The Collection

In my museum I will have ships in bottles, beetles and bullets from battles. A musket from Trafalgar and a ticket from Waterloo Station. I will have Queens and drones and dinosaur bones and movie-star autographs and rocks from the moon. I will have snuff boxes and stuffed foxes and stuffed huntsmen too. And Egyptian Mummies, Sugar Daddies and rock-a-byed babies. All in a row. I will have whole rooms of erotic playing cards and candles and pictures of Cavalier spaniels. I will have the most extensive collection of fossilised museum curators and every surviving copy of Another Christmas With Andy Williams. Pinned down and neatly categorised, I will display, for all to see, all of the virtues (Hope and Charity and Punctuality and Élan) and the most interesting vices (Peacockery and Flim-flammery and Condescension).

And, finally, in the grandest of all the rooms and Galleries, under a single spotlight and on a simple plinth with a small, handwritten sign, I will display...