Free Will and Indignity

I live comfortably in the shadow of a high sandstone bluff that keeps the worst of the winds away, and enjoy a stable relationship with an aging mare. She herself has two fillies and a colt from a previous alliance.

The colt has just bolted to Australia, one filly has foaled three times and is readying for the fourth issue, while the other filly has just recovered from the first foal and is moving at unstoppable speed towards the arrival of the second. God help her if she doesn’t have the sense to have what’s left of her reproductive system removed. (Ovarian cancer before she’s 22, they grow up so fast these days).

The most-foaled filly is having attention to her works, having finally realised that four is enough; the mare realised it after three. Which leaves me with a stable-mate who can take any amount of mounting, but isn’t going to further my line. I am a stallion un-studded, rampant upon an empty field, accompanied by a mocking Jaybird.

Since I am therefore to be denied from adding to the stock of the world, I wish to leave my imprint on it by other means. Not for me a comfortable rest beneath the turf in some far-forgotten field, or a curling ascent to the upper atmosphere followed by a steady settling over the surrounding countryside; I want to directly participate in the life and land around me.

Render down my flesh and feed it to the pigs, it seems appropriate enough to me, or to the cats if you prefer, but please not to dogs, I’m not a dog-person.

Feed my liver and kidneys to the birds, and let them unload the result upon the heads of the opinionated and fashion-conscious from a great height.

I would like my gall-bladder and spleen to be dried and made into wind-chimes to be hung from a branch somewhere in the mysterious coppice behind where I live.

Grind my bones into a powder and use it to grit the roads and pavements during the forthcoming bleak winters brought on by climate changes.

Divide my heart up, a large portion to a Spanish lady from Alicante, if you can find her, and split the remainder between the mare, and a lady in Berkshire who loves to pretend she doesn’t really care.

My brains, what there is of them, can be chopped up and fed to trout in fish farms, in the hope that they will develop a really useful disease which will cause sheep who drink the infected water to go barking mad and start to savage four-wheel drive vehicles in urban areas. If they take it upon themselves to also molest MEP’s and local planning councillors, I can only say it is an unexpected blessing.

Tell anyone else who thinks they have a claim upon me that they should serve their notice soon, before the wheels are set in motion.