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.