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!
Tuesday 31 July 2007
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!
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