Everyone should have a few harmless hobbies. As well as taking a keen and highly knowledgeable interest in horses, strangling the occasional peasant, and waving at bemused fat blokes, Her Majesty the Queen takes great delight in opening major public buildings. You name them, she's opened them: libraries, schools, courts, hospitals, railway stations. So keen, in fact, is the Queen on declaring buildings open that they often let her do it retrospectively, long after the buildings have become fully operational.
But it has just occurred to me that I've never heard of Her Majesty opening a prison. Which is pretty odd, as they all seem to be named after her.
Can you just imagine the Queen declaring a prison open and then having to walk down a line of specially selected, well-behaved inmates, making polite conversation with them?
"Hello. What did you do?" I hope she would say.
Erratum: For peasant read pheasant throughout (with a tip of the hat to Sellars and Yeatman).
Prince Philip once opened a prison in Dorchester, wearing a fox fur hat:
Apparently when he told the queen he was going to Dorchester, she replied "Oh really! where the fox hat?"