3111. Apollo’s torso © Bruce Goodman 9 February 2025

Grandma had a statue of some Greek god or other in the fernery at the back of her garden. Grandma was a keen gardener. You couldn’t see the statue from the house, but when you walked the garden and turned the corner, there was this alabaster torso – headless I might add – poking out from the lush green ferns. I never trusted it. It was a bit scary. Grandma said it was a statue of Apollo. Without a head I thought it was grotesque. And the statue was cracked. I said to grandma, “Both you and the statue are cracked.” Fortunately she got the joke, but why anyone would want a statue of a man’s nipples in their garden is beyond me. Grandma said she bought it at a second-hand shop and not at a garden centre. Then one day I noticed that the statue had been moved. It was closer to the house and standing in a bed of hydrangeas. I asked grandma why she had moved it and she said she hadn’t touched it. The next day the statue was even closer to the house, simply standing in the middle of the lawn outside the sitting room window. Grandma was disgusted because Apollo was not wearing anything below his belly button. “I don’t know who is doing this,” said grandma. “I never noticed it had genitals before. We can’t put up with Apollo’s dangly bits staring at us in the face. We shall have to move the statue back to where it was.” We got a cart, put the statue on it, and hauled it back to the fernery. When we got there its neck was bleeding. The torso and cart were covered in blood. We ran to the house. These days grandma’s garden is completely overrun. She gave up gardening. As far as I know the statue is still lying on the path down where the fernery used to be. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story