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!