by Henry VIII commissions a statue and discovers Britain has a long, cheerful, and entirely unstoppable tradition of decorating public monuments
I once erected statues of myself across the realm expecting nothing but appropriate reverence. A traffic cone appeared on my head within eight days, and I have since learned this is considered, nationally, a sign of genuine affection.
The Commission
The statue, commissioned by a small arts council with genuinely good intentions, depicted me mid-punchline, microphone in hand, a modernised take the sculptor described as capturing my essential spirit, and I stood before it on unveiling day genuinely moved, having not seen a proper likeness of myself in bronze since roughly 1541.
The First Cone
The traffic cone appeared overnight, balanced with what I can only describe as genuine architectural skill directly atop my bronze head, and my initial fury lasted almost exactly until Dev explained, patiently, that this happens to nearly every statue in Britain eventually, and represents, according to considerable local precedent, not disrespect but a specific, cheerful form of national fondness.
The Duke Of Wellington Precedent
Dev showed me photographs of a statue in Glasgow that has worn a traffic cone continuously for over four decades, the council having formally given up removing it after residents protested, a piece of civic history I found genuinely moving in ways I did not expect a traffic cone to be capable of producing.
The Escalation
Within a month my own statue had additionally been dressed in a scarf during a cold snap, and once, memorably, given a small paper crown during what I later learned was a nearby school’s history week, decorations I have come to regard not as vandalism but as a form of ongoing, low-stakes public dialogue with a figure who once genuinely terrified this exact population.
The Verdict
I visit the statue regularly now, purely to see what new accessory it has acquired, and I have decided that being cheerfully decorated by strangers represents a form of immortality considerably warmer than anything achieved by my actual original tomb. I once demanded absolute reverence in life. In bronze, I have settled, quite happily, for a traffic cone and the occasional scarf.
The Ongoing Tradition
The statue has since acquired a small knitted hat during a particularly cold week, courtesy, Dev tells me, of a local woman who apparently decorates several statues across the borough as a personal hobby. I have started leaving her small thank you notes tucked beneath the plinth, a correspondence I find genuinely delightful despite never once having met her.
I have also started photographing each new addition for a small private album, a record of affection I did not expect a bronze statue to accumulate quite this quickly. Immortality, it turns out, looks considerably better with a knitted hat attached. Immortality, it turns out, looks considerably better with a knitted hat attached, and I have made my peace entirely with sharing the plinth with whatever arrives next. The knitted hat has earned its own small footnote in my wardrobe. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: the original account of my own return to Britain, the proper London pub where history finally sat down for a pint, London’s ongoing talent for charging you simply for looking.
