There’s a guy, festioned with headphones, acting strange in the library.

He’s babbles in tune to whatever he’s tuned into, at the computer terminal.

Outside, a dog wags his tail while Billy no-mates watches the short skirts pass by.

He’s outside a club called Funny Girls,
and is confused, ’cos the skirts are filled with hairy legs, making him wonder, ‘Am I hetro, homo, metro or bi?’

‘Well, I’m not interested,’ he muses, ‘in the skirt-wearers,
so I must be what used to be regarded as ‘normal’.’

But his former girl friend, Merrily Phipps,
who is on the autistic spectrum, now claims he must be homosexual.

For she sees everything in black and white, 
and at college had a blinkered approach to academic study, though was a leading force in the theatrical society,
and enjoyed many a stage fight.

For Queen Lizz, known as the Virgin Queen,
was her favourite monarch,
but she was also fond of the ruler’s ladies-in-waiting,
who loved that wily creature the fox,
renowned in English folklore as Reynardine.

They even sang about it in the courtly parlour.

But now the waiting ladies’ are celestial beings, and, though status does not exist in Heaven, still minister to their mistress’s toilet,
for ties of fiefdom are hard to break.

Meanwhile down on Earth, Billy no-mates wonders what will become of his strange lady friend, Merrily, who’s now in the library looking at the strange guy babbling at his computer.

Pointing to him, she asks Billy, ‘Is he schizophrenic?’

He answered, ‘Maybe like you, he’s on the spectrum.’

‘Oh, it’s getting crowded on there, what with generals, prime ministers and a virgin Her Majesty.’

Then the babbling man looks over at us, saying, 
'I’m meeting Queen Elizabeth, not the one
in Buckingham Palace – but the so-called virginal
monarch of 17th-century fame – and her ladies’-in-waiting
at Funny Girls, where I’m the manager, tonight.’

Staring at him, as if he was mad, she exclaimed.
‘So there’ll be spirits in front of the bar, as well as behind it!’

‘Don’t mock,’ he shouted, ‘did you know that
club of funny men and women used to be the old Odeon, and is haunted?’

Merrily wondered about this, when she saw
Queen Lizzie dance with women who looked like men, and wondered whether this was some sort of fancy dress party,
while the waiting ladies asserted to her admirers,
‘You know, Lizzie’s not really virginal.

'She was admired by male courtiers,
who loved her vain portraits and self admiration.'

‘Is she here?’ One woman asked.

‘Yes, she was drasgged upstairs by fellow queens to teach them Elizabethen dancing.’

Meanwhile, the library guy, who was dancing the
foxtrot with one of Lizzie’s celestial ladies-in-waiting,
had finally stopped babbling.

Instead, he admitted to his ghostly dancing partner,
who was dressed as a vixen,
‘I babble too much I know, and annoy the
other library users with my muttering.’

‘Like young Merrily I am on the spectrum,
but I hope she’s looking for another man,
now her suitor Billy has lots of mates.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she replied,
‘but those new ‘friends’ are all lovers of the female form.’

‘Oh dash it – well I’ll start babbling again, just to annoy him.’

‘Oh, don’t do that, by the way, you’re a lovely dancer.’

‘Why do you babble, are you worried about money,
is your club struggling with the cost of living?

'For I’ve got a plan to produce publicity and thus boost your income.’

‘Why don’t I stalk the place in ghostly apparel?'

He started to babble with excitement at this, but quietened after a kiss.

In the morning the cleaner found them snoozing in the office,
with their discarded clothes draped over the computer terminal.