.