Come closer, my rib-shivering colleagues, and let your cockles be warmed by this wintry tale.
There I was, this last Thursday, lingering at the intersection of North End and Racton roads, with my pal, the Pelican Whippersnapper (a puckish sort, with a crafty aspect, and a fellow alumnus of the ragged school), and indulging, quite snugly, in a spot of adolescent chin music.
He’d just returned from helping his father de-louse some bedding in Rickman's Rents (Narrow Street, Limehouse, thanks for asking). He still had a few traces of permethrin powder on his clothing. I leant over to brush some off his shoulder.
We were jawing over the state of the local polonies, and how the curve of some of their ankles reproduced the delicate sweep of the pediments that sit atop that handsome façade in Stevenage Road.
We were also reflecting upon how our beloved boys, them what ply their trade in the black and white, might prosper this coming Saturday evening when confronted with those lesser black-and-whiters from Tyneside.
Presently, our most high-minded wittering was disturbed by some muffled thunderings, underway further down the market. Someone had been on the loud-mouth soup.
We dandied on down to the site of the ructions.
A crowd had gathered, no doubt expecting either a glorious epiphany to part the clouds of their existential gloom or, at the very least, a gratis set of kitchen knives. Alas, today they would be going home blade-less, and with their moral compasses still spinning like billy-o.
Some low-rent twicer had constructed a makeshift hustings upon which to deliver a scalding sermon to the unassuming market-dwellers, harmlessly trying to assemble a few victuals.
An obstreperous knocker from the gospel shop, he was giving all of those within earshot a right verbal handbagging. Haranguing quite liberally he was, accusing his audience of being slack and back-handed. He was the distillate of all that is vexatious and pernickety.
Nudging through the throng, we could see that he was in fact balancing upon on an unwieldy pile of scratched and cracked shellacs. As he rattled out his bilious volleys of pelting-speech, punctuating his accusations with prods and pokes, he rocked like a storm-tossed sailor, yielding helplessly to the stack’s unsteadiness.
The tone of his tirade was apparent: we were all crumbs ‘neath the Devil’s fingernails (and quite possibly, the scurf on his tail, and the tarnish on his trident too, for all I could surmise).
He was bellyaching about the state of the neighbourhood: how we were sinners, spinners, infidels and n’er-do-wells, and how we were all overdue a one-to-one with old Mr. Grim.
The stuff about being lowly and forsaken I could weather: after all, we’re all of us only ever one step from the gutter. But his dockside manner chafed my sensibilities no end. It was like someone adjusting me braces without introducing themselves first.
What a sixpenny schlemiel he was!
His oratory technique grated too: there were glottal stops and non-sequiturs tumbling out of his gob like some kind of anti-grammatical ectoplasm.
At any minute I was expecting him to spout some hackneyed trader’s spiel: “Four linen shifts, two pair of muslin ruffles, and a set of copper-bottomed saucepans…sold! to the shrinking lady in the violet affair. I’d get some ointment on that, love!”
Well, he got some hackles up and no shamming.
But oh! how he fled when the turnips and beets began raining down upon his evangelical bonce, courtesy of yours truly and the Pelican. He thought that Old Scratch himself had singled him out for some kind of divine tuber-related retribution. All of his past transgressions went rattling along behind his eyes like some kind of debauched ticker-tape.
As he tried to dodge this plague of produce, he tottered and fell, spawning a swirling confetti of pious pamphlets amid the shrapnel of splintering 78s.
He then skidded off down Tournay Road like copper off a collection plate. That’ll teach him not to be so sudden and upfront on our territory.
If he wants a lesson in expounding in a succinct and direct manner, he wants to come down the Cottage when a game’s pulsating and everyone’s dander’s up, and hear the practised eloquence on offer there.
So thick is the air with cusses and expletives that, at times, you could reach up, and fair pluck them out of the ether with your pinkies.
Then, if you were so inclined, you could thread them onto a piece of waxy twine and fix ‘em up so that they stretched from one side of the Johnny Stevenage Stand to the other like a string of sparkly X-rated Christmas lights.
Even the cherub-faced understrappers join in sometimes. I’ve even seen a few little ‘uns hoisted on to their parents shoulders so as to reach up and seize some filthy idiom in their chubby little mittens.
Anyway, having stood lapel to lapel as unelected guardians of our beloved parish, we opted to let modesty form the better part of valour and slipped away.
Knowing that the tide would be low, we wandered off down to the river for a swift session of ducks and drakes on the foreshore.
So, friends, until the next time, steer clear of trumpery and take care to avoid the morning drop.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 14 December 2007
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Reserve & Resolve
In the most recent of days, where have I been? Where indeed, my warm-minded Fulham contemporaries, have I been?
Out on manoeuvres with The Parsons Green Fundamentalist Militia?
Eating skylarks in a freezing garret?
No, fellas: neither. Last evening I limped on down to the Cottage, floodlights blazin’ by the river, to view the latest gaggle of Black and White understrappers attempting to catch teacher’s eye. We all like a tryer don’t we, chums, and enthusiasm’s the father-in-law of achievement, or so Ma says.
Well, these boys were plenty keen, and you would hope so considering how callow most were: some had less bum fluff than me. So, on the seesaw of virtues, resolve might be on the “up” end, and panache on the “low”, but I’m sure that by the time they’re sporting shadows at five o’ clock, they’ll be shaving with the first team.
It was particularly cheering to see that cheeky renaissance man Mr. Volz striding out. I had donned a pair of suedette bib-shorts, and waved around an antique stein of Ma Knows Best, to hearten him following his sideline spell. I think he appreciated it. I hope he did, for by the end of the game my shanks were a-shivering like nobody knows. I had to race home for a vigorous rub down with some Dante’s mustard liniment.
Last night I did see the future, mateys, so ready yourself. For when it comes today will be yesterday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Out on manoeuvres with The Parsons Green Fundamentalist Militia?
Eating skylarks in a freezing garret?
No, fellas: neither. Last evening I limped on down to the Cottage, floodlights blazin’ by the river, to view the latest gaggle of Black and White understrappers attempting to catch teacher’s eye. We all like a tryer don’t we, chums, and enthusiasm’s the father-in-law of achievement, or so Ma says.
Well, these boys were plenty keen, and you would hope so considering how callow most were: some had less bum fluff than me. So, on the seesaw of virtues, resolve might be on the “up” end, and panache on the “low”, but I’m sure that by the time they’re sporting shadows at five o’ clock, they’ll be shaving with the first team.
It was particularly cheering to see that cheeky renaissance man Mr. Volz striding out. I had donned a pair of suedette bib-shorts, and waved around an antique stein of Ma Knows Best, to hearten him following his sideline spell. I think he appreciated it. I hope he did, for by the end of the game my shanks were a-shivering like nobody knows. I had to race home for a vigorous rub down with some Dante’s mustard liniment.
Last night I did see the future, mateys, so ready yourself. For when it comes today will be yesterday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 3 December 2007
Manchester & Mannequins
It’s the morning of a Manchester evening, my Cottaging cheerios.
And despite the innate glories of a south west six existence, I feel a miasma of foreboding looming o’er us all.
Even a beetle-headed ninnyhammer like me recognises that pickings tonight are likely to be decidedly slim. No, I won’t be expecting a flurry of pocket-sized epiphanies to be igniting within my noggin during the course of the game; even with Mr. Sanchez’s assertion that our heroes are to “have-a-go.”
Now, I might proceed on knock-knees, but I don’t have gambler’s elbows. Nevertheless, if our boys conspire to overcome those mercenary-headed reds, I will personally accept a forfeit.
At first twinklings tomorrow morning, I will construct a life-sized effigy of The Sanch from the seventeen yards of soufflé gauze and two pair of worsted stockings that I recently purloined from a doorway on Racton Road.
I will then slice open the back of my hand-crafted mannequin with a keen–bladed Stanley and climb inside. I then pledge to spend the rest of the day terrorising the market like a kind of inverse Santa, an anti-Christmas if you will, roaring at the little ‘uns, and lobbing Battersea Bundles at all the bleary-eyed backchatters who doubted Lawrie’s logic.
Anyway, I’m off for a steaming hot slice of Hare Pie Scramble and a Conny Wabble chaser to calm the nerves.
I’ll then set about adjusting my braces extra tight in readiness for tonight’s game.
See you on the other side, mateys!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
And despite the innate glories of a south west six existence, I feel a miasma of foreboding looming o’er us all.
Even a beetle-headed ninnyhammer like me recognises that pickings tonight are likely to be decidedly slim. No, I won’t be expecting a flurry of pocket-sized epiphanies to be igniting within my noggin during the course of the game; even with Mr. Sanchez’s assertion that our heroes are to “have-a-go.”
Now, I might proceed on knock-knees, but I don’t have gambler’s elbows. Nevertheless, if our boys conspire to overcome those mercenary-headed reds, I will personally accept a forfeit.
At first twinklings tomorrow morning, I will construct a life-sized effigy of The Sanch from the seventeen yards of soufflé gauze and two pair of worsted stockings that I recently purloined from a doorway on Racton Road.
I will then slice open the back of my hand-crafted mannequin with a keen–bladed Stanley and climb inside. I then pledge to spend the rest of the day terrorising the market like a kind of inverse Santa, an anti-Christmas if you will, roaring at the little ‘uns, and lobbing Battersea Bundles at all the bleary-eyed backchatters who doubted Lawrie’s logic.
Anyway, I’m off for a steaming hot slice of Hare Pie Scramble and a Conny Wabble chaser to calm the nerves.
I’ll then set about adjusting my braces extra tight in readiness for tonight’s game.
See you on the other side, mateys!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 30 November 2007
Lemons & Leads
Famously Fulham colleagues, I’m not wrong am I?
Collectively - that’s all of us together, like - our humours are a little sluggish, aren't they? Our faces are somewhat long, and our peckers require upping.
In addition to the on-pitch misdemeanours that we suffer all too regularly, we each have our own little grievances that irk and confound us, and cause merry hell with our moods, don’t we chums.
Well, this time last week, I’d just paid a visit to the esteemed Mr. Saxby, on that there Fulham High Street, to avail myself of an exquisite pair of mustard-yellow moleskin breeches to wear to Sunday’s match against the Blackburners. The concept, as it germinated within my murky loaf, was to use the extra space provided by their inherent design to smuggle in a highly potent, citrus-style arsenal. Specifically, a slew of unwaxed Sicilian lemons packed around the thighs.
My squint-eyed plan being to bombard, mid-game, the lustrous noodle of that bellicose bully huff, Mr. Robinson Savage. Any queries from the security blowhards at the turnstiles were to be fended off with a convoluted alibi involving cellulite and water retention. Evidently, I was fully prepared.
Imagine my dismay then, when that flailing chancer didn’t even take to our sacred turf. I was so keen to give that cunning shaver his comeuppance, that the match result seemed even more depressing than it should’ve. The only thing that wasn’t deflated was my bloomin’ stupid fruity bloomers. I had to waddle all the way home before I could offload the contents into the coal scuttle.
I did think of presenting them to Mr. Lawrie as a kind of post-game consolation. You know, one lemon for each time we’ve surrendered a lead, that kind of biscuit. Thing is, he seems to be turning into something of a misery chops as it is, without sucking on a glut of de-trousered bitter fruits. He’s morphing into a right prickly grumble gizzard ain’t he. When he’s not having elbow digs at the whiskers and blazers, he’s penning peevish epistles to Mr. Hackett.
He’s certainly not one to let his sour grapes wither on the vine.
He wants to go easy. All that shaking your fist at the moon’s not good for the constitution, not to mention the risk of contracting glue-tongue from all the stamps he must be licking.
Anyway, I’m off to cheer myself up by throwing flaming celery sticks at the Jesus freaks leafleting on Lillie Road.
As for perking up our Sanch, I fear that only the presentation of Sir Fergie’s tallywags on a Harrods-branded salver next Monday evening could crack that grim visage at the moment.
Let’s all raise a glass to that potential canapé, eh fellas!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Collectively - that’s all of us together, like - our humours are a little sluggish, aren't they? Our faces are somewhat long, and our peckers require upping.
In addition to the on-pitch misdemeanours that we suffer all too regularly, we each have our own little grievances that irk and confound us, and cause merry hell with our moods, don’t we chums.
Well, this time last week, I’d just paid a visit to the esteemed Mr. Saxby, on that there Fulham High Street, to avail myself of an exquisite pair of mustard-yellow moleskin breeches to wear to Sunday’s match against the Blackburners. The concept, as it germinated within my murky loaf, was to use the extra space provided by their inherent design to smuggle in a highly potent, citrus-style arsenal. Specifically, a slew of unwaxed Sicilian lemons packed around the thighs.
My squint-eyed plan being to bombard, mid-game, the lustrous noodle of that bellicose bully huff, Mr. Robinson Savage. Any queries from the security blowhards at the turnstiles were to be fended off with a convoluted alibi involving cellulite and water retention. Evidently, I was fully prepared.
Imagine my dismay then, when that flailing chancer didn’t even take to our sacred turf. I was so keen to give that cunning shaver his comeuppance, that the match result seemed even more depressing than it should’ve. The only thing that wasn’t deflated was my bloomin’ stupid fruity bloomers. I had to waddle all the way home before I could offload the contents into the coal scuttle.
I did think of presenting them to Mr. Lawrie as a kind of post-game consolation. You know, one lemon for each time we’ve surrendered a lead, that kind of biscuit. Thing is, he seems to be turning into something of a misery chops as it is, without sucking on a glut of de-trousered bitter fruits. He’s morphing into a right prickly grumble gizzard ain’t he. When he’s not having elbow digs at the whiskers and blazers, he’s penning peevish epistles to Mr. Hackett.
He’s certainly not one to let his sour grapes wither on the vine.
He wants to go easy. All that shaking your fist at the moon’s not good for the constitution, not to mention the risk of contracting glue-tongue from all the stamps he must be licking.
Anyway, I’m off to cheer myself up by throwing flaming celery sticks at the Jesus freaks leafleting on Lillie Road.
As for perking up our Sanch, I fear that only the presentation of Sir Fergie’s tallywags on a Harrods-branded salver next Monday evening could crack that grim visage at the moment.
Let’s all raise a glass to that potential canapé, eh fellas!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Sylvain & Salvation
On an unsullied Tuesday such as this, your team having recently exposed some Royals without resorting to blackmail, you may ask yourselves, in a distracted fashion, where I have been?
Where have I been, you query?
Boning up on genealogy in the hope of finding a distant Welsh relation so as to boast an affinity with the mercurial Mr. Simon Davies?
Collecting up spent squibs ‘round Bishop’s Park in a fit of civic-minded hunter-gathering?
No, my little sparklers, I have been spending most of my time since last Saturday evening stroking Mr. Sylvain Legwinski’s radiant mane, finger-tipping Poacher’s Relish into his beard, and gazing indulgently into his luminous, staring eyes.
So, did Ma finally flip, and despatch me to Ipswich like a doleful little evacuee in 1939 or thereabouts, short-trousered and with nought to my name but a plimsoll bag and a slab of Palm toffee?
Have I, since then, been floating around the changing rooms at Portman Road, attending to a reclining Frenchman while he earwigs the half-time team talk from Mr. Magilton, drip-feeding him Crimson Seedless grapes in a bacchanalian orgy of simmering homoeroticism?
Don’t be five past daft, Fulham mates, I’m a red-blooded chit like all of you, and the truth is, of course, far more mundane.
You may recall, that last Friday I was presented with a plaster saint that Ma had rescued from the local vicar’s lecherous clutches. You may also recall that I carried out a masterful, Fulham-themed makeover upon the sacred figure, and that by the end of it he was the spit of our Leggy.
I then resolved to take him to Saturday’s game with me as a kind of karmic talisman what might tinker with the laws of physics as they’ve been generally adopted, and cause great things to happen in a Fulham-leaning direction. Great things that our boys have been unable to conjure thus far by virtue of their boots and brains and stuff.
Well, you can’t dispute the evidence can you, my post-celebratory chums, you just can’t. In fact, you can round up Mr. Einstein, Mr. Newton, and even the eternally foxy Judith Haan, pop them in a hessian sack and drop ‘em in the mighty Thames, ‘cause we out-manoeuvred them and all their tricky thinking too.
Yes, Mr. Sylvain’s supernatural persuasions undeniably secured us that elusive conquest, and that is a hobnailed truth. What is more: he made an elephant fly; he made a Welshman take wing; and he de-spooked a goalkeeper suffering from Soldier’s Heart, and returned him to the keen-reflexed stalwart he once was.
So, to show my thanks on your behalf, I’ve been tending to the fella’s needs and necessities to ensure that his powers don’t diminish through neglect, because you never know when we might need him again.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Where have I been, you query?
Boning up on genealogy in the hope of finding a distant Welsh relation so as to boast an affinity with the mercurial Mr. Simon Davies?
Collecting up spent squibs ‘round Bishop’s Park in a fit of civic-minded hunter-gathering?
No, my little sparklers, I have been spending most of my time since last Saturday evening stroking Mr. Sylvain Legwinski’s radiant mane, finger-tipping Poacher’s Relish into his beard, and gazing indulgently into his luminous, staring eyes.
So, did Ma finally flip, and despatch me to Ipswich like a doleful little evacuee in 1939 or thereabouts, short-trousered and with nought to my name but a plimsoll bag and a slab of Palm toffee?
Have I, since then, been floating around the changing rooms at Portman Road, attending to a reclining Frenchman while he earwigs the half-time team talk from Mr. Magilton, drip-feeding him Crimson Seedless grapes in a bacchanalian orgy of simmering homoeroticism?
Don’t be five past daft, Fulham mates, I’m a red-blooded chit like all of you, and the truth is, of course, far more mundane.
You may recall, that last Friday I was presented with a plaster saint that Ma had rescued from the local vicar’s lecherous clutches. You may also recall that I carried out a masterful, Fulham-themed makeover upon the sacred figure, and that by the end of it he was the spit of our Leggy.
I then resolved to take him to Saturday’s game with me as a kind of karmic talisman what might tinker with the laws of physics as they’ve been generally adopted, and cause great things to happen in a Fulham-leaning direction. Great things that our boys have been unable to conjure thus far by virtue of their boots and brains and stuff.
Well, you can’t dispute the evidence can you, my post-celebratory chums, you just can’t. In fact, you can round up Mr. Einstein, Mr. Newton, and even the eternally foxy Judith Haan, pop them in a hessian sack and drop ‘em in the mighty Thames, ‘cause we out-manoeuvred them and all their tricky thinking too.
Yes, Mr. Sylvain’s supernatural persuasions undeniably secured us that elusive conquest, and that is a hobnailed truth. What is more: he made an elephant fly; he made a Welshman take wing; and he de-spooked a goalkeeper suffering from Soldier’s Heart, and returned him to the keen-reflexed stalwart he once was.
So, to show my thanks on your behalf, I’ve been tending to the fella’s needs and necessities to ensure that his powers don’t diminish through neglect, because you never know when we might need him again.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 2 November 2007
Saints & Speedos
Beatific Friday blessings to you all, my most devout Fulham flock.
As you all know, on a select few days each week, prior to opening up her stall, Ma avails herself of some extra apron-cash by undertaking a sprig of cleaning at our local church.
There she was yesterday morning, toiling in silence amidst the grainy, pre-dawn dimness: conscientiously sponging down the pews; industriously buffing up the cherubs.
How sensitively she de-curled the stiffened little wicks that had wilted on the votive candles, like a junior doctor on their first day checking for the descent of a pair of adolescent testicles.
Diligently up the aisle went the fresh rushes - laid with a practised hand - when her reflective maternal reveries were disturbed by a strange, attenuated moaning. It resounded around the triforium and down along the organ pipes.
Not being one to give sofa-space to superstition, and feeling somewhat responsible for the premises, she resolved to track down the source of this ungodly, oscillating drone.
Being of a keen ear, she soon located the sound as emanating from behind an ornate screen, perched in the corner of the gloomy apse. As she approached, she glimpsed frantic movements through the squints. Involuntarily, her mind added the missing information to formulate a picture in her head of what lay beyond.
The bad penny dropped.
Rounding the screen, there was the sight she had by then constructed within her noggin: the vicar prostrate, thrashing away, getting gratuitously hot under the dog-collar with a two-foot tall plaster saint. A pair of turquoise Speedos were shoved into his mouth, muffling his fervent ejaculations.
She instinctively moved as if to flay the prone clergyman with a fistful of taut rushes, but held back for fear it may deliver a prurient thrill, and propel him over the cusp of arousal (she still had the cleaning responsibilities, remember, chums). Instead, she hoicked the font across the flagstones, tipping it’s contents over him and finally extinguishing his perverted ardour. The divine drenching caused him to start as though woken suddenly from a deep, intense slumber.
Upon comprehending his detection he oozed ignominy from every pore. Shame ain’t the word: he had a finger in every humble pie.
It didn’t fool Ma though. She cut her milk teeth on the many previous indiscretions of his that she’d witnessed; the least reprehensible of which was interfering with a wicker reindeer the Christmas before last.
And it wouldn’t be his last performance, Ma knew that for certain. In fact, if we weren’t only a few short shillings from Carey Street, she might have performed a rough and ready rectal exam upon him with the unfortunate object of his lust, before telling him what do with his menial, sub-minimum wage arrangement.
Instead, she satisfied herself with leaving him snivelling in a pool of his own humiliation, confiscating the abused icon to spare it from further indignities in the future.
Upon returning to the family digs, she presented it to me as though it was top of my Christmas list. Not being of a particularly pious stripe meself, I chose to render a profane but sensitive reassignment to the exploited statuette.
Scrabbling around under the sink, I found one of Pa’s long discarded tablets of tailor’s chalk, and a rusting tin of black Kiwi Parade Gloss.
After a brief artistic interlude, I’d re-painted the fellow in a true-to-life replica of that most exalted and famous black and white Fulham kit!
And by Cribbins how noble he looked then. In fact, his pre-existing ‘tache ‘n’ beard malarkey gave him a rather bohemian bearing, and brought to mind none other than Mr “Leggy” Legwinski.
So fellas, look out for me tomorrow when I shall be swinging the born again totem around my bonce like a demented hammer-throwing highlander, whilst imploring our boys towards a blessed victory.
Salvation’s at hand, fellow parishioners: St. Sylvain’s gonna save us!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
As you all know, on a select few days each week, prior to opening up her stall, Ma avails herself of some extra apron-cash by undertaking a sprig of cleaning at our local church.
There she was yesterday morning, toiling in silence amidst the grainy, pre-dawn dimness: conscientiously sponging down the pews; industriously buffing up the cherubs.
How sensitively she de-curled the stiffened little wicks that had wilted on the votive candles, like a junior doctor on their first day checking for the descent of a pair of adolescent testicles.
Diligently up the aisle went the fresh rushes - laid with a practised hand - when her reflective maternal reveries were disturbed by a strange, attenuated moaning. It resounded around the triforium and down along the organ pipes.
Not being one to give sofa-space to superstition, and feeling somewhat responsible for the premises, she resolved to track down the source of this ungodly, oscillating drone.
Being of a keen ear, she soon located the sound as emanating from behind an ornate screen, perched in the corner of the gloomy apse. As she approached, she glimpsed frantic movements through the squints. Involuntarily, her mind added the missing information to formulate a picture in her head of what lay beyond.
The bad penny dropped.
Rounding the screen, there was the sight she had by then constructed within her noggin: the vicar prostrate, thrashing away, getting gratuitously hot under the dog-collar with a two-foot tall plaster saint. A pair of turquoise Speedos were shoved into his mouth, muffling his fervent ejaculations.
She instinctively moved as if to flay the prone clergyman with a fistful of taut rushes, but held back for fear it may deliver a prurient thrill, and propel him over the cusp of arousal (she still had the cleaning responsibilities, remember, chums). Instead, she hoicked the font across the flagstones, tipping it’s contents over him and finally extinguishing his perverted ardour. The divine drenching caused him to start as though woken suddenly from a deep, intense slumber.
Upon comprehending his detection he oozed ignominy from every pore. Shame ain’t the word: he had a finger in every humble pie.
It didn’t fool Ma though. She cut her milk teeth on the many previous indiscretions of his that she’d witnessed; the least reprehensible of which was interfering with a wicker reindeer the Christmas before last.
And it wouldn’t be his last performance, Ma knew that for certain. In fact, if we weren’t only a few short shillings from Carey Street, she might have performed a rough and ready rectal exam upon him with the unfortunate object of his lust, before telling him what do with his menial, sub-minimum wage arrangement.
Instead, she satisfied herself with leaving him snivelling in a pool of his own humiliation, confiscating the abused icon to spare it from further indignities in the future.
Upon returning to the family digs, she presented it to me as though it was top of my Christmas list. Not being of a particularly pious stripe meself, I chose to render a profane but sensitive reassignment to the exploited statuette.
Scrabbling around under the sink, I found one of Pa’s long discarded tablets of tailor’s chalk, and a rusting tin of black Kiwi Parade Gloss.
After a brief artistic interlude, I’d re-painted the fellow in a true-to-life replica of that most exalted and famous black and white Fulham kit!
And by Cribbins how noble he looked then. In fact, his pre-existing ‘tache ‘n’ beard malarkey gave him a rather bohemian bearing, and brought to mind none other than Mr “Leggy” Legwinski.
So fellas, look out for me tomorrow when I shall be swinging the born again totem around my bonce like a demented hammer-throwing highlander, whilst imploring our boys towards a blessed victory.
Salvation’s at hand, fellow parishioners: St. Sylvain’s gonna save us!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 29 October 2007
Fingers & Forecasts
Feelin’ Wear-y, Fulham friends?
Has the Stadium of Light left you a little darker in the soul?
Early this morning, I was helping Miss Wetherby (next door-but-one) de-gunge her griddle. She says that naïve fingers are more sensitive to small grooves. She was certainly all smiles afterwards.
Her antiquated Bakelite was rattling and droning in the corner, puffing out the weather forecast. I copped an ear:
“A deep depression over Craven Cottage, remaining steady, with a new low expected tea-time Saturday.
Warnings of gales in Brompton Road proceeding menacingly towards SW6.
Team failing, moving slowly south, 18 to 20. Squally showers expected, occasional brightness. Managerial position emptying by December, future outlook changeable.”
Galled by this prognosis, I sloped off up to the market, which was fussily arranging it’s skirts for the coming day’s trading.
I collared arch-grump and market sage Mr Jewry, and relayed these ominous projections to him. Ever tetchy, he waved a dismissive currant pasty, and said: “supporting Fulham is like being trapped in a slowly-deflating dinghy, circling clockwise in the North Sea: Forties-Fisher-German Bight-Dogger, and repeat until sunk.”
Well, that’s talking in tongues down my street, and it sent my noggin into a bit of a tailspin, and that’s no fib.
So, finding all this flimsy humbugging too heavy for a pair of hopeful shoulders like mine, I slipped away, and went briskly on down to the Cottage to unburden myself.
As ever, upon arriving, the prospects improved. Newly gladdened, I set about projecting some positive tidings towards that delightful Johnny Stevenage stand, before depositing a few protective karmic charms by each of the turnstiles.
You could say that I’ve swathed that old place in a kind of psychic bubble-wrap that’s rendered it impervious to all the downbeats and wiseacres.
With these dependable measures in place, we’re all set and fair to deliver a right Royals beating on Saturday, and squarely debag those gloomy harbingers what’s pooping on our parade!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Has the Stadium of Light left you a little darker in the soul?
Early this morning, I was helping Miss Wetherby (next door-but-one) de-gunge her griddle. She says that naïve fingers are more sensitive to small grooves. She was certainly all smiles afterwards.
Her antiquated Bakelite was rattling and droning in the corner, puffing out the weather forecast. I copped an ear:
“A deep depression over Craven Cottage, remaining steady, with a new low expected tea-time Saturday.
Warnings of gales in Brompton Road proceeding menacingly towards SW6.
Team failing, moving slowly south, 18 to 20. Squally showers expected, occasional brightness. Managerial position emptying by December, future outlook changeable.”
Galled by this prognosis, I sloped off up to the market, which was fussily arranging it’s skirts for the coming day’s trading.
I collared arch-grump and market sage Mr Jewry, and relayed these ominous projections to him. Ever tetchy, he waved a dismissive currant pasty, and said: “supporting Fulham is like being trapped in a slowly-deflating dinghy, circling clockwise in the North Sea: Forties-Fisher-German Bight-Dogger, and repeat until sunk.”
Well, that’s talking in tongues down my street, and it sent my noggin into a bit of a tailspin, and that’s no fib.
So, finding all this flimsy humbugging too heavy for a pair of hopeful shoulders like mine, I slipped away, and went briskly on down to the Cottage to unburden myself.
As ever, upon arriving, the prospects improved. Newly gladdened, I set about projecting some positive tidings towards that delightful Johnny Stevenage stand, before depositing a few protective karmic charms by each of the turnstiles.
You could say that I’ve swathed that old place in a kind of psychic bubble-wrap that’s rendered it impervious to all the downbeats and wiseacres.
With these dependable measures in place, we’re all set and fair to deliver a right Royals beating on Saturday, and squarely debag those gloomy harbingers what’s pooping on our parade!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 26 October 2007
Courting & Cavorting
Brotherly love to you all, my adorable cottaging kindreds.
In those tiny transitional spaces where the hectic yields to the humdrum in the continuum of your convoluted daily lives, I fancy I can hear you wondering to yourselves, as the hubbub recedes, where I have been.
Where have I been?
Exchanging playful glances with Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy?
Cavorting in a spinney with a shrewdness of apes?
‘fraid not, mateys: I’ve been contracting a stoop from spending most of mid-morning with my beak squashed against the grime-ingrained panes of The Divide And Conker, Pa’s local, trying to alert the redundant old cove through the lunchtime turmoil.
I was keen to secure his attention before he became completely liquoriced, and relocated to the Former Sober Republic of Drunkmanistan.
I could vaguely identify his spectral, attenuated form, like a fifth-generation photocopy of a person, shimmering through the twenty-watt, yellow-bulbed gloom.
He was slumped in a musty snug, like an under-stuffed, unwanted Guy on November 6th, slackjawing about this and that, and ritually cursing misfortune’s neglected half-brother. He persisted in holding court despite his audience comprising solely of shove ha’penny champion-elect Rancid Joe (comatose), and the landlord’s clingy, wheezing, Bichon Frise, freshly sick from being force-fed pistachios by you-know-who.
He’d just polished off a platter of the sub-gastropub puree that they try to pass off for food. The usual rag and famish fare, it slid down his gullet, no doubt, without even touching the sides.
My loitering was on account of me being on the ear’ole for a sub with which to purchase a mid-morning Banana Inbetween from the highly-esteemed Well Bread pastry parlour.
A gratis Underage Alcopop fizzer to sloosh it down with would have been most welcome too.
It’s all right for Pa, idling his life away, content and not the least bit ashamed to be forever dipping his rookers in the National Handbag. But when one is toiling away under a malign maternal dictatorship like I am, some level of sustenance is required. It would be entirely fruitless to pester Ma - she’s the living embodiment of the cashless society. Any coins that slip into her apron disappear never to be seen again.
A bit like a first-half Fulham lead.
Despite my frenzied dumb-show, he failed to notice me and, as the ingested indulgences steadily paralysed his system, he seemed to slowly fade away and become one with the grubby upholstery.
I was barking up the wrong family tree.
I decided to drift over and attempt to catch the eye, if not the ardour, of the flower-seller’s enchanting daughter. Now there’s a lass with the latch-keys to my heart.
Stationed opposite, I commenced my renowned and much-plagiarised, courting ritual. I employed all my most erotic techniques:
strutting back and forth like a cockerel, with a baby parsnip peeking out of my button-fly;
vigorously thrusting my pelvis towards her whilst squawking like a distressed crow;
kneading tallow into my bumfluff, and tousling my barnet with shredded vegetables;
flamboyantly juggling four under-ripe limes, whilst whistling “You and Me and Fulham.”
Nothing worked.
It was a peerless display of uninformed carnal expression but, despite my fervent approaches, she remained impervious; engrossed in her world and quite serene, she continued delicately twisting wire around the stems of her orange Barberton Daisies.
I had as much chance of beguiling her as I did of being kidnapped by a badger in a gravy waistcoat.
So, with a distended belly, and a fallen crest to boot, I can only beseech our boys to, by any means necessary, out-manoeuvre the Mackems at the weekend, and give a little hope to us all.
But whatever happens chums; remember that each of us is black and white, and that when it rains we all get wet.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
In those tiny transitional spaces where the hectic yields to the humdrum in the continuum of your convoluted daily lives, I fancy I can hear you wondering to yourselves, as the hubbub recedes, where I have been.
Where have I been?
Exchanging playful glances with Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy?
Cavorting in a spinney with a shrewdness of apes?
‘fraid not, mateys: I’ve been contracting a stoop from spending most of mid-morning with my beak squashed against the grime-ingrained panes of The Divide And Conker, Pa’s local, trying to alert the redundant old cove through the lunchtime turmoil.
I was keen to secure his attention before he became completely liquoriced, and relocated to the Former Sober Republic of Drunkmanistan.
I could vaguely identify his spectral, attenuated form, like a fifth-generation photocopy of a person, shimmering through the twenty-watt, yellow-bulbed gloom.
He was slumped in a musty snug, like an under-stuffed, unwanted Guy on November 6th, slackjawing about this and that, and ritually cursing misfortune’s neglected half-brother. He persisted in holding court despite his audience comprising solely of shove ha’penny champion-elect Rancid Joe (comatose), and the landlord’s clingy, wheezing, Bichon Frise, freshly sick from being force-fed pistachios by you-know-who.
He’d just polished off a platter of the sub-gastropub puree that they try to pass off for food. The usual rag and famish fare, it slid down his gullet, no doubt, without even touching the sides.
My loitering was on account of me being on the ear’ole for a sub with which to purchase a mid-morning Banana Inbetween from the highly-esteemed Well Bread pastry parlour.
A gratis Underage Alcopop fizzer to sloosh it down with would have been most welcome too.
It’s all right for Pa, idling his life away, content and not the least bit ashamed to be forever dipping his rookers in the National Handbag. But when one is toiling away under a malign maternal dictatorship like I am, some level of sustenance is required. It would be entirely fruitless to pester Ma - she’s the living embodiment of the cashless society. Any coins that slip into her apron disappear never to be seen again.
A bit like a first-half Fulham lead.
Despite my frenzied dumb-show, he failed to notice me and, as the ingested indulgences steadily paralysed his system, he seemed to slowly fade away and become one with the grubby upholstery.
I was barking up the wrong family tree.
I decided to drift over and attempt to catch the eye, if not the ardour, of the flower-seller’s enchanting daughter. Now there’s a lass with the latch-keys to my heart.
Stationed opposite, I commenced my renowned and much-plagiarised, courting ritual. I employed all my most erotic techniques:
strutting back and forth like a cockerel, with a baby parsnip peeking out of my button-fly;
vigorously thrusting my pelvis towards her whilst squawking like a distressed crow;
kneading tallow into my bumfluff, and tousling my barnet with shredded vegetables;
flamboyantly juggling four under-ripe limes, whilst whistling “You and Me and Fulham.”
Nothing worked.
It was a peerless display of uninformed carnal expression but, despite my fervent approaches, she remained impervious; engrossed in her world and quite serene, she continued delicately twisting wire around the stems of her orange Barberton Daisies.
I had as much chance of beguiling her as I did of being kidnapped by a badger in a gravy waistcoat.
So, with a distended belly, and a fallen crest to boot, I can only beseech our boys to, by any means necessary, out-manoeuvre the Mackems at the weekend, and give a little hope to us all.
But whatever happens chums; remember that each of us is black and white, and that when it rains we all get wet.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 22 October 2007
Lawrie & Lactation
Subdued salutations, my most exasperated mates.
You don’t need me to impart the fact that a lot of yammer’s been spewed about a certain Sanchez, L., Mister. With this is mind, I fancied I might wield some of my newly found words to fashion my four farthings worth.
Thing is, when I spluttered up to Mr Jewry’s stall, all proud and beaming, to show off my little discoveries, he gave me a right terse ticking off. In fact, afterwards I felt a little shrivelled. He said I should handle superior words with caution, and be careful not to obfuscate, whatever that means. He said that some folks could interpret my immature doggerel as a touch patronising. That it could appear snooty, even from a gutter-dwelling chit like me.
Well, I’ve still got the flea in my ear now. Just shows how even the most innocent of intentions can get misconstrued, eh fellas? And that brings us roundly back to Mr Lawrie.
He may be a stern, bespectacled martinet, but in management terms he’s a tyro, and his future remains a guessing story to the best of us.
Granted, as a relative greenhorn he remains a going concern rather than a racing certainty, but needs must when the devil drives. And if it appears I’m alluding to Mr Harrods Al Fayed as a devil, then it’s in strictly the most endearing and chubby-cheeked sense.
Some insinuate that the little giblets he’s purchased to date aren’t the butcher’s best, and that he’s therefore something of a lickpenny. They wonder will he be able to perform the same acts of alchemy that he’s done previously, and make straight fires from crooked logs.
Some sorts even insist on crucifying him for his playing past. Be honest gentlemen, would you be content for a mature boudoir performance to be judged on an adolescent alleyway fumbling? It seems that old sins cast long shadows.
I can understand the frustrations and the need to vent. We all need a little release from time to time: our passions are liable to get pent-up when the object of our affections goes a little limp.
It reminds of me of that rather rum story by Mr. Maupassant - An Idyll - the one about a heavily-lactating woman on a train who only gains relief from the pain of her milk-swollen breasts when a fellow passenger offers to imbibe some of the offending liquid, direct from source you might say. He hadn’t eaten in three days, so it suited both parties!
No! I’m not asking you start suckling your neighbours at the game, St. Ivel preserve us! Although when those replica shirts come off, there’s some chaps that certainly look capable of providing a little half-time refreshment.
What I’m saying, is that we can hector and chide ‘til our temples pulsate – in fact, I bust yet another pair of braces meself this last Saturday - but where’s the percentage in aspiring to champagne tastes on a ginger beer budget?
Our travails might seem like water off a lame duck’s back sometimes, but I’d wager a gusset-full of plums that beneath that reasoned veneer, he’s as troubled as we are. He does, so far at least, appear to possess a splash more acumen than most. He certainly presents a more austere mien: I can’t see him sharing a lager bath with his players and scrubbing their backs with organic leeks, post-defeat. I reckon he just sits in a corner, leering menacingly over the top of the latest copy of Business Today, punching digits into a calculator. Maybe even drawing a sinister finger across his neck, slowly, from ear to ear.
We all agree that it’s time for success to get it’s collar felt ‘round our way, and I ain’t just talking about winning the Intertoto one time. But sometimes, as we all know, football can amount to little more than a squalid raffle. Goals that are not goals, leads that are no longer leads.
In those instances, we just have to accept that we are mere ears of corn, in thrall to fate’s force nine. It’s sometimes better to yield a little, than risk suffering widespread structural damage.
In conclusion, based on the evidence thus far, Your Honour, I’d probably give Mr. S. the name of my tailor.
And if he’s still with us in the New Year, I’ll give him the phone number too!
Until then, as Mr. Jewry often remarks, “don’t count your headless chickens before they hatch.”
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
You don’t need me to impart the fact that a lot of yammer’s been spewed about a certain Sanchez, L., Mister. With this is mind, I fancied I might wield some of my newly found words to fashion my four farthings worth.
Thing is, when I spluttered up to Mr Jewry’s stall, all proud and beaming, to show off my little discoveries, he gave me a right terse ticking off. In fact, afterwards I felt a little shrivelled. He said I should handle superior words with caution, and be careful not to obfuscate, whatever that means. He said that some folks could interpret my immature doggerel as a touch patronising. That it could appear snooty, even from a gutter-dwelling chit like me.
Well, I’ve still got the flea in my ear now. Just shows how even the most innocent of intentions can get misconstrued, eh fellas? And that brings us roundly back to Mr Lawrie.
He may be a stern, bespectacled martinet, but in management terms he’s a tyro, and his future remains a guessing story to the best of us.
Granted, as a relative greenhorn he remains a going concern rather than a racing certainty, but needs must when the devil drives. And if it appears I’m alluding to Mr Harrods Al Fayed as a devil, then it’s in strictly the most endearing and chubby-cheeked sense.
Some insinuate that the little giblets he’s purchased to date aren’t the butcher’s best, and that he’s therefore something of a lickpenny. They wonder will he be able to perform the same acts of alchemy that he’s done previously, and make straight fires from crooked logs.
Some sorts even insist on crucifying him for his playing past. Be honest gentlemen, would you be content for a mature boudoir performance to be judged on an adolescent alleyway fumbling? It seems that old sins cast long shadows.
I can understand the frustrations and the need to vent. We all need a little release from time to time: our passions are liable to get pent-up when the object of our affections goes a little limp.
It reminds of me of that rather rum story by Mr. Maupassant - An Idyll - the one about a heavily-lactating woman on a train who only gains relief from the pain of her milk-swollen breasts when a fellow passenger offers to imbibe some of the offending liquid, direct from source you might say. He hadn’t eaten in three days, so it suited both parties!
No! I’m not asking you start suckling your neighbours at the game, St. Ivel preserve us! Although when those replica shirts come off, there’s some chaps that certainly look capable of providing a little half-time refreshment.
What I’m saying, is that we can hector and chide ‘til our temples pulsate – in fact, I bust yet another pair of braces meself this last Saturday - but where’s the percentage in aspiring to champagne tastes on a ginger beer budget?
Our travails might seem like water off a lame duck’s back sometimes, but I’d wager a gusset-full of plums that beneath that reasoned veneer, he’s as troubled as we are. He does, so far at least, appear to possess a splash more acumen than most. He certainly presents a more austere mien: I can’t see him sharing a lager bath with his players and scrubbing their backs with organic leeks, post-defeat. I reckon he just sits in a corner, leering menacingly over the top of the latest copy of Business Today, punching digits into a calculator. Maybe even drawing a sinister finger across his neck, slowly, from ear to ear.
We all agree that it’s time for success to get it’s collar felt ‘round our way, and I ain’t just talking about winning the Intertoto one time. But sometimes, as we all know, football can amount to little more than a squalid raffle. Goals that are not goals, leads that are no longer leads.
In those instances, we just have to accept that we are mere ears of corn, in thrall to fate’s force nine. It’s sometimes better to yield a little, than risk suffering widespread structural damage.
In conclusion, based on the evidence thus far, Your Honour, I’d probably give Mr. S. the name of my tailor.
And if he’s still with us in the New Year, I’ll give him the phone number too!
Until then, as Mr. Jewry often remarks, “don’t count your headless chickens before they hatch.”
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 19 October 2007
Nouns & Naysayers
Fulham friends fair and lean, assume a metaphorical huddle formation, fondly clasping the shoulder blades of those adjacent, and ask me, as one, where I have been.
Where have I been, you ask?
Investigating the subtle differences between a gimlet, an awl, an augur and a wimble?
Playing Knock Down Ginger in Jackanapes Row?
No, my little cummerbunds, I have been executing, Rolex-regular, my pre-market ambulations, dreamily traversing south west six’s sublime lanes and passageways.
Routine, I find, like a long-limbed soak in a sudsy pewter tub, never fails to soothe the stings and bangs what life typically dishes out to low-hanging miscreants like us. In particular, and most specifically, the harsh, raking ache caused by football-shaped travesties such as what we are forced to endure all too frequently down by the Mighty Thames.
Yes, repetitious and non-thinking pursuits somehow manage to apply a pacifying salve to smarting emotional ailments, such as this great stinking post-Pompey hangover we’ve all been a-suffering from recently.
Despite the first steps of my morning trawl being reliably undertaken through a fog-brained murk, I nevertheless aspire to keep at least one lazy eye out for any discarded reckonings as I wander. Copper coils, lead piping, discarded titanium hip-joints: anything that I might be able to exchange for some low-denomination pocket smash, or that Ma could potentially employ in the creation of more celebrity-aping homunculi to flog from her stall.
My knock-kneed exertions were carrying me along handily when, turning the corner into an alley behind Clem Attlee Court, my apprentice totter’s radar demurely blipped.
Something, singled out by the sun, was glinting at me from beneath a mound of off-cuts, waxy shavings, lino curls and coffee grounds. Cagily, I approached this inviting little beacon. Nudging the draff aside with the toe of a nimbly-buffed brogue, I uncovered a small, cognac-coloured, leather field-case. Lifting it from the ground, I shook off the spoilings.
I liberated the clasp and lifted the flap.
There, bunched within, shimmering in the thin morning sunlight, was a plethora of pristine, unused English nouns. Suffused with a rather pitiful glee, I quivered as I eased them out.
There was balustrade and guillemot, and even haberdasher, safe within their waxed-paper wrappers.
Continuing to rummage within the damp satchel, like a pig snouting for truffles, I uncovered a covert pocket containing a small, tightly-bound bundle. It turned out to be some collective nouns, all wrapped up in a ragged dimitty petticoat.
Placed under pressure from a broad-beamed peeler with a fistful of me scruff, I’d have to concede that the collective nouns are my most lovingly-tongued favourites, officer.
And what a medley it was:
There was murmuration. That’s a collection of starlings.
There was skulk. That’s a collection of foxes.
There was also dopping, sedge, and sounder, but please good chums, don’t chide me for squirreling them away for another occasion.
Despite heretofore possessing synapses pickled in syrup, this find got the matter in my noggin pulsating like billy-o. A microscopic firework display of reasoning, exploding right there between me cauliflowers: roman candles and catherine wheels of “I wonder”s and “what if”s.
What these cerebral pyrotechnics lead me to speculate, was if there might be a collective noun for our beloved black and white boys.
We know that some inveterate piss-the-beds might suggest that the term should be “a failure of Fulham players.”
Well, perish the thought and all it’s children! Let any oily-arsed naysayers chew on this well-spun one-liner:
“A brilliance of black and whiters.”
“Touché!” I hear you ejaculate in sympathy. But, deep-down we know, our brows beaten through seasons of experience, that the more suitable syntax would probably be:
“A frustration of Fulhamers.”
Or, perhaps, “an inconsistency of Cottagers.”
It’s a difficult thing to precisely pin because, as Mr Jewry often opines, supporting Fulham is like “falling between two stool pigeons”. And I think we all know what he means by that, don’t we fellas.
Leaving them considerations hanging enticingly in the limpid, brittle air, I tripped off with my giddy windfall, happy as a kipper in a kibbutz.
So chums, look out for me this coming Saturday, where I shall be openly displaying my freshly-swollen glossary, and ramming a few choicely selected idioms up the Derby.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Where have I been, you ask?
Investigating the subtle differences between a gimlet, an awl, an augur and a wimble?
Playing Knock Down Ginger in Jackanapes Row?
No, my little cummerbunds, I have been executing, Rolex-regular, my pre-market ambulations, dreamily traversing south west six’s sublime lanes and passageways.
Routine, I find, like a long-limbed soak in a sudsy pewter tub, never fails to soothe the stings and bangs what life typically dishes out to low-hanging miscreants like us. In particular, and most specifically, the harsh, raking ache caused by football-shaped travesties such as what we are forced to endure all too frequently down by the Mighty Thames.
Yes, repetitious and non-thinking pursuits somehow manage to apply a pacifying salve to smarting emotional ailments, such as this great stinking post-Pompey hangover we’ve all been a-suffering from recently.
Despite the first steps of my morning trawl being reliably undertaken through a fog-brained murk, I nevertheless aspire to keep at least one lazy eye out for any discarded reckonings as I wander. Copper coils, lead piping, discarded titanium hip-joints: anything that I might be able to exchange for some low-denomination pocket smash, or that Ma could potentially employ in the creation of more celebrity-aping homunculi to flog from her stall.
My knock-kneed exertions were carrying me along handily when, turning the corner into an alley behind Clem Attlee Court, my apprentice totter’s radar demurely blipped.
Something, singled out by the sun, was glinting at me from beneath a mound of off-cuts, waxy shavings, lino curls and coffee grounds. Cagily, I approached this inviting little beacon. Nudging the draff aside with the toe of a nimbly-buffed brogue, I uncovered a small, cognac-coloured, leather field-case. Lifting it from the ground, I shook off the spoilings.
I liberated the clasp and lifted the flap.
There, bunched within, shimmering in the thin morning sunlight, was a plethora of pristine, unused English nouns. Suffused with a rather pitiful glee, I quivered as I eased them out.
There was balustrade and guillemot, and even haberdasher, safe within their waxed-paper wrappers.
Continuing to rummage within the damp satchel, like a pig snouting for truffles, I uncovered a covert pocket containing a small, tightly-bound bundle. It turned out to be some collective nouns, all wrapped up in a ragged dimitty petticoat.
Placed under pressure from a broad-beamed peeler with a fistful of me scruff, I’d have to concede that the collective nouns are my most lovingly-tongued favourites, officer.
And what a medley it was:
There was murmuration. That’s a collection of starlings.
There was skulk. That’s a collection of foxes.
There was also dopping, sedge, and sounder, but please good chums, don’t chide me for squirreling them away for another occasion.
Despite heretofore possessing synapses pickled in syrup, this find got the matter in my noggin pulsating like billy-o. A microscopic firework display of reasoning, exploding right there between me cauliflowers: roman candles and catherine wheels of “I wonder”s and “what if”s.
What these cerebral pyrotechnics lead me to speculate, was if there might be a collective noun for our beloved black and white boys.
We know that some inveterate piss-the-beds might suggest that the term should be “a failure of Fulham players.”
Well, perish the thought and all it’s children! Let any oily-arsed naysayers chew on this well-spun one-liner:
“A brilliance of black and whiters.”
“Touché!” I hear you ejaculate in sympathy. But, deep-down we know, our brows beaten through seasons of experience, that the more suitable syntax would probably be:
“A frustration of Fulhamers.”
Or, perhaps, “an inconsistency of Cottagers.”
It’s a difficult thing to precisely pin because, as Mr Jewry often opines, supporting Fulham is like “falling between two stool pigeons”. And I think we all know what he means by that, don’t we fellas.
Leaving them considerations hanging enticingly in the limpid, brittle air, I tripped off with my giddy windfall, happy as a kipper in a kibbutz.
So chums, look out for me this coming Saturday, where I shall be openly displaying my freshly-swollen glossary, and ramming a few choicely selected idioms up the Derby.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 28 September 2007
Wembley & Wapping
Come, come, my glum chums. I’m in the dumps too.
In fact, I feel like I’ve been debagged on Lady Parson’s Stairs, them slimy risers at Wapping.
You see, following Mr Sanchez’s explicit tub-thumping regarding our imminent cup-hugging glory, I’d already commenced, in intimate cahoots with my tailor, sourcing cloth for a new pair of tufnells in which to promenade up Wembley Way next May two thousand ‘n’ eight. They were going to be in the camp colours, an exquisite herringbone affair, spun from the finest Super 100s. Strap ‘n’ buckle side adjusters and all.
Then we go and play some giddy-eyed formation against a team of pub-lumbering no-necks, and a significant spoke gets put in our Wembley wheel of fortune.
With such an approach, we had about as much chance of winning as
we did of cycling to Canvey in a custard hat.
Lacking wherewithal and insight as I do, I decided to elicit the opinion of market-notorious, cryptic-quipping grouch and stall-holder Mr Jewry.
How, from his lofty-minded realm, did he survey the Coleman-Sanchez continuum?
After a moment of synchronised introspection and crotch-scratching, he replied, shipping forecast-like, “moderate or poor, becoming mainly good.”
Well, by faint praise be damned, Mr Lawrie!
Surely, I suggested, you’ve been moved by his measured articulacy, his reasoned eloquence, and by his uniformly effulgent loquaciousness?
“Fine words butter no parsnips,” he batted back.
And I think he may have had the beginnings of a point. Whether he has the endings of one too, only the unfurling of the season will reveal.
For now though, we need to collectively cease bellyaching, hand-wringing, finger-wagging, and eye-rolling. Because we all know that this coming Saturday weekend we share pasture with our bluetongued, bovine neighbours. Them what’s currently squatting on our land.
If you’re attending be sure to take your umbrella, for if their shoddy, faux-mourning continues, the crocodile tears are gonna be raining down from every corner ‘pon our proud little black and white bonces.
So, are we gonna clean their clocks, or are we about to undergo an unholy doughnutting?
If we trade in another lettuce-limp display, it might only be praying to the god of produce that delivers us buttered parsnips.
With such conjecture hanging morosely in the air, I for one will be spending from now until then kneeling on a pretend-grass prayer mat in front of the first fruit and vegetable stall I come to.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
In fact, I feel like I’ve been debagged on Lady Parson’s Stairs, them slimy risers at Wapping.
You see, following Mr Sanchez’s explicit tub-thumping regarding our imminent cup-hugging glory, I’d already commenced, in intimate cahoots with my tailor, sourcing cloth for a new pair of tufnells in which to promenade up Wembley Way next May two thousand ‘n’ eight. They were going to be in the camp colours, an exquisite herringbone affair, spun from the finest Super 100s. Strap ‘n’ buckle side adjusters and all.
Then we go and play some giddy-eyed formation against a team of pub-lumbering no-necks, and a significant spoke gets put in our Wembley wheel of fortune.
With such an approach, we had about as much chance of winning as
we did of cycling to Canvey in a custard hat.
Lacking wherewithal and insight as I do, I decided to elicit the opinion of market-notorious, cryptic-quipping grouch and stall-holder Mr Jewry.
How, from his lofty-minded realm, did he survey the Coleman-Sanchez continuum?
After a moment of synchronised introspection and crotch-scratching, he replied, shipping forecast-like, “moderate or poor, becoming mainly good.”
Well, by faint praise be damned, Mr Lawrie!
Surely, I suggested, you’ve been moved by his measured articulacy, his reasoned eloquence, and by his uniformly effulgent loquaciousness?
“Fine words butter no parsnips,” he batted back.
And I think he may have had the beginnings of a point. Whether he has the endings of one too, only the unfurling of the season will reveal.
For now though, we need to collectively cease bellyaching, hand-wringing, finger-wagging, and eye-rolling. Because we all know that this coming Saturday weekend we share pasture with our bluetongued, bovine neighbours. Them what’s currently squatting on our land.
If you’re attending be sure to take your umbrella, for if their shoddy, faux-mourning continues, the crocodile tears are gonna be raining down from every corner ‘pon our proud little black and white bonces.
So, are we gonna clean their clocks, or are we about to undergo an unholy doughnutting?
If we trade in another lettuce-limp display, it might only be praying to the god of produce that delivers us buttered parsnips.
With such conjecture hanging morosely in the air, I for one will be spending from now until then kneeling on a pretend-grass prayer mat in front of the first fruit and vegetable stall I come to.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 20 September 2007
Maps & Meditations
Yesterday evening I sloped off on one of my typically bow-legged wanderings around the manor, primed to meditate upon, and ultimately turn to mental mulch, the day’s dealings.
And, as decisively, to develop my proficiency for wearing a hat in a built-up area.
My mooch was as arbitrary as ever, only using that Craven Cottage as a reference point to prevent me from straying too far; a comforting beacon, blinking away at the back of my awareness.
As I drifted, I gazed up at the ethereal vapour trails in the sky and tried to locate one that matched the sublime arc undertaken by Mr Kamara’s outlandish upside-down bicycle-kick, whilst wondering wistfully if he could repeat his acrobatics against the Svengalis this coming Saturday tea-time.
It was a satisfyingly wayward saunter, and it left me resolved and revamped.
Upon returning from these crooked amblings, I often take out an old map of these here streets and mark out the route, the one what I’ve just undertaken in my own shoes, by virtue of my own rickety limbs.
Well, last night, having traced my path onto the paper with a stubby Faber Castell HB, I found, to my glad-eyed wonder, that the route that I’d just undertaken described a near-perfect heart shape!
What is more, there sat our beloved ground, succinctly bullseyed bang-slap in the middle of it!
It was accidentally heart-shaped some of the flint-faced rationalists amongst you might protest, but to my enquiring bean it represented a subconscious revelation of my ardour.
Now dismiss that thinking, if you must, as a whole sorry sack of yackety-yak, and ridicule me for playing keepy-up with tuppeny-ha’penny notions, but not even the most cold-blooded curmudgeon would question that my little strawberry’s in the right place.
And I know that, with every little black and white beat, so is yours!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
And, as decisively, to develop my proficiency for wearing a hat in a built-up area.
My mooch was as arbitrary as ever, only using that Craven Cottage as a reference point to prevent me from straying too far; a comforting beacon, blinking away at the back of my awareness.
As I drifted, I gazed up at the ethereal vapour trails in the sky and tried to locate one that matched the sublime arc undertaken by Mr Kamara’s outlandish upside-down bicycle-kick, whilst wondering wistfully if he could repeat his acrobatics against the Svengalis this coming Saturday tea-time.
It was a satisfyingly wayward saunter, and it left me resolved and revamped.
Upon returning from these crooked amblings, I often take out an old map of these here streets and mark out the route, the one what I’ve just undertaken in my own shoes, by virtue of my own rickety limbs.
Well, last night, having traced my path onto the paper with a stubby Faber Castell HB, I found, to my glad-eyed wonder, that the route that I’d just undertaken described a near-perfect heart shape!
What is more, there sat our beloved ground, succinctly bullseyed bang-slap in the middle of it!
It was accidentally heart-shaped some of the flint-faced rationalists amongst you might protest, but to my enquiring bean it represented a subconscious revelation of my ardour.
Now dismiss that thinking, if you must, as a whole sorry sack of yackety-yak, and ridicule me for playing keepy-up with tuppeny-ha’penny notions, but not even the most cold-blooded curmudgeon would question that my little strawberry’s in the right place.
And I know that, with every little black and white beat, so is yours!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
Pies & Postcodes
No football for a fortnight, fellow Fulham followers! How you may collectively kvetch and bristle at such starvations.
But like Miss Khan, I feel for you, and like two Chuck Woods, fourteen days is too long.
It’s been a football fast and like flip am I famished.
So, where have I been during this fallow, mid-game slump?
Investigating the subtle differences between a gilet, a jerkin, a bib and a tabard?
Ankle-paddling in the Quaggy?
No, my friends; when not ricocheting around like a flippered pinball amongst the hectoring hustle and bartering bustle of the market-day melee, I’ve been moping away amid the Fulhamish demimonde.
Late last evening, I found a crust of Bombardier pie on the corner of Crabtree Lane and Rainville Road. In fact, it was right on the very threshold where our celebrated realm of SW6 goes to-to-toe with that of our neighbour, W6.
Was this an epicurean revision of the beating of the bounds? Have the locals taken postcode pride to a gang-like level, and started marking out their territory with the plate-scrapings of old repasts?
Perhaps they’ve also been dipping their pinkies into some arcane psychogeographic chowder before flicking all manner of protective karmic spells around their manor, in an intra-community xenophobic hoedown?
Or did some late-night, loud-mouthed dipso, whiskied to the gills, simply discard it whilst reeling sideways across the street into an unyielding lamppost, sublimely unaware of the administrative ley-line he was trampling upon, and the connivings his behaviour might trigger within this eternally nonplussed noggin?
These rum conundrums befuddled and bewitched me as I loped off towards Stevenage Road for a last lingering nighty night.
Fortunately it’s a finely-tailored fact, that when such convolutions create havoc ‘neath me little stovepipe, one simple glimpse of Mr. Leitch’s listed brickwork soothes the psyche, and readies me for a gentle reclining into the arms of Mr. Morpheus.
Ma said there would be days like these. And like cribbins there was!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
But like Miss Khan, I feel for you, and like two Chuck Woods, fourteen days is too long.
It’s been a football fast and like flip am I famished.
So, where have I been during this fallow, mid-game slump?
Investigating the subtle differences between a gilet, a jerkin, a bib and a tabard?
Ankle-paddling in the Quaggy?
No, my friends; when not ricocheting around like a flippered pinball amongst the hectoring hustle and bartering bustle of the market-day melee, I’ve been moping away amid the Fulhamish demimonde.
Late last evening, I found a crust of Bombardier pie on the corner of Crabtree Lane and Rainville Road. In fact, it was right on the very threshold where our celebrated realm of SW6 goes to-to-toe with that of our neighbour, W6.
Was this an epicurean revision of the beating of the bounds? Have the locals taken postcode pride to a gang-like level, and started marking out their territory with the plate-scrapings of old repasts?
Perhaps they’ve also been dipping their pinkies into some arcane psychogeographic chowder before flicking all manner of protective karmic spells around their manor, in an intra-community xenophobic hoedown?
Or did some late-night, loud-mouthed dipso, whiskied to the gills, simply discard it whilst reeling sideways across the street into an unyielding lamppost, sublimely unaware of the administrative ley-line he was trampling upon, and the connivings his behaviour might trigger within this eternally nonplussed noggin?
These rum conundrums befuddled and bewitched me as I loped off towards Stevenage Road for a last lingering nighty night.
Fortunately it’s a finely-tailored fact, that when such convolutions create havoc ‘neath me little stovepipe, one simple glimpse of Mr. Leitch’s listed brickwork soothes the psyche, and readies me for a gentle reclining into the arms of Mr. Morpheus.
Ma said there would be days like these. And like cribbins there was!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Frying Pans & Felons
Two-one.
One-two.
Two-in-one. Two for the price of one. Two become one.
Curse that squalid combination in all it’s manifestations, eh, Black and Whiters? Together, it’s been no less than a hex on our season thus far.
But, negative mathematical karma aside, last Saturday came and it went, and that’s a fully-upholstered fact.
Despite the sadness of stepping outside the boundaries of my beautiful SW6 for a day, me and my brogues limped into Aston with a cheerful aspect.
With time in hand, I sat down in the park by the ground to savour a pre-match spread; a tart blackberry sherbet, and a chive and parsnip pasty done my palate proud. It was mildly idyllic save for the M6 droning away over my shoulder.
Mid-tucker, an elderly fellow wandered past (be-suited, and smart as shoeshine he was), and nodded a greeting. He had the beginnings of a dowager’s hump, it’s true, but for eighty years old he was sprightly and bright enough to be the envy of all of us thruppeny squirts.
He stepped off the path and wandered over for a spot of chin music.
On learning of my London leaning, he recounted how he once lived in Stoke Newington and was married to one of the Christies.
My noggin creaked and groaned as it tried to place the name. No! Surely not! Your wife wasn’t related to that murderous wrong ‘un from Rillington Place, I asked him?
No, he said, Christie’s that world famous auction house dynasty. Oh well, you must be quids in then mister, I thought, hastily scribbling a begging letter behind my back.
The damn and blast of it is, that he didn’t find out his wife had the keys to the vault ‘til after they’d separated. Going once, going twice…a lifetime of regret sold to the dapper gentleman with the stoop!
He also related how he had once worked in The Castle on City Road and, following a bit of a hoo-ha involving the Kray twins, turfed the monozygotic maulers out and sent them packing all the way back to Valance Road, despite frantic mimes from the landlord to the contrary. What a terror!
Talking of villains, that stadium of theirs was like nothing more than one big frying pan, weren’t it, my overcooked chums. I kept expecting a giant-sized Ainsley Harriot to suddenly loom up over the Holte End, and toss in a touch of Tabaso.
And what was cooking in that pan (apart from us Cottagers lined up around the edge like sizzling little shallots), but one enormous footballing curate’s egg.
How can our mighty boys be so fluent, so imposing, and so tenacious for a spell, and then a single segment of orange later, become so gossamer-thin, so ephemeral, and so infuriatingly will-o’-the-wisp?
That’s a quandary to ponder, if ever I met one.
And ponder it I did as I stood there, post-defeat, ‘neath that incessant Birmingham sun, getting slowly casseroled whilst waiting for one of the two omnibuses provided to escort a near stadium-full of souls back to the city centre.
And tho’ the scene indeed resembled something Biblical, the feeding of the five thousand it weren’t.
With that in mind, and if not before then after, I’ll see you for the joust with Jolly’s boys at the weekend.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
One-two.
Two-in-one. Two for the price of one. Two become one.
Curse that squalid combination in all it’s manifestations, eh, Black and Whiters? Together, it’s been no less than a hex on our season thus far.
But, negative mathematical karma aside, last Saturday came and it went, and that’s a fully-upholstered fact.
Despite the sadness of stepping outside the boundaries of my beautiful SW6 for a day, me and my brogues limped into Aston with a cheerful aspect.
With time in hand, I sat down in the park by the ground to savour a pre-match spread; a tart blackberry sherbet, and a chive and parsnip pasty done my palate proud. It was mildly idyllic save for the M6 droning away over my shoulder.
Mid-tucker, an elderly fellow wandered past (be-suited, and smart as shoeshine he was), and nodded a greeting. He had the beginnings of a dowager’s hump, it’s true, but for eighty years old he was sprightly and bright enough to be the envy of all of us thruppeny squirts.
He stepped off the path and wandered over for a spot of chin music.
On learning of my London leaning, he recounted how he once lived in Stoke Newington and was married to one of the Christies.
My noggin creaked and groaned as it tried to place the name. No! Surely not! Your wife wasn’t related to that murderous wrong ‘un from Rillington Place, I asked him?
No, he said, Christie’s that world famous auction house dynasty. Oh well, you must be quids in then mister, I thought, hastily scribbling a begging letter behind my back.
The damn and blast of it is, that he didn’t find out his wife had the keys to the vault ‘til after they’d separated. Going once, going twice…a lifetime of regret sold to the dapper gentleman with the stoop!
He also related how he had once worked in The Castle on City Road and, following a bit of a hoo-ha involving the Kray twins, turfed the monozygotic maulers out and sent them packing all the way back to Valance Road, despite frantic mimes from the landlord to the contrary. What a terror!
Talking of villains, that stadium of theirs was like nothing more than one big frying pan, weren’t it, my overcooked chums. I kept expecting a giant-sized Ainsley Harriot to suddenly loom up over the Holte End, and toss in a touch of Tabaso.
And what was cooking in that pan (apart from us Cottagers lined up around the edge like sizzling little shallots), but one enormous footballing curate’s egg.
How can our mighty boys be so fluent, so imposing, and so tenacious for a spell, and then a single segment of orange later, become so gossamer-thin, so ephemeral, and so infuriatingly will-o’-the-wisp?
That’s a quandary to ponder, if ever I met one.
And ponder it I did as I stood there, post-defeat, ‘neath that incessant Birmingham sun, getting slowly casseroled whilst waiting for one of the two omnibuses provided to escort a near stadium-full of souls back to the city centre.
And tho’ the scene indeed resembled something Biblical, the feeding of the five thousand it weren’t.
With that in mind, and if not before then after, I’ll see you for the joust with Jolly’s boys at the weekend.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 23 August 2007
Dislocations & Daydreams
Subdued Autumnal-type tidings, cottaging crew-mates.
I’ve been taking time out from pie-eyeing all the glad-ragged polonies mewling and gassing along North End Road, to ponder the strange and raggedy start to our season.
I spent much of yesterday idling by the parapet at the mid-point of Mr Bazalgette’s beautiful bridge, gazing most of the day long into that eternal tide.
It’s a unique set-up, and that’s no lie, what with having a church poised at either end. Yet, despite this reassuring symmetry, I was feeling a tad dislocated, as is the way with some of our players’ limbs at the moment.
Stripping fibrous strands from a stick of celery and letting the wind lift them from my fingers, I watched them see-saw down into the ebbing flow beneath. As I did so, I wondered within my adolescent bean if our fortunes were going to be the same: unpredictable and inconsistent, prey to sly-eyed forces beyond our control.
Have the Fates formed an anti-Fulham federation? Are they, clad in luminous shirts (you know the ones), whispering viciously even now as they plot to undo Mr. Lawrie’s grand plan?
Or, will that very plan be shown to be little more than “sound and fury, signifying nothing”?
The screech of a number 14 arrested my reverie, and prevented (hallelujah!) the formation of yet another tawdry metaphor for you to negotiate.
Enough! I challenged myself. There’s been too much dwelling in penny-farthing hells, too much belly-aching, and too much hangdogging around here.
So, grasp the nettle and follow me to far-off Aston. And when we win, I’ll be standing you all a slice of cob and a celebratory quaff of tar water.
As sure as shallots, I’ll see you there!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
I’ve been taking time out from pie-eyeing all the glad-ragged polonies mewling and gassing along North End Road, to ponder the strange and raggedy start to our season.
I spent much of yesterday idling by the parapet at the mid-point of Mr Bazalgette’s beautiful bridge, gazing most of the day long into that eternal tide.
It’s a unique set-up, and that’s no lie, what with having a church poised at either end. Yet, despite this reassuring symmetry, I was feeling a tad dislocated, as is the way with some of our players’ limbs at the moment.
Stripping fibrous strands from a stick of celery and letting the wind lift them from my fingers, I watched them see-saw down into the ebbing flow beneath. As I did so, I wondered within my adolescent bean if our fortunes were going to be the same: unpredictable and inconsistent, prey to sly-eyed forces beyond our control.
Have the Fates formed an anti-Fulham federation? Are they, clad in luminous shirts (you know the ones), whispering viciously even now as they plot to undo Mr. Lawrie’s grand plan?
Or, will that very plan be shown to be little more than “sound and fury, signifying nothing”?
The screech of a number 14 arrested my reverie, and prevented (hallelujah!) the formation of yet another tawdry metaphor for you to negotiate.
Enough! I challenged myself. There’s been too much dwelling in penny-farthing hells, too much belly-aching, and too much hangdogging around here.
So, grasp the nettle and follow me to far-off Aston. And when we win, I’ll be standing you all a slice of cob and a celebratory quaff of tar water.
As sure as shallots, I’ll see you there!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 10 August 2007
Sparklers & Squibs
Quit cabbaging, dozing associates of mine, I’m pregnant!
Pregnant with anticipation that is!
Did you really think I’d casually scuppered eons of evolution with a mere semantic bauble!
The blue touch-paper of the forthcoming season is about to be lit and I, for one, am not about to retire to a safe distance. Fertilised or not, I’m gonna be cheering for two, and that’s not even close to a lie.
I’m keen as kippers to get my sticky mittens on Mr Sanchez’s newly-purchased little sparklers. Will they be exciting sixpenny fizzers, or the same old damp squibs?
Can I now limp game-wards with some freshly-laundered hope in my ticket pocket? Arrive with renewed promise reflecting in the gleaming, elbow-greased, toes of my brogans?
Whatever the prospect, my favourite half-lined trousers will be there this Sunday coming, and I’ll make pig-sure I’m inside ‘em, dressed and ready for the set-to with Wenger’s Originals.
Once inside, I’ll be carousing around the aisles in my steam-fresh, cadet-grey whipple hat. I’ll be freely distributing punnets of hand-picked, locally-grown, nouns and verbs from within my trusty tan leather valise, for you all to construct your own, personalised, pro-Fulhamer chants with.
If things start to turn a little queer late in the game, I’ll have an emergency supply of potent expletives ready to pass around for you to curse the footballin’ gods with. Handle them with care though - you might wake the gooners!
So prepare yourself, chums; it’s time to pull the ring finger of fate.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Pregnant with anticipation that is!
Did you really think I’d casually scuppered eons of evolution with a mere semantic bauble!
The blue touch-paper of the forthcoming season is about to be lit and I, for one, am not about to retire to a safe distance. Fertilised or not, I’m gonna be cheering for two, and that’s not even close to a lie.
I’m keen as kippers to get my sticky mittens on Mr Sanchez’s newly-purchased little sparklers. Will they be exciting sixpenny fizzers, or the same old damp squibs?
Can I now limp game-wards with some freshly-laundered hope in my ticket pocket? Arrive with renewed promise reflecting in the gleaming, elbow-greased, toes of my brogans?
Whatever the prospect, my favourite half-lined trousers will be there this Sunday coming, and I’ll make pig-sure I’m inside ‘em, dressed and ready for the set-to with Wenger’s Originals.
Once inside, I’ll be carousing around the aisles in my steam-fresh, cadet-grey whipple hat. I’ll be freely distributing punnets of hand-picked, locally-grown, nouns and verbs from within my trusty tan leather valise, for you all to construct your own, personalised, pro-Fulhamer chants with.
If things start to turn a little queer late in the game, I’ll have an emergency supply of potent expletives ready to pass around for you to curse the footballin’ gods with. Handle them with care though - you might wake the gooners!
So prepare yourself, chums; it’s time to pull the ring finger of fate.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Slingshots & Steptoes
My fairest Cottaging cousins, I trust you’ll be dragging your exquisite corpses out of your local brandy shops and joining me this coming Friday, as we set about shooting a few hoops?
See, following a well-meaning, but rather bewildering ear-bending about shepherds’ bushes, public conveniences, and back alleys, Ma’s granted me the keys to the city (well, the White one, anyways).
It’s a must-see, ain’t it, what with Mr Sanchez recently enjoying one of Chairman Mo’s glorious golden showers. Such largesse, deployed as it has been with keen managerial acumen, and bullish business dealing, has provided us with a spanking set of new players to ogle. They might even be good!
The leading question at this particular time is, will we be parading cheeky, simian-featured Mr Cook in front of his only recently ex-employers? Won’t that be peculiar for the fellow. It’ll be a bit like toddling off to Mr Tjinder’s corner shop to buy a stale tuppeny starver, only to meet yourself on your doorstep upon your return.
So, yes, I’ll be attending, and it’s a bet safe as houses that my Crombie pockets are gonna be packed with kiwis and bruised plums, ripe for lobbing. I’ll even be using my newest silk fogle as a slingshot, if the locals get uppity.
And once my intimate fruitery has been exhausted, I’ll be pelting all those grimy-collared steptoes with turns of phrase, figures of speech and all manner of pithy rejoinders.
It’s gonna be a massacre of thesaurus-type proportions!
In fact, if you keep your glazzes open, post-victory, you might witness me fizzing past the old Palais (R.I.P.), hanging grim and death-like to the bumper of a speeding saloon, with a set of sofa casters lashed to my brogues.
I need to race home and retire early, see, as I’ve a promise to keep to Miss Wetherby (next-door-but-one) on Saturday morning; she’s asked me to rake over her smallholding. I don’t know what cribbins that entails, but she said that me tufnells could come undone, and me hair could end up parted on the opposite side to when I got up.
With such queerness to consider, I’ll see you all on Friday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
See, following a well-meaning, but rather bewildering ear-bending about shepherds’ bushes, public conveniences, and back alleys, Ma’s granted me the keys to the city (well, the White one, anyways).
It’s a must-see, ain’t it, what with Mr Sanchez recently enjoying one of Chairman Mo’s glorious golden showers. Such largesse, deployed as it has been with keen managerial acumen, and bullish business dealing, has provided us with a spanking set of new players to ogle. They might even be good!
The leading question at this particular time is, will we be parading cheeky, simian-featured Mr Cook in front of his only recently ex-employers? Won’t that be peculiar for the fellow. It’ll be a bit like toddling off to Mr Tjinder’s corner shop to buy a stale tuppeny starver, only to meet yourself on your doorstep upon your return.
So, yes, I’ll be attending, and it’s a bet safe as houses that my Crombie pockets are gonna be packed with kiwis and bruised plums, ripe for lobbing. I’ll even be using my newest silk fogle as a slingshot, if the locals get uppity.
And once my intimate fruitery has been exhausted, I’ll be pelting all those grimy-collared steptoes with turns of phrase, figures of speech and all manner of pithy rejoinders.
It’s gonna be a massacre of thesaurus-type proportions!
In fact, if you keep your glazzes open, post-victory, you might witness me fizzing past the old Palais (R.I.P.), hanging grim and death-like to the bumper of a speeding saloon, with a set of sofa casters lashed to my brogues.
I need to race home and retire early, see, as I’ve a promise to keep to Miss Wetherby (next-door-but-one) on Saturday morning; she’s asked me to rake over her smallholding. I don’t know what cribbins that entails, but she said that me tufnells could come undone, and me hair could end up parted on the opposite side to when I got up.
With such queerness to consider, I’ll see you all on Friday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 9 July 2007
Tiling & Tartlets
Well, well, and well, black and white brothers and sisters!
Although our transfer window is open, it seems as though almost no one and his uncle wants to defenestrate themselves in our direction!
So, while Mr Sanchez continues to schlep across the football desert in search of some footballing nomads what, like, might actually want to play for us, I’ve been on my knees at Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one), up to my cuff links in grout.
As a favour for letting me finger the knobs on her old Bakelite whenever our boys’ away matches are being broadcast on The National Wireless, I’ve been half-tiling her scullery.
In black and white, of course.
Thing is, pals, whenever the aroma of her freshly-baked lemon-zest tartlets mingles with the pungent tang of tile-paste, I can feel myself going giddy sideways. I start to think I’m in the changing rooms at the Cottage, and before I know it I’m smearing adhesive all over me little limbs like linament, and executing star jumps, banging me bonce on the bare light bulb! It’s like playing truant from common sense school.
It’s hard work, and sure to leave me on the far side of fagged, but it beats flogging hand-made knick-knacks on Ma’s stall, and that’s not even the brother-in-law of a lie.
Anyways, I’m sure that soon enough, some of Mr Harrods Al Fayed’s hard-earned tourist cash will be flowing out from one of his offshores, in exchange for another willing new recruit.
Until then, turn the corner for SW6, and do-si-do your partners.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Although our transfer window is open, it seems as though almost no one and his uncle wants to defenestrate themselves in our direction!
So, while Mr Sanchez continues to schlep across the football desert in search of some footballing nomads what, like, might actually want to play for us, I’ve been on my knees at Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one), up to my cuff links in grout.
As a favour for letting me finger the knobs on her old Bakelite whenever our boys’ away matches are being broadcast on The National Wireless, I’ve been half-tiling her scullery.
In black and white, of course.
Thing is, pals, whenever the aroma of her freshly-baked lemon-zest tartlets mingles with the pungent tang of tile-paste, I can feel myself going giddy sideways. I start to think I’m in the changing rooms at the Cottage, and before I know it I’m smearing adhesive all over me little limbs like linament, and executing star jumps, banging me bonce on the bare light bulb! It’s like playing truant from common sense school.
It’s hard work, and sure to leave me on the far side of fagged, but it beats flogging hand-made knick-knacks on Ma’s stall, and that’s not even the brother-in-law of a lie.
Anyways, I’m sure that soon enough, some of Mr Harrods Al Fayed’s hard-earned tourist cash will be flowing out from one of his offshores, in exchange for another willing new recruit.
Until then, turn the corner for SW6, and do-si-do your partners.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Hunger & Hallucinations
Comely greetings, my charming cottaging kindreds, despatched roundly from yours truly as he foot-drags his sorry way across the off-season hinterland.
Are you, like me, a little hungry?
No, I don’t mean I’m aching for some belly timber. Around this market, there’s always a kumquat to suck on, if you give the right trader the wink. And, at the day’s death, there’s always a warm stubby of Super Malt from Mr Tjinder in the corner shop.
No, good friends, I am hungry for football.
So, what have I been doing then, during this gloomy hiatus? Engaging in the hugger-mugger of international finance? Consumer-testing gas umbrellas? No, I’ve been flexing my leather uppers, skulking endlessly around the avenues of this glorious parish: the Gowans, the Ringmers, the Hestercombes, but always, always ending up back at the gates of our beloved ground.
Have you, like me, found yourself going five fathoms past doolally with it all?
Yes, I can press my face against those gates, half-close my eyes, and kid myself within my noggin that I can see a fully-restored Mr Bullard, scrawny and liquid-waisted, executing exquisite fouettés before block DL, bedazzling his lumpen, dreary-eyed opponents.
But I want more than a penny peep on the palace pier. I want the whole shebang, the entire oeuvre, the complete sha-la-la. I want some full-on horizontal refreshments with a football flavour.
Face it, fellow Fulhamers, without football, life is little more than a loosely-tangled hairball of fripperies and bagatelles. A farrago of distractions and empty asides.
But, like Ms Ross, I’m still waiting: waiting in vain, waiting for the man, waiting in the waiting room.
Like some Beckett decrepit, waiting, waiting, waiting…
Once underway, a season gives us structure, don’t it? It gives our meagre existences a shape, a framework on which to hang our mundane mitherings, and our duty-bound, day-to-day dealings. Imminent fixtures on the calendar can punctuate our emptiness, can’t they, like little ships of hope bobbing on the horizon of our subconscious. Thirty-eight reasons to carry on living.
Now I’ve handed over my craftily-earned cutter, I can’t wait to get my adolescent luppers on that freshly-minted Season Ticket. I’ll be there at Mr Wenger’s Marvellous Soccer Theme Park for the season bully-off in my best three and nines and, believe me chums, when that inaugural whistle toots I’ll be as pleased as a punch-drunk pug on butter puffs.
Yes, I’m an eager beaver, and like fanny am I looking forward to sampling Mr Sanchez’s fresh fish; with the right purchases, the upcoming season becomes a shush bag of expectations. I dare say I can feel a pan-handle forming in the basket of me tufnells!
Anyway, we’ve all got time to pass, and some more than others, so I’m off to polish me new brogans.
Until then, go easy on the bark juice, consider foot-binding, and shake your angry fists at killjoys and cheap jacks.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Are you, like me, a little hungry?
No, I don’t mean I’m aching for some belly timber. Around this market, there’s always a kumquat to suck on, if you give the right trader the wink. And, at the day’s death, there’s always a warm stubby of Super Malt from Mr Tjinder in the corner shop.
No, good friends, I am hungry for football.
So, what have I been doing then, during this gloomy hiatus? Engaging in the hugger-mugger of international finance? Consumer-testing gas umbrellas? No, I’ve been flexing my leather uppers, skulking endlessly around the avenues of this glorious parish: the Gowans, the Ringmers, the Hestercombes, but always, always ending up back at the gates of our beloved ground.
Have you, like me, found yourself going five fathoms past doolally with it all?
Yes, I can press my face against those gates, half-close my eyes, and kid myself within my noggin that I can see a fully-restored Mr Bullard, scrawny and liquid-waisted, executing exquisite fouettés before block DL, bedazzling his lumpen, dreary-eyed opponents.
But I want more than a penny peep on the palace pier. I want the whole shebang, the entire oeuvre, the complete sha-la-la. I want some full-on horizontal refreshments with a football flavour.
Face it, fellow Fulhamers, without football, life is little more than a loosely-tangled hairball of fripperies and bagatelles. A farrago of distractions and empty asides.
But, like Ms Ross, I’m still waiting: waiting in vain, waiting for the man, waiting in the waiting room.
Like some Beckett decrepit, waiting, waiting, waiting…
Once underway, a season gives us structure, don’t it? It gives our meagre existences a shape, a framework on which to hang our mundane mitherings, and our duty-bound, day-to-day dealings. Imminent fixtures on the calendar can punctuate our emptiness, can’t they, like little ships of hope bobbing on the horizon of our subconscious. Thirty-eight reasons to carry on living.
Now I’ve handed over my craftily-earned cutter, I can’t wait to get my adolescent luppers on that freshly-minted Season Ticket. I’ll be there at Mr Wenger’s Marvellous Soccer Theme Park for the season bully-off in my best three and nines and, believe me chums, when that inaugural whistle toots I’ll be as pleased as a punch-drunk pug on butter puffs.
Yes, I’m an eager beaver, and like fanny am I looking forward to sampling Mr Sanchez’s fresh fish; with the right purchases, the upcoming season becomes a shush bag of expectations. I dare say I can feel a pan-handle forming in the basket of me tufnells!
Anyway, we’ve all got time to pass, and some more than others, so I’m off to polish me new brogans.
Until then, go easy on the bark juice, consider foot-binding, and shake your angry fists at killjoys and cheap jacks.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Pomegranates & Polonies
Mind your beeswax, Fulham-striped friends, the football/fashion dichotomy has just taken a fist to the solar plexus!
You’ve noticed – surely, you have – that our boys have just received a brand-new outfit to peddle their footballing wares in – it’s the butcher’s best ain’t it, and that’s not even close to being a fib.
I like the new kit. It’s simple, like me. And, as we all know, simplicity is the hand-maiden of style’s younger brother.
Well, now that the team are all correctly kitted-out, there’s no excuse for not mounting a realistic challenge on 15th place next season. And if they ultimately under-achieve – like fanny they will! - at least they’ll do so in a dapper fashion.
Anyway, I’m off to spit pomegranate pips at all the teenage polonies scowling down Munster Road – somebody needs to.
And in the meantime my good chums, remember: it’s easier to break the egg of style than to lay it.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
You’ve noticed – surely, you have – that our boys have just received a brand-new outfit to peddle their footballing wares in – it’s the butcher’s best ain’t it, and that’s not even close to being a fib.
I like the new kit. It’s simple, like me. And, as we all know, simplicity is the hand-maiden of style’s younger brother.
Well, now that the team are all correctly kitted-out, there’s no excuse for not mounting a realistic challenge on 15th place next season. And if they ultimately under-achieve – like fanny they will! - at least they’ll do so in a dapper fashion.
Anyway, I’m off to spit pomegranate pips at all the teenage polonies scowling down Munster Road – somebody needs to.
And in the meantime my good chums, remember: it’s easier to break the egg of style than to lay it.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Buddhists & Bully-Boys
Fairest Fulham disciples, who are you and where have I been?
You are a sentient sack of bone and spittle what’s using your noggin to pontificate on these words, right now.
Me, I’ve been polishing doorknockers on and around North End Road, and building a life-size curlew out of curled-up cabbage leaves merely in order to earn a bit of spare trouser-cash.
Well, spiritually-leaning chums, in a facsimile of the great Buddhist cycle of Death and Rebirth, football is dead, only to be born again in a few short summer months’ time.
In the meantime, mid-knocker polishing, I‘ve been squatting on the Stevenage kerbside gazin’ up at that beautiful stand, idly shaking hands with my most sombre and deep-lying thoughts.
I’ve been tickling myself into believing that I can hear the matchday hubbub: the fluttering of Fluts, and the monotone boom of the programme sellers.
I fancy I can see the ghosts of former players, taking flight and manufacturing magic from the mastery of their lithe limbs, and limitless imaginations.
I sense I’m somehow seeing the spectres of spectators, drifting through the turnstiles, repeating a similar cycle: that of returning again and again to support their team. And yet another one, that of renewing one’s enthusiasm, weekly, in the midst of relentless, recurring disappointments.
Hope dying, hope being reborn.
Eventually, the reverie gives way, and I realise it’s just the low-level thrum of my grandfather’s pocket watch, ticking away constantly within my best vest pocket, impervious to life’s ups, oblivious to it’s downs.
Then, amazingly for a low-educated (but honest) cripple like me, a small thought hatches itself from within the incubating warmth of me stovepipe. I realise, that that’s how we all need to be in these ever-changing times. Constant like a clock, anchored on a stormy sea, whilst renewing ourselves each and every day.
Well, whilst your testing those telling truths I’m limping from the scene. All that thinking has given me a right backwards headache, and what’s more, I’ve got to pick up some faggots for throwing at the market inspector later on. Fascist bully-boy!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
You are a sentient sack of bone and spittle what’s using your noggin to pontificate on these words, right now.
Me, I’ve been polishing doorknockers on and around North End Road, and building a life-size curlew out of curled-up cabbage leaves merely in order to earn a bit of spare trouser-cash.
Well, spiritually-leaning chums, in a facsimile of the great Buddhist cycle of Death and Rebirth, football is dead, only to be born again in a few short summer months’ time.
In the meantime, mid-knocker polishing, I‘ve been squatting on the Stevenage kerbside gazin’ up at that beautiful stand, idly shaking hands with my most sombre and deep-lying thoughts.
I’ve been tickling myself into believing that I can hear the matchday hubbub: the fluttering of Fluts, and the monotone boom of the programme sellers.
I fancy I can see the ghosts of former players, taking flight and manufacturing magic from the mastery of their lithe limbs, and limitless imaginations.
I sense I’m somehow seeing the spectres of spectators, drifting through the turnstiles, repeating a similar cycle: that of returning again and again to support their team. And yet another one, that of renewing one’s enthusiasm, weekly, in the midst of relentless, recurring disappointments.
Hope dying, hope being reborn.
Eventually, the reverie gives way, and I realise it’s just the low-level thrum of my grandfather’s pocket watch, ticking away constantly within my best vest pocket, impervious to life’s ups, oblivious to it’s downs.
Then, amazingly for a low-educated (but honest) cripple like me, a small thought hatches itself from within the incubating warmth of me stovepipe. I realise, that that’s how we all need to be in these ever-changing times. Constant like a clock, anchored on a stormy sea, whilst renewing ourselves each and every day.
Well, whilst your testing those telling truths I’m limping from the scene. All that thinking has given me a right backwards headache, and what’s more, I’ve got to pick up some faggots for throwing at the market inspector later on. Fascist bully-boy!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Plums & Pom-Poms
My most esteemed cottage-flavoured companions: are you ready?
Internet-ready, battle-ready, oven-ready, HD-ready, ready steady go, Ready Steady Cook, ready for action, Ready Brek, ready or not here I come. I don’t care which stripe you aspire to. Just be ready.
These last weeks I‘ve tried to rally my best black and white chums using, like, verbs and nouns and things. Now, I don’t by any stretch see myself as a cheerleader and, to be brutal, walking ‘round the market bearing a brace of pompoms would have got me a swift toe-cap up the harris many moons ago. Polish on the seat of me tufnells for the sake of a bit of cross-dressing? No thank you, Mr La Rue!
But I’m beseeching you once again to holler to the heavens.
Over a stale lardy bun just yesterday, I was pondering thoughts from within my noggin: we’ve raised ourselves up for the Reading game; we braced ourselves for the Blackburn; we got aroused for the Arse. With the refractory periods becoming ever-more exhausting can we possibly enliven ourselves for the Liverpool?
Mr Jewry (at the next stall), he says that supporting this club is like “eating plums off a barbed-wire plate”. Well, if you love this club right down to your bones and sockets, as I do, then you know all too well that the sweetness of plums in the mouth often carries a bitter aftertaste, however much you masticate.
So this next coming Saturday, mouth full or not, let’s collectively spit pips for our boys.
Indulge in whatever foreplay gets you fruity, get entangled on the terraces, and let’s come together as one. Let’s fill the Fulham air with unrestrained ejaculations, with no worrying about what stains we may leave behind.
Until then, make like monks!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Internet-ready, battle-ready, oven-ready, HD-ready, ready steady go, Ready Steady Cook, ready for action, Ready Brek, ready or not here I come. I don’t care which stripe you aspire to. Just be ready.
These last weeks I‘ve tried to rally my best black and white chums using, like, verbs and nouns and things. Now, I don’t by any stretch see myself as a cheerleader and, to be brutal, walking ‘round the market bearing a brace of pompoms would have got me a swift toe-cap up the harris many moons ago. Polish on the seat of me tufnells for the sake of a bit of cross-dressing? No thank you, Mr La Rue!
But I’m beseeching you once again to holler to the heavens.
Over a stale lardy bun just yesterday, I was pondering thoughts from within my noggin: we’ve raised ourselves up for the Reading game; we braced ourselves for the Blackburn; we got aroused for the Arse. With the refractory periods becoming ever-more exhausting can we possibly enliven ourselves for the Liverpool?
Mr Jewry (at the next stall), he says that supporting this club is like “eating plums off a barbed-wire plate”. Well, if you love this club right down to your bones and sockets, as I do, then you know all too well that the sweetness of plums in the mouth often carries a bitter aftertaste, however much you masticate.
So this next coming Saturday, mouth full or not, let’s collectively spit pips for our boys.
Indulge in whatever foreplay gets you fruity, get entangled on the terraces, and let’s come together as one. Let’s fill the Fulham air with unrestrained ejaculations, with no worrying about what stains we may leave behind.
Until then, make like monks!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 27 April 2007
Kennedy & Knock-Knees
“The future’s made of virtual insanity.” That’s what he said.
This morning, all of a sudden like, whilst deep in a relegation-centred reverie, an unseen force lifted me up on to me tippy-toes. Violently. This sudden growth spurt was not by virtue of eating a fistful of baby spinach for breakfast, but as a result of Mr Jewry (at the next stall) a-twisting my ear‘ole between his thumb and forefinger whilst simultaneously grinding a whelk into the North End Road tarmac with the heel of his superannuated Loakes. Obstreperous bumpkin!
“The future’s made of virtual insanity”, he ejaculated whilst performing this grievous act.
Now, I may be little more than an honest cripple with a crafty aspect, but whatever the future is, in fact, made of, my immediate one will see me knock-kneeing it up the Holloway Road this coming Sunday afternoon. Not even Mr. Jay Kay is gonna stop me from doing that!
Of necessity, I shall be decidedly post-prandial, having had an apron full of belly timber, pre bully-off. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to cheer in the face of overwhelming odds on an empty stomach. P’raps I should eat the form book for lunch! That’ll be a superior remedy chums, killing, as it were, two sparrows with one stone.
Now, my most admirable black-and-white comrades, once inside that unholy corporate dustbowl, we may well be little more than the equivalent of a few sprats in a Sperm Whale’s gullet, but that’s no excuse for being shrinking scaredy-cats, or sickly, weak-limbed lightweights. We need gallons of spunk, spine, spirit, and steel. We must merge together, into a kind of seething amorphous mass, and will ourselves to become more than the sum of our parts. To make a sound that science can’t contain.
Whatever the flavour of the on-pitch shenanigans, however grisly in nature the goings-on in front of us, we must continue to rage regardless. Like oaks in a gale, like clocks in a thunderstorm.
We must inspire our fragile heroes to step out from under the shadow of underachievement, to liberate themselves, and to shake hands with greatness.
Because as we all know, friends: the mediocre are many but the prime number few.
So prepare yourself, one and all. As Mr. Kennedy may have once said: “ask not what your club can do for you; ask what you can do for your club.”
Now is the time to do it: let’s set the day on fire!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
This morning, all of a sudden like, whilst deep in a relegation-centred reverie, an unseen force lifted me up on to me tippy-toes. Violently. This sudden growth spurt was not by virtue of eating a fistful of baby spinach for breakfast, but as a result of Mr Jewry (at the next stall) a-twisting my ear‘ole between his thumb and forefinger whilst simultaneously grinding a whelk into the North End Road tarmac with the heel of his superannuated Loakes. Obstreperous bumpkin!
“The future’s made of virtual insanity”, he ejaculated whilst performing this grievous act.
Now, I may be little more than an honest cripple with a crafty aspect, but whatever the future is, in fact, made of, my immediate one will see me knock-kneeing it up the Holloway Road this coming Sunday afternoon. Not even Mr. Jay Kay is gonna stop me from doing that!
Of necessity, I shall be decidedly post-prandial, having had an apron full of belly timber, pre bully-off. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to cheer in the face of overwhelming odds on an empty stomach. P’raps I should eat the form book for lunch! That’ll be a superior remedy chums, killing, as it were, two sparrows with one stone.
Now, my most admirable black-and-white comrades, once inside that unholy corporate dustbowl, we may well be little more than the equivalent of a few sprats in a Sperm Whale’s gullet, but that’s no excuse for being shrinking scaredy-cats, or sickly, weak-limbed lightweights. We need gallons of spunk, spine, spirit, and steel. We must merge together, into a kind of seething amorphous mass, and will ourselves to become more than the sum of our parts. To make a sound that science can’t contain.
Whatever the flavour of the on-pitch shenanigans, however grisly in nature the goings-on in front of us, we must continue to rage regardless. Like oaks in a gale, like clocks in a thunderstorm.
We must inspire our fragile heroes to step out from under the shadow of underachievement, to liberate themselves, and to shake hands with greatness.
Because as we all know, friends: the mediocre are many but the prime number few.
So prepare yourself, one and all. As Mr. Kennedy may have once said: “ask not what your club can do for you; ask what you can do for your club.”
Now is the time to do it: let’s set the day on fire!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 23 April 2007
Churchill & Consummation
Holy unconsummated desire, Fulham-minded mates of mine!
What was last Saturday just gone all about then? Hatfuls of sunshine, but precious little plunder.
It was what Mr Churchill might have called: “a fatal neutrality”.
To labour my metaphor from last week just a touch longer, Saturday was like romancing the woman of your dreams into bed, only to find out that it was your sister, and that the law of the land prevented you from progressing. Your pistol’s cocked, but the target’s moved.
I don’t know what we do with ourselves for the next week now. I can’t take much more of this 11-a-side hole-and-corner intrigue. I reckon Mr Dante could conjure up a more welcoming retreat than that which we have to occupy over the next few days.
I‘ve already spent a whole day moping around the church, whilst Ma freshened up the font with some tallow and beeswax. I was supposed to be helping her, placing some fresh rushes up the old rector’s passage, but my noggin just wasn’t working proper.
I kept drifting off into these spacious, left-handed reveries, where Mr Sanchez was forcing the players to undergo a kind of penitence, thrashing each other with fresh leeks, and poking each other in the eyes with sticks of celery. I know what your thinking: I’d been tea-leafing magic mushrooms from the hippy fella in the market. The ones he reckons are capable of making you see people what, like, aren’t really there. Well no, my suspicious ones, I hadn’t, but I reckon some of our players might have indulged a touch, what with their strange habit of passing the ball into places where the sober amongst us can’t see a dicky bird.
Anyway, you know I’d swap a skip full of shin plasters and the seat of my smartest puppy-tooth tufnells for us to survive this current episode. And I know you know.
“Wars are not won by evacuations”, the great man said. And I’m of a mind to agree with him.
In the meantime chums, lets keep our collective peckers up, and our upper lips resolutely stiffened.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
What was last Saturday just gone all about then? Hatfuls of sunshine, but precious little plunder.
It was what Mr Churchill might have called: “a fatal neutrality”.
To labour my metaphor from last week just a touch longer, Saturday was like romancing the woman of your dreams into bed, only to find out that it was your sister, and that the law of the land prevented you from progressing. Your pistol’s cocked, but the target’s moved.
I don’t know what we do with ourselves for the next week now. I can’t take much more of this 11-a-side hole-and-corner intrigue. I reckon Mr Dante could conjure up a more welcoming retreat than that which we have to occupy over the next few days.
I‘ve already spent a whole day moping around the church, whilst Ma freshened up the font with some tallow and beeswax. I was supposed to be helping her, placing some fresh rushes up the old rector’s passage, but my noggin just wasn’t working proper.
I kept drifting off into these spacious, left-handed reveries, where Mr Sanchez was forcing the players to undergo a kind of penitence, thrashing each other with fresh leeks, and poking each other in the eyes with sticks of celery. I know what your thinking: I’d been tea-leafing magic mushrooms from the hippy fella in the market. The ones he reckons are capable of making you see people what, like, aren’t really there. Well no, my suspicious ones, I hadn’t, but I reckon some of our players might have indulged a touch, what with their strange habit of passing the ball into places where the sober amongst us can’t see a dicky bird.
Anyway, you know I’d swap a skip full of shin plasters and the seat of my smartest puppy-tooth tufnells for us to survive this current episode. And I know you know.
“Wars are not won by evacuations”, the great man said. And I’m of a mind to agree with him.
In the meantime chums, lets keep our collective peckers up, and our upper lips resolutely stiffened.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Tragedies & Trollopes
Thursday-shaped greetings, Fulham friends.
It may, indeed, be Thursday, but I say: enough of this dilly-dandering! The hour is, is it not, at hand. Or at least it will be come 3.00 this next Saturday coming.
A tall, thin gentleman from Ireland once mused: “The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes over life and death and other tuppeny aches”
Meanwhile, some shorter, less thin, and marginally less austere fellows once expounded: “Tragedy – when the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on.”
Whatever the great poets might have said about it, the question currently buzzin’ ‘round my noggin, Cottaging associates, is this one: are we about to enter into a slow-time waltz with Lady Tragedy? Are we about to slip ‘tween the bedclothes with Dame Disaster? Come Saturday tea-time will be collectively fingering the gusset of Madame Misfortune?
Or, and this is the twenty-bob poser, will we be gang-banging the Trollope of Triumph?
And if we are, will we, post-coitus, be gorging ourselves on the victuals of victory: to be specific, will we be eating SW6 out of turnip crudités and hare-pie scramble come Saturday evening?
I don’t know what you lot drape your languid frames in of a Sunday, but I, for one, don’t want to be spending this coming next one, mooching around the North End Road in my mourning jewellery, considering the pros and cons of watching our crestfallen, emasculated, black and whiters playing 22-man kickaround against Burnley next season.
Therefore, and to be perfectly blunt, now is not the time for indulging in fruitless chin music, or pondering how you narrowly missed a career as Yannick Noah’s foot masseuse. We need to have our eyes lined up on the prize, strutting shoulder to shoulder down the Stevenage, buttocks taut, and chins a-juttin’.
As Mr Dickens might say “Give it mouth!”
For one brief interlude, let’s put the inexpressible, unavoidable, malaise of human existence from our minds, and make it a glorious day, filled with sunshine and plunder.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
It may, indeed, be Thursday, but I say: enough of this dilly-dandering! The hour is, is it not, at hand. Or at least it will be come 3.00 this next Saturday coming.
A tall, thin gentleman from Ireland once mused: “The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes over life and death and other tuppeny aches”
Meanwhile, some shorter, less thin, and marginally less austere fellows once expounded: “Tragedy – when the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on.”
Whatever the great poets might have said about it, the question currently buzzin’ ‘round my noggin, Cottaging associates, is this one: are we about to enter into a slow-time waltz with Lady Tragedy? Are we about to slip ‘tween the bedclothes with Dame Disaster? Come Saturday tea-time will be collectively fingering the gusset of Madame Misfortune?
Or, and this is the twenty-bob poser, will we be gang-banging the Trollope of Triumph?
And if we are, will we, post-coitus, be gorging ourselves on the victuals of victory: to be specific, will we be eating SW6 out of turnip crudités and hare-pie scramble come Saturday evening?
I don’t know what you lot drape your languid frames in of a Sunday, but I, for one, don’t want to be spending this coming next one, mooching around the North End Road in my mourning jewellery, considering the pros and cons of watching our crestfallen, emasculated, black and whiters playing 22-man kickaround against Burnley next season.
Therefore, and to be perfectly blunt, now is not the time for indulging in fruitless chin music, or pondering how you narrowly missed a career as Yannick Noah’s foot masseuse. We need to have our eyes lined up on the prize, strutting shoulder to shoulder down the Stevenage, buttocks taut, and chins a-juttin’.
As Mr Dickens might say “Give it mouth!”
For one brief interlude, let’s put the inexpressible, unavoidable, malaise of human existence from our minds, and make it a glorious day, filled with sunshine and plunder.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Delilah & Delight
What a giddy to-do, cottaging colleagues of mine!
There I was yesterday, loitering around the North End Road in the pre-match hinterland, gazing idly at the assorted denizens drifting in and out of The Goose, just feeling the eagerness and excitedness start to muster in me puppytooth tufnells. When, out of the market-based hubbub, up loped a clot of clumsy-eyed Stoke City miscreants oinking and guffawing in some strange guttural tongue.
Now, The Goose might not be the most voguish of booze boutiques: modern? family-friendly? customer-facing? You jest, Fulham friends! I mean, they don’t even have latrines for lady-flavoured folk. Those that can’t contain themselves have to squat over an empty pickled herring jar under a lean-to in the windswept back yard, nylons bunched around their ankles.
Anyway, despite this rough and readiness, even these poxed and palsied potters were considered beyond the Pale Ale, and within seconds they were royally turfed out by Mr Dave the brick-built barman from Battersea: 16 stone, hands like shovels, and reigning South London Ginsters pasty-eating champion.
As they sloped off, crestfallen and sheepish-like, I added to their indignity by pelting them with a paw-full of rock hard sprouts I’d been keeping in the pocket of my midnight blue covert (velvet collar, thanks for asking) for just such an occurrence.
Later on, in a kind of symmetrical and poetic fashion, it squared up in my mind that their performance on the pitch once they’d come up against the mighty black and whiters was equally paltry. What a busted flush they turned out to be all ‘round, from the fans through to the players. “Delilah” be damned! They couldn’t throw a wig on a weathercock from half a shrinking yard, even with a head start!
Kudos and credit to Mr Cookie of course, who now seems to be assembling a group of foot-soldiers that seems right intimate with each other and who would no doubt scrub each others backs in the shower for less than half a farthing. That’s what you call loyalty in this day an age I reckon. Talking of soldierly, strictly-heterosexual, brotherliness, such qualities will no doubt be needed this coming Tuesday evening for the War on Warnock. Pistols cocked, boys!
Until next time, if not before.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
There I was yesterday, loitering around the North End Road in the pre-match hinterland, gazing idly at the assorted denizens drifting in and out of The Goose, just feeling the eagerness and excitedness start to muster in me puppytooth tufnells. When, out of the market-based hubbub, up loped a clot of clumsy-eyed Stoke City miscreants oinking and guffawing in some strange guttural tongue.
Now, The Goose might not be the most voguish of booze boutiques: modern? family-friendly? customer-facing? You jest, Fulham friends! I mean, they don’t even have latrines for lady-flavoured folk. Those that can’t contain themselves have to squat over an empty pickled herring jar under a lean-to in the windswept back yard, nylons bunched around their ankles.
Anyway, despite this rough and readiness, even these poxed and palsied potters were considered beyond the Pale Ale, and within seconds they were royally turfed out by Mr Dave the brick-built barman from Battersea: 16 stone, hands like shovels, and reigning South London Ginsters pasty-eating champion.
As they sloped off, crestfallen and sheepish-like, I added to their indignity by pelting them with a paw-full of rock hard sprouts I’d been keeping in the pocket of my midnight blue covert (velvet collar, thanks for asking) for just such an occurrence.
Later on, in a kind of symmetrical and poetic fashion, it squared up in my mind that their performance on the pitch once they’d come up against the mighty black and whiters was equally paltry. What a busted flush they turned out to be all ‘round, from the fans through to the players. “Delilah” be damned! They couldn’t throw a wig on a weathercock from half a shrinking yard, even with a head start!
Kudos and credit to Mr Cookie of course, who now seems to be assembling a group of foot-soldiers that seems right intimate with each other and who would no doubt scrub each others backs in the shower for less than half a farthing. That’s what you call loyalty in this day an age I reckon. Talking of soldierly, strictly-heterosexual, brotherliness, such qualities will no doubt be needed this coming Tuesday evening for the War on Warnock. Pistols cocked, boys!
Until next time, if not before.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 22 January 2007
Steed & Stokey
No lingering, Fulham messmates. The day’s on fire!
Enough with humbugging and all associated slapdashery, enough with being a fly in the jug, a snit, and a foot-dragging flibbertigibbet.
Well, Mr and Mrs Tottenham’s children, they showed themselves to be nothing more than a bunch of sickly, weak-limbed, lightweights, didn't they. A gaggle of nanny-suckling parlour-soldiers, lead by Miserable Moan-a-Minute Mr Jolly, a modern-day Mr Pugwash if ever I saw one.
Meanwhile, our boys, lead by Corporeal Brown (that pallor!), cast vexations and grumblings aside, and demonstrated what a limp chimera of a top team his ex-employers really are. Furthermore, they made it more than crystal to Mr Steed that his career choice might not be the sublime path to glory that he might have previously imagined. Poor lamb.
And whilst we were unable to partake of a waltz with lady victory, we did at least get to ask her for a dance. So, before we potter off towards our clash with Old Stokey, a final, heartfelt “hurrah!” for Mr Montella, and a suitably baritone “booo” for Mr Jan’s butter fingers.
Anyways, that’s enough for charm school my Fulham friends. If you don’t see me this next Saturday coming, I’ll sure as sugar see you! Now I’m off to meet Ma from her cleaning job at the local church, and to shake my fist at Old Scratch whilst I’m there.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Enough with humbugging and all associated slapdashery, enough with being a fly in the jug, a snit, and a foot-dragging flibbertigibbet.
Well, Mr and Mrs Tottenham’s children, they showed themselves to be nothing more than a bunch of sickly, weak-limbed, lightweights, didn't they. A gaggle of nanny-suckling parlour-soldiers, lead by Miserable Moan-a-Minute Mr Jolly, a modern-day Mr Pugwash if ever I saw one.
Meanwhile, our boys, lead by Corporeal Brown (that pallor!), cast vexations and grumblings aside, and demonstrated what a limp chimera of a top team his ex-employers really are. Furthermore, they made it more than crystal to Mr Steed that his career choice might not be the sublime path to glory that he might have previously imagined. Poor lamb.
And whilst we were unable to partake of a waltz with lady victory, we did at least get to ask her for a dance. So, before we potter off towards our clash with Old Stokey, a final, heartfelt “hurrah!” for Mr Montella, and a suitably baritone “booo” for Mr Jan’s butter fingers.
Anyways, that’s enough for charm school my Fulham friends. If you don’t see me this next Saturday coming, I’ll sure as sugar see you! Now I’m off to meet Ma from her cleaning job at the local church, and to shake my fist at Old Scratch whilst I’m there.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 12 January 2007
Wiggas & Wonderings
Word up, Fulham thugs of mine!
As Mr GZA once said: “Why is the sky blue, why is water wet” and, presumably, “Why do lovers break each other’s hearts”.
There I was yesterday, slouching on the bonnet of Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one) plum-coloured Karmann Ghia, slurping on a can of flip. I’d had a bit of a backwards headache following a staring competition with the Johhny Haynes stand that morning. Fortunately for little me, the flip did the business - what a bracing cordial that was! Perhaps it was the turpentine chaser, but my little brain was off doing arabesques with Rudey Nureyev!
Anyways, there I loitered, gazing longingly at the flower-seller’s daughter, and wondering why if it’s a big enough umbrella, it’s always me that ends up getting wet, when suddenly the news entered my little noggin, courtesy of Mr Tjinder bellowing in my lug-holes (and interrupting my lecherous little reverie), that Mr Cookie had just ensnared a bright shiny new footballing player by the name of Mr Clint Dempsey.
Well. Clint. I don’t believe that there’s anyone currently residing in SW6 by the name of Clint. Not in this neighbourhood.
Apparently, he indulges in tip-top or bling-rap or some such confusion, whatever carry-on that might allude to?
I hope he doesn’t go in for all this glorification of guns following a goal-scoring incident: imitating AK47s, Kalashnikovs and spud-guns. There really is no need for violence in this day and eon.
Anyway, on that little moral morsel, I’m off for a quick scoot up and down North End Road to throw some sprouting tubers and broken cockleshells at the Jesus freaks out leafleting the locals.
What a hoop’la and how-de-do that promises to be.
Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
As Mr GZA once said: “Why is the sky blue, why is water wet” and, presumably, “Why do lovers break each other’s hearts”.
There I was yesterday, slouching on the bonnet of Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one) plum-coloured Karmann Ghia, slurping on a can of flip. I’d had a bit of a backwards headache following a staring competition with the Johhny Haynes stand that morning. Fortunately for little me, the flip did the business - what a bracing cordial that was! Perhaps it was the turpentine chaser, but my little brain was off doing arabesques with Rudey Nureyev!
Anyways, there I loitered, gazing longingly at the flower-seller’s daughter, and wondering why if it’s a big enough umbrella, it’s always me that ends up getting wet, when suddenly the news entered my little noggin, courtesy of Mr Tjinder bellowing in my lug-holes (and interrupting my lecherous little reverie), that Mr Cookie had just ensnared a bright shiny new footballing player by the name of Mr Clint Dempsey.
Well. Clint. I don’t believe that there’s anyone currently residing in SW6 by the name of Clint. Not in this neighbourhood.
Apparently, he indulges in tip-top or bling-rap or some such confusion, whatever carry-on that might allude to?
I hope he doesn’t go in for all this glorification of guns following a goal-scoring incident: imitating AK47s, Kalashnikovs and spud-guns. There really is no need for violence in this day and eon.
Anyway, on that little moral morsel, I’m off for a quick scoot up and down North End Road to throw some sprouting tubers and broken cockleshells at the Jesus freaks out leafleting the locals.
What a hoop’la and how-de-do that promises to be.
Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 1 January 2007
Figgy Pudding & Fatness
Well chums, with 12 crisp and shiny new months all stacked up neatly for us to enjoy over the coming year, I’d like to wish all you Fulham-flavoured best mates of mine out there a prosperous one!
Last night, with the memory of Mr Carlos Boca’s glorious equaliser still fresh in the thinking part of my noggin, I fear I had one too many sups of Jenkins Ol’ Wallop, and I was up a-jiving and a-jigging all night long ‘till auld acquaintances had been forgotten and all that malarkins! Also, through the now-foggy miasma of my noodle, I vaguely remember chargin’ up and down the North End Road at some point with a pillow up me shirt and a cupped hand to me ear, making like Mr Flab Lampard in a most derogatory fashion.
Now I’m a-achin’ all over as Mr Johnny Kidd would say!
Anyways, me New Year’s Resolution is in tribute to me still-suffering Ma: “Don’t drink a tin-bath full of Dick’s Advocaat or you’ll end up with a muzzy izzet”.
Keep those wise words with you at all times, fellow black and whiters, and it’ll be a good year!
Now let’s stuff some stale figgy puddin’ in those Hornet-shaped cake-holes today! They're nothin' but a bunch of yellow & black pantywaists!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Last night, with the memory of Mr Carlos Boca’s glorious equaliser still fresh in the thinking part of my noggin, I fear I had one too many sups of Jenkins Ol’ Wallop, and I was up a-jiving and a-jigging all night long ‘till auld acquaintances had been forgotten and all that malarkins! Also, through the now-foggy miasma of my noodle, I vaguely remember chargin’ up and down the North End Road at some point with a pillow up me shirt and a cupped hand to me ear, making like Mr Flab Lampard in a most derogatory fashion.
Now I’m a-achin’ all over as Mr Johnny Kidd would say!
Anyways, me New Year’s Resolution is in tribute to me still-suffering Ma: “Don’t drink a tin-bath full of Dick’s Advocaat or you’ll end up with a muzzy izzet”.
Keep those wise words with you at all times, fellow black and whiters, and it’ll be a good year!
Now let’s stuff some stale figgy puddin’ in those Hornet-shaped cake-holes today! They're nothin' but a bunch of yellow & black pantywaists!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
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