Thursday, 15 March 2018

Obits

I'm not ghoulish enough to have a file of obituaries ready and waiting for when elderly, deserving cases depart this life. The selection criteria that decides who gets one here is entirely arbitrary and down to me and Ken Dodd would have had one had I been here and I'd have invited my father to write it had it not been his incapacity that I was away doing my insubstantial best to attend to.
By Jove, Missus, By Jove, What a Beautiful Day it was to be stuck on a GWR train half the day while Shattered Love won at 4/1 without me home in time to back it.
I said to the railwayman, Can't you go any faster.
He said, Yes, sir, I can go faster but I've got to stay on the train.

I didn't have this Stephen Hawking poem prepared for his ultimate demise, it was in a very limited edition of poems I did in 2000, Line Drawings, on a variety of 'personalities', that included Gianni Versace, Emma Thompson. Lisa Simpson, Damien Hirst, Ian Wright and Shirley Bassey, but it comes in useful now.