A Lord’s Laughing Lament

A silly, sorry, savoury story of freshly sliced history

Pop quiz, hotshots: What was this surfing paradise once named? (Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash)

I’m used to it, of course.

I’ve been maligned all my life. Put upon. Ridiculed. ‘Humiliated’ would not, I fear, be an exaggeration.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, sniggering to yourselves.

Hark at the entitled fop! Literally entitled! Born into a fortune with a silver spoon between his ruddy arsecheeks! And immortalised at that! Like he’s the bloody Mona Lisa or that Eureka feller whatever his name was. Well, more immortalised than him, because no one forgets what I am called.

You adore me, crave me all morning in your grubby, stuffy cubicle hellholes, can’t wait to wrap your lips around me, devour me with salivating delight.

What’s that? Oh, you’re quite right, I do apologise. I sometimes forget the manners to which I was so highly born when the fit of pique comes upon me, as I rail against the injustices of history, the cruel calumnies, the…

But there I go again. My name? John Montagu, at your service! First Lord of His Majesty’s Admiralty, Postmaster General, spymaster, statesman, wig-wearing Whig. 4th Earl of Sandwich.

Aha! The penny drops, yes? The bread is buttered, so to speak. Buttered, filled, layered and slatheringly…