I came to a fork in the road
and ate dirt
with Morton
in the Marsh...
mallows melting.
Melton Mowbray
Stilton cheese
moves across the plate
propelled by grubs.
Good God, mother!
Eat,
drink and drown them.
Any port in a storm.
It's Christmas.
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Author Notes
For those of you who were not born and bred in England, here are a few notes to help you follow my bizarre train of thought in this nonsensical poem.
A Morton's Fork is a specious piece of reasoning in which contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant) conclusion. It is said to originate with the collecting of taxes by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 15th century, who held that a man living modestly must be saving money and could therefore afford taxes, whereas if he was living extravagantly then he was obviously rich and could still afford them. (Wikipedia)
Moreton-in-Marsh is a delightful town in north-eastern Gloucestershire, England.
Marshmallows are delicious when toasted on the prongs a fork in a campfire. (90% of mine used to melt and fall off the fork into the fire, alas).
Melting Moments are a particularly delectable kind of biscuit, popular in Australia.
Melton Mowbray is another town in England, one of the five homes of Stilton cheese.
When I was a child, along with the turkey, plum pudding, Christmas cake, Port, wine, nuts, etc., we used to have half a wheel of Stilton cheese on the sideboard, just to fill up the odd corners. Half a Stilton weighs about 9 lbs. It is a blue cheese, best eaten with Bath Oliver biscuits and left to get quite ripe. Ours sometimes became over-ripe. I remember at the age of six being fascinated as a piece of it gradually moved across my godmother's plate, propelled by small white grubs as she was deep in conversation with my father. We scooped the cheese from the centre of the wheel but as the days wound their inevitable way towards Twelfth Night, the cheese started to dry out despite a damp cheesecloth being spread over the top. The remedy, apparently frowned on by purists, was to pour a glass or two of Port into the centre.
P.S. The grubs tasted largely of over-ripe Stilton, marinated in Port; rather better, I think, than the Witchetty Grubs, considered a delicacy among the Aboriginal people here in Australia.
P.P.S. Like Stilton, this poem might be an acquired taste.
Image courtesy of http://fxcuisine.com/ reproduced under Creative Commons licence.
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