Courting & Cavorting

Brotherly love to you all, my adorable cottaging kindreds.

In those tiny transitional spaces where the hectic yields to the humdrum in the continuum of your convoluted daily lives, I fancy I can hear you wondering to yourselves, as the hubbub recedes, where I have been.

Where have I been?

Exchanging playful glances with Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy?

Cavorting in a spinney with a shrewdness of apes?

‘fraid not, mateys: I’ve been contracting a stoop from spending most of mid-morning with my beak squashed against the grime-ingrained panes of The Divide And Conker, Pa’s local, trying to alert the redundant old cove through the lunchtime turmoil.

I was keen to secure his attention before he became completely liquoriced, and relocated to the Former Sober Republic of Drunkmanistan.

I could vaguely identify his spectral, attenuated form, like a fifth-generation photocopy of a person, shimmering through the twenty-watt, yellow-bulbed gloom.

He was slumped in a musty snug, like an under-stuffed, unwanted Guy on November 6th, slackjawing about this and that, and ritually cursing misfortune’s neglected half-brother. He persisted in holding court despite his audience comprising solely of shove ha’penny champion-elect Rancid Joe (comatose), and the landlord’s clingy, wheezing, Bichon Frise, freshly sick from being force-fed pistachios by you-know-who.

He’d just polished off a platter of the sub-gastropub puree that they try to pass off for food. The usual rag and famish fare, it slid down his gullet, no doubt, without even touching the sides.

My loitering was on account of me being on the ear’ole for a sub with which to purchase a mid-morning Banana Inbetween from the highly-esteemed Well Bread pastry parlour.

A gratis Underage Alcopop fizzer to sloosh it down with would have been most welcome too.

It’s all right for Pa, idling his life away, content and not the least bit ashamed to be forever dipping his rookers in the National Handbag. But when one is toiling away under a malign maternal dictatorship like I am, some level of sustenance is required. It would be entirely fruitless to pester Ma - she’s the living embodiment of the cashless society. Any coins that slip into her apron disappear never to be seen again.

A bit like a first-half Fulham lead.

Despite my frenzied dumb-show, he failed to notice me and, as the ingested indulgences steadily paralysed his system, he seemed to slowly fade away and become one with the grubby upholstery.

I was barking up the wrong family tree.

I decided to drift over and attempt to catch the eye, if not the ardour, of the flower-seller’s enchanting daughter. Now there’s a lass with the latch-keys to my heart.

Stationed opposite, I commenced my renowned and much-plagiarised, courting ritual. I employed all my most erotic techniques:

strutting back and forth like a cockerel, with a baby parsnip peeking out of my button-fly;

vigorously thrusting my pelvis towards her whilst squawking like a distressed crow;

kneading tallow into my bumfluff, and tousling my barnet with shredded vegetables;

flamboyantly juggling four under-ripe limes, whilst whistling “You and Me and Fulham.”

Nothing worked.

It was a peerless display of uninformed carnal expression but, despite my fervent approaches, she remained impervious; engrossed in her world and quite serene, she continued delicately twisting wire around the stems of her orange Barberton Daisies.

I had as much chance of beguiling her as I did of being kidnapped by a badger in a gravy waistcoat.

So, with a distended belly, and a fallen crest to boot, I can only beseech our boys to, by any means necessary, out-manoeuvre the Mackems at the weekend, and give a little hope to us all.

But whatever happens chums; remember that each of us is black and white, and that when it rains we all get wet.

Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!