Was Victoria Amused? Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Was Victoria Amused?
At the Kelvingrove Exhibition,1888, Victoria saw:
A working dairy
A Power Drop biscuit machine
A giant Canadian cheese
An oriental smoking lounge
A balloon manned by Signor Balleni from Warwickshire
Busts of her Royal Personage carved in soap
A Dutch cocoa house
A terracotta fountain
A loom making hygenic woollen underwear
A Bachelor's Cafe
A stuffed polar bear
Two Venetian gondoliers. ‘Signor Hokey & Signor Pokey'
An Indian fakir on a bed of nails
Thomson's Patent Gravity Switchback railway

Did these wonders give her the shivers?
Was she impressed by the red and cream striped walls?
Did she thrill to its minarets, its oriental towers?

This was a year Her Highness might remember
The Great Sheep Panic of Oxfordshire
The Ripper's Whitechapel murders
The arrival from India of Snakes and Ladders
The London match girls' strike
Hailstones as big as oranges, killing workers in Uttar Pradesh

Or more likely, be blown away by the fact that
Lord Walsingham shot 1,070 grouse in a single day