Thread by @MarkFrancois12

Extracts from the plague diary of Mark ne-Francois-Pepys

June 9th 1665

Up, betimes and to my cash & carry in Bristol for two barrels of Monster, and there is excitement in the harbour so I mounted an empty plinth and spake:

Friends, yeomen, countrymen, lend me your fears;

1/7

I come to praise Colston, not submerge him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred within statues;
So let it be with Colston. Antifa
Hath told you that Colston was malicious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

2/

And grievously hath Colston answer’d it.
Here, under Avon, Farage and the rest –
For Farage is an honourable man;
So are they all, these Bad Boys of Brexit –
Come I to speak at Colston’s immersion.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

3/

But Johnson says he was ambitious;
And Johnson is an honourable man.
He hath dragged many slaves across the world
Whose ransoms did his general coffers fill:
Did this in Colston seem malicious?
When that the slaves have cried, none of them spoke:

4/

Criminal damage doth provoke outcry:
Yet Wigmore says he was ambitious;
And Wigmore is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the dockside wall
I did present my peeler of potatoes,
Which Colston, a statue, then did refuse.

5/

Yet Arron Banks says he was ambitious;
And, sure, Banks is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what these men spoke,
But here, stand now to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, when Victorians
Did picture him, why then, to drown him?

6/

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish memes,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the Avon there with Colston,
And I must swim till it come back to me.

Home, Peperami, bed.