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23.03.2012, Words by Ruth Saxelby

Dogs doing lists #21: In which Philip Larkin discourses on the Special Relationship

  1. Dogs bursting into David Cameron’s guest bedroom after a long state dinner and narrating the scene in hushed tones to an absent camera, “Love again: wanking at ten past three…”
  2. Dogs turning to Barack Obama as Philip Larkin murmurs, “He’s fucking her and she’s taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise,” and remarking, “This is either astute commentary on sexual politics or sheer, retrograde lechery, but probably sheer, retrograde lechery.”
  3. Dogs emerging from the fireplace in the Oval Office with a shotgun and warning between heaving gasps of breath, “THE FLOO NETWORK— THE FLOO— THE FLOO NETWORK IS FULL OF TERRORISTS.”
  4. Dogs pouring broth over the wrenched body of David Cameron in a White House cauldron, intoning, “Get stewed…” and dropping a cooking manual into the concoction, muttering, “…books are a load of crap.”
  5. Dogs fumbling nervously through a stack of crinkled notecards before eventually breaking down completely and confessing over and over again to an assembly of visiting heads of state, “I WAS WANKING AT TEN PAST THREE, I WAS WANKING AT TEN PAST THREE.”
  6. Dogs orating, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they don’t mean to, but they do—” and turning to the happy faces of the children to stage-whisper, “THEY REALLY MEAN TO.”
  7. Dogs shooting a harpoon as Moby-Dick rises out of the stormy ocean beside the Pequod and twists in agony, coughing once on his way over the ship to deposit Philip Larkin on the deck, resembling, with his shiny bald head, a slime-coated sperm whale, and turning terror-stricken as Captain Ahab clomps over to demand, “Is this some kind of a joke?”
  8. Dogs changing the sheets in the Lincoln Bedroom and discovering THIS BE THE VERSE carved ominously into the headboard.
  9. Dogs waving wildly at Michelle Obama on the red carpet, demanding, “JASON WU? ALEXANDER MCQUEEN? WHO ARE YOU WEARING??” as Samantha Cameron staggers up with limbs akimbo to whisper breathily into the microphone, “I was wanking at ten past three.”
  10. Dogs hijacking a plane bound for Merrie England and landing in Iceland during the Nordic Ragnarök to bear witness to the destruction of the world tree Yggdrasil.

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