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!
Friday, 28 September 2007
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!
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