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!