Birthday Letter to Queen Elizabeth II

April 21, 2014,

Dear Queen Elizabeth II:

Happy birthday!!!

I just want to say that you look absolutely fantastic for 88! Really, I could see in the photograph that your skin was just glowing so I really want to congratulate you on that. I had my passport photograph taken yesterday, after only a five year interval, and I’m very sorry to say that I looked asymmetrical, angry and jaundiced, like a hard drinking 68 year-old. Really, I looked like I live in Russia or something, and I don’t!

I’m actually from Canada, so I’m one of your subjects, and when I was a boy I used to collect stamps with you on them. There must have been hundreds of them, and they all looked pretty much alike—you, looking regal in front of some aspect of Canadian industry.

None of them were valuable for collectors as so many were printed and used to mail letters. (You remember mailing letters, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you always had a fancy butler to mail them for you and put the stamp on the envelope, otherwise I guess it would have been pretty weird to put a stamp of yourself on the envelope. That’s the sort of thing that could go to a person’s head, I think.) At any rate, they were everyday stamps, the sort that filled the pages between the cool ones of Grizzly Bears or hockey players, but every once in awhile for a special occasion they’d put out a stamp of you that was practically the size of a hockey card. It would be either silver or gold and it was like finding a jewel. Suddenly, we got to see you in all your majesty, if that makes any sense.

Everybody has regrets, but I imagine a queen might have more than most. You were locked into a very particular life from the time you were born and you must always wonder about that boy you thought cute way back when, or what it would have been like to have been a hippy and get high with a Beatle. What would you say your biggest regret is?

I regret never learning how to fire a gun.

And if you could sleep with either Colin Firth or Russell Brand, which one would you choose?

Don’t be shy, it’s your birthday.

Michael Murray

PS: Is Gwyneth Paltrow really British?