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!