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!

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!

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!