Lady H. M. Ainsley-Billington--A Celebratory Retrospective

Lady Hortense MacFarquhar Ainsley-Billington, grande dame of the English stage, is celebrated as much for being as pale and sweet as a blancmange as for her operatic rendering of the timeless classic "When, In Momentary Slumb'r, My Love Doth Recline."

One can scarcely hope to catalog all of Lady Hortense's triumphs in this small space. However, no one will ever forget her command performance at Buckingham Palace when she gave a fist pump upon hitting every note of the impossible five octave "Bobby, Be The Bric-A-Brac On My Curio Shelf," prompting the attending Royals to initiate an instantaneous in-the-aisles hokey pokey break dance such has never been seen before or since.

A month later, once again lucid after an unfortunate episode involving character actor and sometime companion Fredo Pastalini and "just a smidgen" of Chinese opium, Lady H. wowed 'em at the Royal Albert Hall when she sang "My Boy Lollipop" accompanied by a revue of muscular and scandalously (un)clad male dancers. Pausing for a photo-op with Lord Hampstead, Lady H. confided that she was happy all the folderol regarding her tryst with "my little Hamster man" had died down, though of course her referencing it left Lord Hampstead seething and abashed while Lady H. appeared positively smug! 

Interviewed for this article, Lady Hortense opined that, in her view, today's "slipshod copycat noise" cannot hold a candle to the "passion and derring-do" of the electric folk emo metal which first launched her into the limelight. Pontificating quite charmingly on a range of subjects, she reminded this writer time and again of why Edmund Mumzet-Pagliatano bestowed, in Your Evening Calling Card that famous sobriquet "The Sublime Hortense" on our national darling, Lady Ainsley-Billington.  There is no other like her.
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for Get Listed.

In This Room

Here, in this room, is where I left it. 
I carry a key,
cold between my breasts, hard against my heart,
that I will never use again.

You--reaper, slayer, bitch--
I bear no mercy for you, no kind thought.
May fire ants climb up your cunt and kill you very slowly,
and the balm stay in sight just out of reach.

Here, outside this room, is where the husk-body walks.
It lives, while the heart that was its passenger browns and curls beyond the door.
Love for my familiars is strong
but the rest I have driven nails through and fed to bald-head vultures.

Killer, drooling lunatic, dust-souled woman-forgery,
I spit on every mote that's left of you;
I feed your ghost great troughs of hate,
and curse you for killing me, again each day, as long as I have memory.
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for Susie's "If Death Were A Woman" challenge at Real Toads.