Lucy Vickery

On the way out

In Competition No. 3036 you were invited to provide a resignation letter in the style of a well-known author. I was inspired to set this challenge by the great William Faulkner, who bowed out with panache from his job as University of Mississippi postmaster: ‘I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.’ Some entries were resignation letters on the part of the author in whose style they were written; others were written by well-known figures in the style of a given author. Given my somewhat woolly brief, either approach was permissible.

There was much wit and cunning invention on display. Commendations go to Richard Corcoran and Michael R. Burch. The winners take £25 each and the bonus fiver belongs to Bill Greenwell’s Anna Soubry channelling Virginia Woolf.
 
Yes, I think, shuffling my possessions — a string of pearls, a leopard-print scarf, a foghorn — Parliament is full of contradiction. To be independent; to be loyal. And always the glare, the commotion, the blatant intrusion of the cameras: but always we must rise above them, I suppose, to go on. And yet the wickedness, the wickedness runs deep; and how shocking that this blueness oozes out of them and rolls like tides of bile which choke and half-throttle the onlookers. They must cease, must desist, must grind to a halt. For I, Anna Mary Soubry, will otherwise hand in my pass, simply renounce my membership. I feel myself shining a light into the dank, corrupt recesses where he, so thin, so pinched, so cruel, holds sway, he and his charlatans. And I will do it, I think, this instant. It is enough! It is enough!
Bill Greenwell
 
Armed with the Sword of the Spirit and clad in the Belt of Truth buckled about my waist, undaunted by perils that lay in wait, I strove resolved to ascend the hill that stood before me however steep the way.




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