Museums for our
Maladies
After I die, my MAV given
over to the National Trust, tourists will be able to file past the head
pressure that stopped me writing; enter my room to see the non-prolificacy that
came in clusters, all laid out on my desk as it was when I used to sit at it,
watering from the corners of my mouth, hunched over, cowed by a morbid
sensation that I was about to fall backwards.
Arranged around the place
will be the things I was migrainous wearing: my Dunhill glasses, my bucket hat
and an Iraqi soldier’s uniform from the 1990-91 Gulf War.
One day, will you not come
to Crondall and Ewshot, Whitenails Country? After visiting my migraine's
museum, have a drink in the pub where Cromwell stayed – his valde melancholicus
is still on display, just as he left it in the stables – then walk to
Swanthorpe House. In the copses there are bluebells and yellow hornpoppies, and
by the fields you may find musket balls from the English Civil War.
Rogan Whitenails: the poet
this nation has ever produced, by far from it (sic); just a pinch of
pyrotechnical doggerel, an affront to the corpus; but unless someone moves in
who can write better they’ll give me Crondall and Ewshot. They'll give me
Crondall and Ewshot, even though we both know I could never hope to preserve
the local countryside, people or traditions in my self-pitying aspic.
Held in factotumtude, my
retrieving pal,
Bewilting the hardiest
palm with her mal-
fertilising manure, is my
salvation.
She rolls in the strongest
concentration
Of tooty vilas extant –
fox pooh.
