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!