Sur - Ma'am - real

Went to London - State Opening of Parliament - School Cabinet - the Queen waved at me and I mean that ... our eyes met, so I know - she waved - like you do when you're the queen, and I wanted to write.

I felt weird.

STAYING LOST End of Chapter 7

He lay still and breathed until he knew each rib that expanded and contracted to allow the air to enter and leave his body. He wanted to imagine himself six-foot tall and fighting fit... to be some kind of avenging whatever-in-a-cape dealing vengeance and retribution. Why was he not cruising the streets, armed and dangerous, in his mind; why was he not crushing enemies under foot? Where were those thoughts? Why could he not make them, form them into scenes of retaliation? Why was there only one question and no answers?

Counting, and watching the chill blue light from the torch flicker on the wall beside him, filled the space in his head. Jon lay: moving his toes in his boots; squirming in protest at the pressure building in his bladder; rubbing the emptiness that bloated his stomach; banging to relieve the woolly, aching, unreality in his head. He used anything... everything... to push the question back into the vacuum at the back of his mind.

It wouldn’t obey... it whispered when he counted but shouted when he breathed.

The noises outside his head faded, the rays that cut the dark flickered. Despair emerged from the dark until it crowded round Jon’s bed. The blue torchlight faltered again and was gone.

Then there was nothing between Jon and the question that tormented him.

He whispered over the sound of the silence, “Who am I?”