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Miranda Stonor

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The Party Wall Act 1996

‘Some people might find it rather dry reading,
but it’s really quite fascinating,’ he assured me.
My mind fixed itself on walls, as if bidden:
cavity walls, retaining walls, load-bearing walls,
partition walls, brick walls and concrete walls,
broken-down walls with ivy snaking down them,
wall browns in the grasses beneath,
foreboding walls surmounted by barbed wire,
wattle-and-daub walls, dry-stone walls
with the patchworked fields rumpled into the distance,
walled gardens, policy walls, the wooden walls of England,
Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Walls of Jericho,
Wall Street, the Eton Wall Game.
Wilton carpet wall to wall, a fly on the wall in suburbia, next to the china ducks,
‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd made vivid, as we tucked into Wall’s ice-cream.
‘I wondered if you might like to come to the Pyramus and Thisbe Club,’ he asked.
But I was far away by now:
wall of sound, firewall, Wall of Death,
wall eye, Max Wall, off the wall,
walls protecting, walls dividing, walls breached,
Berlin Wall, now that was a party, when the wall came down.

 

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