Opinion

This pharmacy prescribes words and poems to cure your tattered soul

Robin Ince visits Shropshire’s book shops and graveyards

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20 Jun 2025

‘Two gravestones so overgrown that they appear to be the giant heads of two green men, waiting to be revivified by the harvest festival’. Image: Robin Ince

Clare Ferguson-Walker and I arrive on the perfect day to perform at The Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop’s Castle. The Pharmacy is deservingly quite legendary. It is a beautiful shop selling prescriptions of poetry, some in book form, some rolled up tightly and placed inside pill casing, ready to be cracked open to cure your tattered soul. It would be a fine place to visit at any time, but we are staying over during the yard sale weekend. Once a year, houses across the town hold yard sales.

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My hunger is sated early. I buy three vast volumes of The Girl’s Own Annual from the early 20th century. I am hoping one of them may contain instructions for Suffrajitsu. Ju-jitsu was taught to suffragettes because it turns your opponent’s weight against them. I am a few hundred pages in and still nothing yet. I also buy an autobiography of a blacksmith with quite a reputation (so I am told by a man eating a fairy cake). Then, I turn from browser to porter as I become increasingly laden with Clare’s purchases, which include a banana necklace, a Stetson, a curtain for her front door, and the game Guess Poo (like Guess Who but less face-related).

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Caitlin Hurcombe’s grave. Image: Robin Ince

Clun is one town away and far more inviting than its name may suggest. Like the sightseers we are, we visit the local museum and learn of smocks and fossils. The graveyard of the church holds the remains of the playwright John Osborne, known as one of the Angry Young Men, before moving on to being a rather cussed older man. Helen Osborne is buried next to him. On her gravestone are the words: ‘My feet hurt – try washing your sock.’

Nearby, is a mighty slab of stone, carved into it, ‘Bless Her Spirit.’ I walk around it, presuming there will be more to behold. On the back, a dog looking up towards the stars, which are painted gold. It is Caitlin Hurcombe’s grave, a mere 19 years old when she took her life. The Caitlin Kickstart Award was set up by her mother in her memory. Thinking of her lost life, it reminds me of why it is so important to be able to have conversations about suicidal thoughts. It is vital to know it’s a possibility to speak aloud.

The mood is lightened by two gravestones so overgrown with ivy [main image] that they now appear to be the giant heads of two green men, waiting to be revivified by the harvest festival.

I travel on to Llanelli to work on an album of music and poetry with my brilliant friend Rachel Taylor-Beales. Her family has taken to watching an episode of Columbo at the end of every day. Peter Falk’s eccentric character is on a visit to London where Shakespearean actors chew scenery and then spit it to the rafters.

The next afternoon, we finish the last few details of the album and prepare to place it online. I wrote about the cover star, Gary Robert Jones, a few columns back. The album contains the poem that tells of his courage and comradeship. We will send the finished album to him after my gig in Swansea. Sitting in a cafe a couple of hours later, I receive a message from Gary’s daughter. Gary died that afternoon.

That night in The Elysium, Swansea, I tell a little of the stories Gary told me and then start to read the poem, but I am halted by my tears.

I raise a glass of red to Gary Robert Jones. The last drink he bought me in the bar that weekend, he refused to let me buy a drink back because “I’ve got to spend this money while I’m here”.

Robin Ince is a comedian, poet and broadcaster.

If you or someone you know is struggling, contact the National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK on 0800 689 5652, or contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (free from any phone), email: jo@samaritans.org

Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince is out on 1 May (Macmillan, £20). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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