SPLAT!

Well, that’s some way to wake up in the morning! A bellowing warlord has just dumped a bucket of steaming offal on my head!

Hey, I recognize this guy – he’s Offa, the first King of England. What’s he doing in my bedroom?

Oh, of course! We’re meeting all the kings and queens of England today. Offa is just the first of an extraordinary collection, and we’ll soon have the pleasure of meeting all the others, one by one.

Come to think of it, we’re due for a great day all round. It’s the last day of school – hurrah! – so lessons will be a doss, and there’s sports day in the afternoon … and then, wonder of wonders, we’ve got months of summer holiday to enjoy.

But this offal is spoiling the party a little. I mean, it’s running down into my pyjamas – awful! Let me just clear the animal entrails off o’ my face and check the time. The alarm clock, this little Mercedes car on the bedside table with the time on its side, tells me it’s 7.57 a.m.

Well, I think we can all agree that washing has just taken a flying jump to the top of our things-to-do list.

Follow me along this here landing to the bathroom. You don’t mind me pointing out objects of interest, do you, as we go along? Take a look at the Wessex helicopter I’ve dangled up there on the ceiling. Doesn’t it look like it’s hovering? Magic, eh? No, no, there is actually a string, but it’s so thin you can hardly see it.

It’s there because this is the House of Wessex – except in my bedroom, of course, which is the House of Mercia. I’ve put these Wessexes up all over the place to remind me.

Come on, then – into the bathroom!

But fancy this – there’s a massive blue boiled egg in the bathtub.

Breakfast in the bath? Not a bad plan.

SPLOTCH!

But not any more! The egg in the bath has just burst, spattering the whole bathroom with sticky tendrils of its hot liquid yolk. This really is revolting – it’s gone everywhere, including my face, and I don’t think it’s even been cooked long enough to be safe to lick off. What a waste.

This bursting egg, this egg that’s just burst, is King Eg-bert. He’s our second king.

Since the bathwater is now yellow, we’d better wash in the basin.

Unfortunately, a wolf’s beaten us to it – I think we’d better wait our turn. An unusual character, this wolf is stuck in the neck of a large shampoo bottle, admiring himself in the mirror.

Bottles mean Aethels in this household. When you see a bottle, you should be saying to yourself, ‘We have an Aethel here.’ You can think of a full bottle of ethanol to nail this association between bottles and Aethels.

So our wolf who’s wedged in the top of a (shampoo) bottle is Aethelwulf, our next king.

But he’s taking his time, isn’t he? What a ponce! You’d think he was a teenage girl preparing for a prom the way he’s carrying on.

He’s making use of all three of the toiletries that this bathroom has got on offer. Mind you, I suppose it is his right; they are his sons, after all.

They’re lined up on the little glass shelf beneath the mirror, each in a bottle of his own. The first bottle-son has a little bald man sticking out; the feathery head of a colourful bird peeks from the second; from the third, meanwhile, protrudes a tube of red lipstick.

Aethelwulf’s grabbed hold of the biggest bottle now, the one with the bald man sticking out.

The bottle with the baldy is Aethelbald. Amazing: look how the wolf now puts his firstborn Aethelbald to use as a roll-on deodorant, and how the perfectly spherical bald head spins in the bottle’s casing as the wolf rolls it round his armpits.

Now that he’s deodorized with Aethelbald and shaved with Aethelbert, the bottled wolf takes hold of his final son, the bottle of lipstick. Goodness knows why but this wolf wishes to redden his lips. So he purses them as he applies a honking red sheen of Aethelred, taking care not to get any on his newly trimmed moustache.

At last the wolf’s finished, and off he toddles, leaving the sink to us.

Let’s quickly dash some water over our faces and clear away that offal and egg before getting downstairs for breakfast. It feels lovely, doesn’t it, the cool, fresh water? And while we savour it let’s run through our heads the various kings we’ve seen so far today:

After the Mercian King Offa, there’ve been five Wessex kings: King Egbert, bursting in the bath, followed by Aethelwulf and his three bottle sons. In order, those sons were: Aethelbald – the deodorizer, Aethelbert – the moustache-trimmer, and Aethelred – his lipstick.

We’re fresh and clean now, and do you smell this? The godly scent of a fry-up is wafting through the bathroom door. Yum yum. I could use a decent feed – are you going to hang around here or follow me to that food?

But, oh my goodness! It’s right here on the landing! The fry-up’s being cooked on a fire on the carpet!

And there’s the little hooligan responsible for all this, spatula in hand, looking like it’s the most natural place in the world to cook breakfast! He’s tending to his sausages and slapping down another rasher of bacon as we speak.

As we go past, he offers us some of his all-fried fare.

Yes, I know, it smells amazing, but we can’t possibly accept – he’ll be starting fires in our bed next. So let me just boot him out of the way, and we’ll carry on heading downstairs to our cornflakes.

But what a palaver! Instead of soft carpet, look: the stairs are hidden beneath a frothy green torrent of elderflower cordial. How on earth are we supposed to get down to the kitchen now?

Wait a second – the answer’s appeared in the form of a massive wooden head, of all things. It’s jovially bouncing down these elderflower-cordial rapids, cool as a cucumber.

A wood-head is a wood-ed is an Ed-ward, obviously. This here wooden head in the elderflower cordial must be Edward the Elder, then – our next king.

Wheee! Splat!

Well, that was a reasonably soft landing, all things considered. Luckily, we flew from the stream at the bottom of the stairs into two large bottles of fake tan. They saved our skin, no doubt about it. But what atrocious smell is this? Doesn’t it make you want to retch?

This orange gunk, this tanning cream that’s been spattered all over the walls and ceiling, pongs like nothing I’ve ever smelt before.

Bottles of tan? These must be Aethels – tan. King Aethelstan is our next Wessex king.

But let’s not dawdle. Breakfast awaits!

Urgh! What is this? There I was: striding into the kitchen expecting cool, hard tiles beneath my feet, but instead there’s something hot, wet and chunky seeping into my socks.

I’ve just walked straight into a mound of heads. And look! On top of the head-mound, there’s Ed-mund! Far from apologizing, he asks me if I think his head-mound is magnificent.

Thinking about it, I probably do. But I’m not going to tell him that. So I tell him he’s a disgrace, and skirt dismissively past Edmund the Magnificent (our next king) and his ill-placed head-mound.

Right, after all these upsets we need to focus on Operation Cornflakes. We need some milk.

Carefully now, let’s open the door. KETCHUP! A slush of ketchup is gunking out of the fridge and on to the floor. Yoghurts, lettuces and lumps of cheese are being swept out by the flood. This is disastrous.

Open the door a bit more and you’ll see who’s responsible for this: there’s a severed head, stained a bright red, surrounded by a lake of ketchup. And he’s not finished yet. He’s got a full bottle in his mouth and, drunk with glee, he’s clamping his teeth down and squirting it all over the place.

This gleeful head that’s red is King Edred, our next king.

The milk, meanwhile, is irretrievably lost, unless someone feels like digging around in this gunk? I thought not. We’ll have our cornflakes dry, then. Wretched.

At least we can have them in a clean bowl, though. Did you hear that bleep? The dishwasher’s just finished its cycle. Let’s open it up.

Double wretchedness! As the steam clears, all there is to see is a young boy sporting a soggy head-wig. And the liquid he’s just been washed in is, by the smell of things, well… a most unappetizing one. I’m sorry to say this, but it’s quite evident that his head-wig is wet with human urine.

King Eadwig, that’s his name, appears to have wet himself during the wash, and has thus been doused in his own wee. It makes you want to sneeze.

No milk, no bowls. The cornflake plan’s gone out the window. This is actually really annoying: today’s a big day, and we’ll be needing some fuel…

… and there I was complaining! What a fool I’ve been! Listen to this fizzing and spluttering sound coming from the oven! If I’m not mistaken, that is the sound of kippers being grilled in goose fat – my favourite meal.

Ouch! A double whammy! Opening the oven, a wave of heat smacks us in the face, followed soon after by the realization that the interior of our oven is a kipper-free zone.

Instead, there’s a head in the orange light of the grill, calmly inspecting us as he puffs away on a fat Cuban cigar.

This is infuriating! We’re supposed to be inspecting the food, not vice versa.

The head with a cigar, King Edgar, doesn’t seem to care either about the social niceties or the fact that he’s being cooked. He’s just sooo peaceful.

He’s Edgar the Peaceable, our next king.

Well, our breakfast plans have been royally scuppered, you’ve got to admit, but let’s not panic. We can at least hydrate. All top athletes drink loads of water – maybe it’ll help us run faster in sports day.

Here’s a glass, a clean one, I think. We’ll fill it up with cool water at the sink.

Hello? What’s this? Oh heck, there’s yet another severed head in here. This one must be wooden: he’s bobbing up and down in the soapy waters.

Now, I’m not normally quick to anger, but, when you can’t get a glass of water from your own sink without abuse from some piece of wood, things have gone beyond a joke.

So now our glass is full – theeeeeere we go! – I’m going to make a martyr of our mutterer by blasting him with the hot tap.

No – no complaints – I won’t have it. Ha! The deed is done!

Oh, and by the way: with this simple act of violence, we’ve made our next king, Edward the Martyr.

The trouble with all this is that water makes for a pretty poor breakfast. Yes, we’re being hydrated, which is great, but, if it doesn’t taste of anything, it’s not breakfast.

At least this problem is easily solved: there on the kitchen table is a jumbo bottle of trusty Ribena.

The bottle of Ribena, full of its red liquid, combines being a bottle (an Aethel) with being red. It’s therefore an Aethelred. Good morning, King Aethelred!

Don’t mind us; we’re just livening up our water with a bit of your nectar.

As we pour some of Aethelred into the water, however… what’s going on? The water’s turning green.

This isn’t what we bargained for. Green is not red – in fact, it’s most un-red.

Now you could say that our dietary preparations for sports day have left a lot to be desired. I mean, look what’s happened! You just don’t suffer these kinds of disturbances in the Olympic Village. And, no, I’m not making excuses; just consider the facts.

The landing was on fire, for a start. That was unsettling, even if it was just Alfred preparing his all-fried breakfast, and having to swim down those elderflower rapids with Edward the Elder, a wooden head, before cannoning at the bottom into Aethelstan, the two bottles of tanning-cream? The ones that stank? That’s hardly choice preparation, is it?

And everything seems to be conspiring against us in the kitchen too. First, we trod in Edmund’s mound of heads at the door. Then Edred denied us our milk because he was spurting so much ketchup in the fridge. And Eadwig, damp with his own Edwy in the dishwasher? Did Steve Redgrave have to deal with that kind of thing?

The oven, our next point of call, lacked any food, remember, because a head had decided he needed to smoke his cigar inside – that was Edgar – and we couldn’t even get ourselves a drink without being hassled by a wooden head (Edward the mutterer, soon to become Martyr).

Finally, when all we asked for was a little taste of Aethelred’s Ribena, even that failed to meet our expectations: it turned our breakfast green.

But do I expect these setbacks to derail our bid for glory? Not a bit of it! By hook or by crook, we’ll get our carbohydrates somewhere.

Onwards to the House of Denmark, then!

By golly! You’ll never guess who’s on the sofa!

It’s Sven-Göran Eriksson! Hallo Sven!

Sven tries to get up to greet us, but the poor fellow’s stuck. All he can do is turn his head. And check this out – he has grown a forked beard! Perhaps he’s trying to disguise himself after those dismal World Cup showings. Or perhaps the reason he’s sitting there with a forked beard is that he’s our next king, Sweyn Forkbeard.

Despite sitting on a goldmine of Danish pastries, Sweyn’s chosen something rather different to eat. By his feet, on a small stool, Sweyn has stacked himself a mound of those gruesome heads we nearly tripped over on the way into the Wessex kitchen – something to snack on while he watches TV. He’s not gone for a magnificent configuration, you’ll notice, but he’s stacked them very safely all the same, having secured the structure with some iron that’s holding in the head-mound’s sides. Well, this must be why this stack of heads is called Edmund Ironside, the next in the line of England’s rulers.

We should be off to school soon, but while we’re here we may as well spare a couple of minutes to catch some telly. Let’s see what’s on.

Look at him, the poor chap. He’s stuck out in the middle of the river, trying to summon up the courage to swim ashore.

He’s dithering as only Harold can dither: maybe the waters are too cold for his liking. Watch as he dips a foot in to test them, only to whip it back out with a pained sigh.

And, blimey, look at those feet of his! To think that I nearly missed them! They’re just horrible – they’re covered entirely in a thick matting of grey hair.

So one thing’s clear: this is Harold Hairy-feet, or, rather, Harefoot that we’re watching on TV. Harold Harefoot is our next king.

But Harold has now got company; this looks interesting. A small watercraft, perhaps a canoe, is bouncing along the river towards him at great speed, sometimes almost doing the water-going equivalent of a wheelie.

And now we can see why! The whole front portion of, yes it’s a canoe, is not there; it’s obviously been chopped off. Whoever this is out on the river is riding in only half a canoe.

With a terrible crash, half a canoe smashes into Harold, who disappears with a terrific groan into the waters. Poor Harold! I hope he’s OK…

Half a canoe is our next king, King Harthacanute.

‘Neeighhhhhhhhhhhbours, everybody …’ That’s the end of the episode, then. Too bad, I was enjoying myself.

The House of Denmark’s been pretty happening, eh? Sweyn Forkbeard on the sofa with our second head-mound, Edmund Ironside, at his feet. Canute the Great’s canoe on top of the telly. Harold Harefoot getting knocked off the throne by Harthacanute… You can’t argue with that.

Now, then, shouldn’t we be thinking about heading –

SMASH!

Weeeooo-weeeooo-weeeooo…

Breaking glass, the car alarm… Holy smoke – I think someone’s nicking our car!

Stop them!

We bound from the House of Denmark and out of the front door to save the family wheels. But what a sight greets our eyes! There are no thieves here, only a massive wooden head.

A wooden head that’s crushed our car almost flat! Look at the thing; that head must have been dropped from a considerable height.

‘You imbecile!’ we cry at the helicopter pilot. ‘You miserable, pathetic Anglo-Saxon imbecile!’

Instead of the pilot, though, it’s the car-crushing head of wood who responds: ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. ‘I confess – it’s all my fault.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m bloomin’ sure,’ the head snaps back. ‘Just accept my confession. I’ll sort out the insurance.’ At that, the head shuts up.

This confessing head-wood is Edward the Confessor, and the helicopter hovering away above reminds us we’re back with the House of Wessex.

Right, well, thanks to our Edward, we’re going to need a new way to get to school. It’ll have to be the bus. Luckily, there’s a stop just down the street.

Let’s head for that bus stop, passing the squashed car and leaving through the garden gate – which someone’s helpfully holding open for us. You’ll never guess who.

Amazingly, it’s Harold from Neighbours again!

‘Hello again, Harold,’ we say, carefully eyeing his feet. But there’s no hair. His feet are undeniably, disgustingly bald. And he is tapping one impatiently on the dewy grass.

We take the hint, thank him for his kindness and head off, still trying to come to terms with this being an entirely different Harold. Harold II, indeed, the last of the kings of Wessex – the last of the Anglo-Saxons.

We’re now on Norman Street, headed for the bus stop a few yards distant.

All things considered, it’s hardly surprising that the billy goat in front of us is trying to destroy the side of the stop with a rock-hard conker. It needs some kind of improvement, and why not cosmetic dentistry? The goat is making the dents by swinging the conker on a string between his teeth. Fantastic technique, but do pipe down, Billy – you’re in a public place.

While we wait for the bus I’m going to start stretching my hamstrings, bending down like this. Nothing like warming up in good time.

As I do so let me explain something about billy goats. They stand for Williams. Bill is a nickname for ‘William’, you see, so when you see a billy goat, you must say to yourself, ‘Aha! We have a William on our hands.’

This first billy goat (the one we just saw with his conker) is, then, William I the Conqueror, the first Norman king.

My next stretch requires a sitting position, so let’s move under the shelter.

Oh – but the bench is taken…

No worries, though. I mean – is this not the cutest thing you ever saw? A little red-haired billy goat is curled up under a rug on the bench, shivering. The poor thing doesn’t have a home.

He is called Billy Roofless by his pals, but to us he’ll always be King William II ‘Rufus’.

With a hiss and a clunk, the doors slide open. An enormous white chick is the first to hop aboard, waddling up the steps.

Now this is important, so listen up. There are eight Henries in this monarchy of ours, and each will be a different kind of hen, or bird. So remember this: hen (or bird) = Henry.

This first hen, this twittering outsize chick who’s now buying his ticket, is Henry I.

As our first Henry waddles on to the bus, the bus driver comes in to view: it’s Stephen Fry. How cool is that? If I’d known that one of Britain’s national treasures drove the school bus every day, I would have given up on the car ages ago. What Stephen Fry is doing driving buses is anyone’s guess, but it is, I suppose, convenient: King Stephen is our next king.

We’re about to follow Henry I on to the bus and meet our hero driver when, with a terrible bash, a van rams into the side of the bus.

A moment later, a woman with a scraggy old mat in her hand leaps out to attack. This mat-holding maniac, Mat-ilda, obviously doesn’t do road rage by halves.

Matilda is conducting a (drive-by) mat-press: an m-press for short. This is a technique of persuasion, you may know, where you hit someone so hard over the head with a mat that they do whatever you say.

Aha – so the mat-holder, Matilda, is an empress on a mission to persuade. Her full name is Empress Matilda. And her mission? Well, listen to what she’s bellowing, one word at a time, in between whacks of the mat!

She – wants – her – son – to – be – bus – driver.

Yes, I agree, this is an amusing spectacle, but I’ve had enough of it, to be honest. Did you know that if we’re late for registration, we won’t get to compete in the afternoon sports? If Matilda hadn’t turned up, we’d probably already be at school by now.

Finally, Stephen gives in to Empress Matilda’s m-press and turns off the bus engine. The son can drive, but the bus stays here.

With the Norman bus out of service, it looks like we’re going to have to pile into angry Matilda’s van, her anger-van, and be driven to school by her son instead.

But what fun it turns out to be! Our driver is a hen. A hen with two squawking heads.

A two-headed hen like this has to be Henry II. He’s the first king of the royal House of Angevin.

Now we see why Matilda was making such a fuss: her son’s extraordinarily gifted. With his two heads, he’s just got incredible awareness of the road around him, allowing him to take what seem to be enormous risks.

At this rate we’ll be at school in record time!

But the van’s pretty packed, and Henry II pops one head round to say he wants a few of us out on the roof.

No problem, driver! Up through the sunroof we climb, joining a couple of other passengers in the wind. And fancy this – we recognize them both!

At the front I do believe that’s Richard Branson who’s just sat down above the driver with a jousting pole to hand and his feet hanging down on the windscreen. He’s a famously brilliant jouster, is Richard, and he’s obviously come up here to hone his skills. As we wing through the traffic, he’s knocking innocent people off their bikes with sharp thrusts of his pole. A young cyclist has just gone cartwheeling clean over our heads!

What striking bravery – what a lion’s heart – this first Richard (Richard I ‘the Lionheart’) is showing here as he jousts away. Right on the back of the bus, meanwhile, is one of our rivals for the fastest person in school: John Travolta. He’s toned and honed to perfection – look at the moves he’s throwing on his flashing dance floor! He’s like greased lightning, this guy, and now he’s doing some relatively hardcore stretches, probably to try to intimidate us – get a load of those splits! Ouch!

Our first John, Travolta, reminds us that King John is the king after Richard the Lionheart.

So that, then, is the end of the royal House of Angevin.

That was pretty intense, eh? Let’s take a moment, shall we, to steady our nerves with a quick recap.

Working backwards from the anger-van, the House of Angevin, we had King John (Travolta) and King Richard (Branson) being driven by our two-headed Henry II.

Before that we were among the Normans where Empress Matilda was battering Stephen the bus driver, from whom the fluffy white chicklet Henry I was trying to buy a bus ticket.

Underneath the bus shelter, we met the cute roofless billy goat (that was William II ‘Rufus’) and outside the bus shelter William the Conqueror, the first billy goat, was whacking away with his conker.

Good. So, bring your minds back here to the school entrance – and enjoy the view!

It’s a vast pagoda towering over formidable iron gates, glorious in its intricate detailing and decoration.

The architecture is marred only by that straggly bundle hanging from the gates, swinging back and forth in the morning breeze. I hope there’s good reason why this ugly net full of aged plants is spoiling the scene.

Actually, as excuses go, this isn’t bad. It’s there to tell us that we’ve reached the plantage-net, or Plantagenet, era of monarchs.

‘Morning, sir!’

‘Morning!’

Now we’re safely through, turn round and get a good look at the three insanely lifelike eyes on his tail-feathers. Can you believe those aren’t real? From here it’s like they’re following your every step, not missing a thing. Sends shivers down my spine.

Anyhow, this hen with three eyes in his tail is called Henry III, he’s our third bird.

We’re all the way into the Plantagenet playground now, and you’ve got to say that there’s a festival atmosphere today. There’s all sorts going on, even live music – which sounds awesome, actually. That’s some serious volume! Let’s check it out.

Bumbling across, we can make out three musicians jamming away in the bike shed.

Each of the three is an Ed playing a wooden instrument. Musical Ed-woods.

Well… that’s not to say they won’t look similar. But that’s because we could only find one Ed to model for our illustrator, who needed to know what Eds look like. I was in the office at the time and was reluctantly persuaded to pose. So all Edwards from now on in will be playing a wooden instrument and they’ll look remarkably like, er, me.

Listen up, folks – the band has begun to play again.

Ed I, on the left, begins the number, hammering down hard with a boom! boom! boom! on the bass drum. You can feel it in your bowels. Great power from Ed I.

Now it’s boom patter patter patter boom patter patter as Ed II adds the quicker beat of his bongos to Ed I’s bass. Wonderful to hear Ed II, in the middle, on his bongos!

And a big hello to Eddie III, the star of the show! He’s on the right and has just come in with a thunderous droning noise, achieved by playing on three didgeridoos simultaneously.

Look at this special breathing technique he’s using: his cheeks are puffing in and out like the pistons of a steam engine. And the sound he makes – an atrocious racket – wakes up reptilian feelings in your brain. Not for the fainthearted.

Anyhow, as we look at the three Eds, from left to right we see Edward I with his bass drum, Ed II with his bongos and Ed III blowing his three didgeridoos.

Richard’s obviously another King Richard. That he is never seen without his partner, Judy, indicates that he is Richard II – there are always, in effect, two of him.

So Richard and Judy, applauding Eds I, II and III, are Richard II.

We have to leave before the next number because the class register’s about to begin, and this is, as I said earlier, the one day of the year we don’t want to be late (for fear of getting banned from sports day).

But what a hullabaloo greets us as we walk into the classroom! It’s as if we’ve just walked into a henhouse and been mistaken for a snarling fox: there’s the most appalling squawking, birds are flying in all directions and a dense spray of bird feed fills the air.

The walls, meanwhile, are covered in the long and lanky red roses of Lancaster, this being the henhouse of Lancaster.

Only the arrival of the teacher calms things down. And who wouldn’t be scared of this thing? He’s possibly the largest living teacher I’ve ever seen, and easily the largest bird. A turkey of epic proportions, he must weigh at least four tons. You can see ripples shuddering through the fat beneath his feathers as he treads into the room.

Our fourth bird, this four-ton turkey, is Henry IV – and he has four woggles, lest we forget it.

As the register proceeds, five peregrine falcons swoop one by one with bloodcurdling affirmative caws to take up their desktop perches. Look at these muscular birds of prey: are they not the most perfect birds of war you ever saw?

It would be appropriate if they were, because these falcons arranged in V-formation represent our most warlike king, King Henry V.

Every classroom has its rebels. In this case, the rebels are six penguins, fooling around at the back.

Watch them as they blatantly disobey school rules by eating in class. They’re devouring a six-pack of Penguin biscuits. Isn’t it gorgeous how they throw their heads back, shaking a Penguin each down their throats? And what a sound they make as they do so – as if they’re gargling gravel.

The turkey looks pretty displeased, but there’s nothing he can do about it: lads will be lads, after all. These six represent Henry VI.

So in the House of Lancaster, a great red-rose-lined henhouse, we’ve had Henries IV, V and VI. Henry IV was a four-ton turkey doing the register, Henry V was five falcons sitting in V-formation and at the back we had Henry VI, our collection of rebellious biscuit-eating penguins.

Science is in five minutes, and the penguins are already headed that way. So follow me down this corridor and up these… dear heaven! Climbing these stairs is going to be difficult. They’re covered in a great tangle of thorny white roses. These roses have got to be the white roses of York.

Everyone’s a bit unsure how to deal with this situation.

At least someone’s taken the initiative, though, as we all stand there gawping. A guy’s whipped out a four-stringed bass guitar and he’s playing a few tunes to keep us entertained while we climb carefully up.

Why, it’s none other than Edward IV, plucking away with the four fingers of his right hand! He’s pumping out a few funky riffs – I think this one’s the fourth – from the bottom steps of the stairs. Listen to him go!

Behind him, a little up the stairs, can you spot the cheeky junior-school boy pretending he’s part of Ed IV’s band? He’s playing along air-guitar fashion on a little size-five cricket bat.

Ho ho – who’s this sinister-looking creature at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the white double doors of the science labs?

Whoever he is, he’s had a third leg fitted between the normal pair, and he’s practising running around. Extremely badly, I might add.

You know what? I recognize this guy – it’s Ricky Gervaise off the telly – seriously practising for the three-legged race by himself! What a nonce!

Our third Ricky, with his three legs, represents King Richard III.

So on these stairs, the House of York, we’ve had Edwards IV and V and Richard III.

We walk past Ricky through the double doors into science. These doors, by the way, are the reason the whole lab is known as Two-doors: as the royal House of Tudor.

The Tudor science room is divided into two: at the front is the classroom proper; behind it, the lab tables where we do the experiments.

What have we got to look forward to today, I wonder? Well, as always, it’ll be one lesson of theory and one of experiments.

He’s getting on with the lesson now, using a projector to show all seven of the topics he’s prepared for today’s lesson on the board. Groan. He seems to think we’re here to learn on the last day of term. But if that’s what is wanted by Henry VII, our seventh bird and first Tudor king, then we’ll just have to sit through it.

As usual, the teacher’s pet, an eight-foot ostrich, is answering all the questions at the front of the class. Look at him, trying to stick his rubbish ostrich wing up in the air to catch the teacher’s attention. Our largest bird, he’s our last Henry. Henry VIII.

And that completes the set of Henries! Let’s reminisce a second.

To begin with, we had a fluffy white chick, Henry I, climbing on to the school bus. The replacement bus driver in the anger-van was Henry II, the two-headed hen. He raced us to the school gates, where we had our uniforms inspected by the peacock, Henry III.

The following three Henries were all present in our classroom for morning registration. There was Henry IV – the turkey doing the register, our other classmates – the five falcons of Henry V and then the six Penguin-eating penguins of Henry VI, who were huddled together at the back.

Now we’ve just completed the set with Henry VII, our awesome eagle of a science teacher, and the eight-foot ostrich Henry VIII, his favourite pupil.

We’ll obviously take up position at the back, well out of the way of the action, to slack away till the end of the lesson.

What I need is a bit of light aerobic work.

And listen to this – the perfect opportunity has presented itself: one of the littlest kids with us in the back row has just piped up on his little recorder, jigging as he plays. Why not get the blood flowing with a few quiet dance moves here at the back?

The kid taps his fingers merrily over the six-holed instrument, and the majority of the class begins to bop up and down to his tune. Unfortunately, by the sixth number, he’s a bit exhausted, our piper, and keels over dead.

He’s Edward VI, the sickly musical child king.

Never mind! The bell’s gone, and now we get to do experiments. Any experiment we like, in fact, because it’s the last day of term.

Let’s see what everyone’s gone for!

On the near edge of the table closest to us, Jane is being as boring as ever and is ‘experimenting with a new blend of tea’. When you could be throwing potassium into swimming pools and causing explosions, there’s really no excuse for such a choice of investigation. And we tell her this.

But she’s unrepentant: she wants to show us that ‘there’s more to life than PG Tips’ by having us taste her ‘Lady Grey’ tea.

What is Lady Jane Grey like?

Today she is experimenting on a new recipe for the famous bloody Mary cocktail. She’s seeing how it tastes with lamb’s blood in.

But, urgh, that’s not nice. I’m not even going to explain what she’s done now – just know that after Lady Jane Grey, Bloody Mary I is our next monarch, and if you farm sheep, you should not invite her to stay during lambing season.

We’ll move on to the third experiment, taking place on the table at the back of the classroom. The school beauty, an absolute dead-ringer for Cate Blanchett, is busying herself with her lizards. She is putting them to bed after hard spell of rehearsals. Is it possible to train lizards to perform a play? In this beauty’s capable hands, it is.

This Cate Blanchett lookalike we find putting lizards to bed at the back of the labs is Queen Elizabeth I. And what a coincidence that Cate Blanchett will one day play the lead in the movie of the life of Elizabeth I!

The bell goes and double science is over – hurrah! The experiments, conducted by Lady Jane Grey, Bloody Mary I and Elizabeth I, are complete. It’s time we left the Tudors and got some lunch. And goodness we’re hungry – to think we’ve not eaten so far today.

The dining hall isn’t much to look at: a food counter manned by a couple of chefs runs along the right-hand wall of the narrow room, and all the seating’s outside, beyond the far end over there in the fresh air.

Sliding our tray along the runner here, we reach the first chef. What a legend he is! How many schools can boast Sean Connery in the kitchen? I mean – the very first James Bond!

Would we like our stew shaken or stirred, James (the first) asks? Everyone loves this joke – laughter ripples up and down the queue.

We’ll have it shaken, please.

Moving on down the counter, here’s Charles Darwin, the man in charge of the puddings. The first Charles we’ve met, he is today’s King Charles I.

Now, be careful not to make any jokes with Charles, especially not ones about the evolution of his puddings. He’s been serving the same sweetened stew for as long as anyone can remember, and gets a bit touchy when anyone suggests intelligently designing a new one.

Uh-oh! Did you hear that? Trouble’s brewing – the boy just behind us in the queue is demanding crumble for pudding. More than that, he wants olive crumble. Someone shut him up!

But it’s too late.

‘Olive crumble?’ splutters Charles I.

‘I demand it!’ says the boy, Oliver Cromwell.

Before you know it, pandemonium! We’re in a full-blown food fight. Stew is flying in all directions, tables are being overturned and everyone is getting stuck in. It’s almost impossible to see who is on which side, so we’ll just plug away for king or country – or both… whatever.

After several minutes of joyous food fight, the battle subsides: everyone’s run out of stew. But this isn’t great news – Charles I, the pudding chef, has lost his head and, worse, Oliver Cromwell’s been appointed head chef.

But what are they thinking? We have to run a marathon later! He’ll try to feed us olive crumble as a main!

And the cheek! Cromwell is on the PA system telling us he’s doing this to ‘protect us’, that we’re now in a ‘Protectorate’. What nonsense!

We loudly set to protesting the Protectorate, of course, and eventually we get our way: Stew is restored to its rightful position at the top, bottom and middle of the menu.

Hurrah for this restoration! We take a steaming plate of the good stuff and settle down outside with Charlie Chaplin, one of our best mates. He’s just joined us for lunch. The second Charles we’ve met today, Charlie Chaplin represents Charles II. He’s currently doing a very entertaining impression of some dancing legs with a couple of bread rolls stuck on a pair of forks.

Hey, cool, the new chef’s arrived to ask how we like his food and it’s Jamie Oliver! How utterly, gloriously wonderful! We have half his books at home – but who would have guessed he’d be serving us at school? How kind of him to offer us a second helping.

Our second James, then, will be remembered as James II.

So our ‘Stuarts’ have been a palindrome: James, Charles and then Charles, James. And that eejit Oliver Cromwell wedged ingloriously in the middle.

What a feast – we’ve eaten well. And I’m glad we did: the first race begins in a few minutes. We were desperately in need of the energy.

Right, let’s get changed. Follow me.

The entrance for the changing rooms is just through these orange doors leading off the dining courtyard. There we go – I’ll hold the door for you.

So that’s the House of Stuart we’re done with, and this is the House of Orange. Whoa! I’d have brought my sunglasses if I’d known just how orange these changing rooms were going to be. This’ll give me a migraine if I stay here too long.

Once your eyes have adjusted, though, look – you can see we’ve bumped into another young shepherdess called Mary, with another little lamb. This Mary differs from Bloody Mary, you’ll notice, both in that she’s not intent on eating or otherwise violating her lamb, and in that her ‘lamb’ is actually a goat. He’s a billy goat.

A tender scene. They ruled together, did William III and Mary II, our next monarchs.

Once kitted out, on our way out of the changing rooms we almost trip over a figure on the floor. It’s Anne Robinson, pulling on her running spikes on the edge of the grass. Anne Robinson is Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Orange.

Queen Anne’s got some banter up her sleeve, surprise surprise. She’s telling us that we’re the weakest link in our relay team.

We’ll see about that, Anne.

All in all, then, in the House of Orange, we’ve met the three-legged William and his dear love Mary, and Queen Anne. And that’s it.

Let’s go over to the athletics track, where the relay is about to begin.

Team Hanover (famous across the district for their neat handovers) comprises four German boys called George. Each George has a different form of transport – a pogo stick, a bicycle, a trike and a four-wheeled steam engine car make up the team – and they’re carefully arranged up the track, ready to go. This surely puts them at an advantage over us: we’re just running. And before we have a chance to sort out some devious strategy, the starter’s pistol has gone and we’re off!

But look – George III on the trike is losing the plot! He’s just screeched to a sudden halt in the middle of the track, well short of the handover point to George IV. The spectators are doing everything to urge him on, but he’s refusing to budge.

George IV now has to reverse his steam engine backwards to grab the baton from the George on the trike. The time it takes him to back up allows us to sprint past, taking the lead, and, despite a tremendous effort from the steam-powered George IV, we’re first over the line, breaking the ribbon. Hurrah!

Or rather – oh my God, this hurts!

We’ve just been skewered by the four sharp horns of a massive billy goat, one of the Hanoverian reserves, who has gone and head-butted us on the finishing line. We’re now stuck on the four horns, suspended in the air as he trots around, snorting.

As victors over the Hanoverians, we’re honoured to climb the podium and have a gold medal strung round our necks by none other than Queen Victoria, the last of the Hanoverian royals.

‘Well done on your victory,’ says Victoria.

Splendid. As she hangs the medals on us, we notice that her son (dressed in a very gothic outfit) is playing the national anthem on a tenor saxophone made of wood. How proud it makes you feel!

If you watch this Edward tooting his sax high in the air, you’ll see that it makes the silhouette of the number seven against the sky.

The saxophonist is Edward VII, our next king. He is the only member of his band, which he’s catchily called ‘The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’. He’s considering changing the name. It sounds a bit German.

Meanwhile, sports day is far from over. Indeed, the longest and most prestigious event, the marathon, has yet to begin. It’s a monster, this race! We have to run all the way to Buckingham Palace, a distance of twenty-six miles.

And the moment we take our position on the starting line, the starting gun fires. We’re off again.

Hoooo – this is a bit quick. Not the gentle pace I was imagining. They’d better slow down soon. You know what? I hate cross-country. Surely you do as well. I can’t be bothered to run twenty-six miles, and I bet you can’t either. Let’s just hop on the back of this tank, and leave all the physical agony to the other competitors.

Securely perched, we leave the school behind us and try to work out who this tank driver might be. Well, he must be George V: not just because he’s got a mode of transport and we’ve already had four of those – each called George – but also because he has two gun-barrels on his tank, which split off in different directions forming a ‘V’. For good measure, he keeps saying, ‘Ready, aim, five.’

It feels like we’ve been bumping along for ages and, judging by the swelling crowds, we’re nearing the finishing straight. Probably about time to hop off.

Go on, jump for it!

All we need to do now – watch! – is stretch our legs and motor in towards the finish with a modest but decisive lead.

In no time we’re at the palace gates that mark the finishing line, striding along in first place.

Forgive me for feeling that this must be just about the most suave marathon win the school has ever known. We’ve almost skipped under the organ into the palace courtyard without a bead of sweat on us. The crowd roars its appreciation; we politely celebrate. Excellent.

So we’re now into Buckingham Palace’s forecourt – on which a spanking spitfire gleams in the sunlight: what a beauty. It has six wings – a clever aerodynamic device, no doubt – and it represents George VI. Go on, then – it also has a big ‘6’ on the side.

My goodness – this is our prize for winning!

A George VI Spitfire! Rather generous, but we’ll take it!

We must be ever so close to the end of the day. Looking upwards, indeed we are! Take a look at this! There she is! It’s the queen, the real queen! Our very own Queen Elizabeth II! She’s waving at us! How cool is this? She’s on her balcony waving straight at us!

At this, of course, we faint.

On regaining consciousness, the queen, the Spitfire and the crowd have all disappeared. We have only our memories to cherish. But what memories! Let’s quickly run over them a last time to make sure that they’ll never be forgotten.

We were woken at 7.57 a.m. by the warlord Offa dumping loads of offal on us. We hastened to the bathroom where a burst egg, King Egbert, was in the bath. The sink was taken too – by a wolf in a bottle, Aethelwulf, cleaning himself with three of his sons. First, Aethelbald the roll-on deodorant; next, Aethelbert the bird, whose whirring beak clipped his moustache; and the last of the three aethels on the shelf was the red lipstick bottle, Aethelred.

Breakfast beckoned. On the landing, Alfred was making an all-fried fry-up, but we didn’t feel like it so we made off down the stairs. At the top, we found a wooden head being swept down some elderflower rapids – that was Edward the Elder. At the bottom, we collided into a couple of bottles of fake tan, Aethelstan.

Entering the kitchen, we almost tripped over Edmund the Magnificent’s head-mound on the floor.

But we wanted some cornflakes so we forged on. Opening the fridge, Edred’s ketchup had obscured the milk and when a boy in a soggy head-wig (King Eadwig or Edwy) peered out of the dishwasher, we gave up on cornflakes altogether. We thought the oven offered hope, but instead it contained a very relaxed head lighting his cigar off the grill – that was Edgar the Peaceable.

Glass of water in hand, we took the Aethelred Ribena from the kitchen table and added a taste of it to our water. Delicious. That bottle was our last Wessex kitchen king.

In search of Danish pastries, we set off for the sitting room – the House of Denmark – where Sven with his forked beard was stuck on the sofa (Sweyn Forkbeard) with a second mound of heads, Edmund II, piled up at his feet.

Canute the Great was a huge canoe balanced on the TV, but we peered past his legs to see an episode of Neighbours where hairy-footed Harold Harefoot was being run over by Harthacanute, one half of a canoe.

Harthacanute was the last of the Kings of Denmark, and we found our last two Wessex kings in the drive: Edward the Confessor confessing to crushing our car, and a second Harold at the garden gate.

To the bus stop, then, where we found Billy one and two: the Conqueror whacking his conker against the outside of the shelter, and the roofless Rufus sleeping inside.

The school bus pulled in and a fluffy chick, Henry I, tried to buy a ticket from King Stephen Fry, the bus driver. Suddenly Empress Matilda crashed in with her anger-van.

In the anger-van of the House of Angevin, we were driven by Henry II (the two-headed hen) while Richard I (Branson) hung out with his younger brother, John (Travolta), on the roof.

Henry III, the peacock with three ‘eyes’ in his tail, met us at the Plantagenet school gates, and in the bike sheds we had Eds I, II and III making music on a bass-drum, some bongos and a triad of didgeridoos. Richard and Judy, Richard II, seemed to like what they saw from their nearby sofa.

Among the stalks of the white roses of the York staircase on the way to science, we met Eddie IV on bass guitar, accompanied (silently) by the air-guitar-strumming, cricket-bat-wielding Eddie V. Three-legged Ricky Gervaise, bad King Richard III, looked down from the top of the stairs as he practised for the three-legged race.

In our two-door science lab, where we met six Tudors in all, we first encountered an eagle, Henry VII, who was teaching (mainly to the class pet, Henry VIII – the eight-foot ostrich). At the back, Edward VI played us a few little tunes to dance along to.

In the second part of science we did the experiments, with Lady Jane Grey inventing Lady Grey tea, and Bloody Mary inventing a Bloodier Mary. On the back bench Cate Blanchett was putting lizards to bed – that was the looker, Elizabeth I.

Fond memories of a stewed Stuart lunch next! James I (played by Sean Connery) giving us our stew; Charles I (Darwin) trying to give us even more; and then that storming internal food fight caused by Oliver Cromwell’s obnoxious demands.

After the Restoration (of order) we lunched with our chum Charlie Chaplin, Charles II, before Jamie Oliver, James II, came to check out how it had all gone.

We’d no sooner shaken his hand than we were rushing to get changed, for sports day was about to start. In the House of Orange, the changing rooms, we met Mary II and William III, a shepherdess training her three-legged billy goat to walk; then, on the lip of the sports field, Queen Anne (Robinson).

Victoria soon gave us a medal, though, to the tune of Edward VII’s national anthem on the sax.

Sports day finished with a marathon: we rode with George V on his tank all the way to the palace gates, where Edward VIII, the last of our Edwards, boomed his congratulations on a wooden organ. Having passed through the organ into the forecourt we were awarded George VI in his Spitfire as a prize, and were finally completely overwhelmed, when Queen Elizabeth II herself skipped down the steps to give us a kiss. Marvellous.