Ode To The Toilet

By Justin Li

Dearest Adeline,

Thank you for your kind note, though I’m afraid you’re a little late. The bank rang about some ‘suspicious activity’ within seconds of your sixth online purchase – it is, perhaps, far kinder to support the Italian economy indirectly with donations to hospitals and healthcare personnel than it is to fritter away my ex-savings on, what seems to be, cashmere furniture. I urge you to explore other, less financially ruinous means of beating back the ennui of the great indoors. I, for one, have found renewed literary inspiration - in the daily scatological of all places! I should hope this amuses you appropriately:

Ode to the Toilet

To perch upon a toilet bowl, One dirty shiny china pan, That sits beneath two rosy cheeks, Is still a joy to all of man. When sat upon the porcelain throne, The peasant is himself a king, The prince becomes of lowly birth, All bound as one by China ring. An’ no one else for company, With man alone in his own seat, To guess, to think, to contemplate, Or simply look at both his feet. There is, alas, a price to pay, When man commits himself to sit, To while away his golden years, One ounce of gold, its worth in shit. The price is right, the price is fair, A rack of lamb or table scrap, Man can’t but give just as he gets, What gold goes in will out as crap. The toilet is a wondrous thing, Our charity of daily bread, Is honestly, without deceit, Given with grace until we’re dead.

Do feel free to be as liberal with your thoughts as you were with my mum. In spite of all of her cognitive decline, she has yet to forget the time you so visibly objected to her abduction of Lucretia and the displeasure she faced from you subsequently, having left us with the bill from the canine behaviourist. The ‘leaden-footed gorgon’ you were so very fond of when we were still married, who, despite constant reminders, remains none the wiser of our little milestone, is well enough despite your lack of concern.

With this third week of wretched confinement sweatily heaving itself upon us, all that was ready to drink has already been drunk. I fear soon we shall have to lay siege to the good stuff, though I suspect the ‘82 Chateau Latour will put up a damn good fight - all six litres of it.

Trust you are twice as well, half as bored, and a damn sight less drunk. Stay safe and keep well.

All the best to you and yours,

Aloysius Ormsby-Gore