Comrades & Corsairs

Rainy days and Mondays getting you down, fellow Fulhamers?

Where have I been, I hear you speculate as you toss back another thimbleful of whisky to deaden the black and white ache that afflicts us all.

Indeed, my anguished allies, where have I been?

Deflowering pious spinsters in a secluded rotunda?

Practising the lindy hop on Holcroft Pavement?

No, not in any way or by any manner, my little piccalillis. When not flinging chipped oxbloods at Lil’ Larkins, I’ve been wiggling a butter knife in the slot of the old honesty box to extract a few opinions for you.

And it’s my sincere view that football down Fulham way is something of a hard-fought field at the moment. Our boys were certainly given the runaround this last Saturday - and I ain’t talking about gruff cockney Mike Reid’s deranged televisual shenanigans – ‘though that’s what our band of midfield munchkins recalled at times. Mr. Murphy and his mates may as well have been milking pigeons.

And now it feels like our whole season is disappearing backwards down a muddy track strapped to the roof rack of a rusting Ford Corsair. And we all know who the stern-rimmed chauffeur is that reversed us into that quagmire, don’t we.

By the players demeanour you’d think they were sitting in the back of a cart trundling up Holborn Hill, on a one-way trip to Tyburn. The prevailing fear is that they’ll be collectively up for the final drop come season-end. It might have provided entertainment for our Victorian ancestors, but that’s one grisly spectacle I don’t want to witness.

It appears that rank disenchantment ain’t just the preserve of grumpy-eyed fussbuckets anymore: it’s afflicted all of us. Even perennially philosophical ganders like me.

Well, I know it’s true that I spend most of my time looking like I can’t help it - I’m just a cork-brained hemp whose marrowbones knock like they’re grinding mustard when I walk - but I think I like Mr. Hodge.

I’m particularly tickled by the way he articulates that little roll on his ‘r’s. It makes him sound like a particularly well-to-do Dickensian philanthropist. Whereas The Sanch bristled, all Kray-flavoured authoritarian menace, RH resembles an esteemed professor, imparting good and bad tidings with clinical equanimity.

You’ve just got to hope that a manager that uses words like “mendacity” and “Churchillian” without flinching, is similarly erudite with regard to footballing matters.

Anyway chums, I’m off to bathe in the limpid refrains of migrating curlews, whilst having my feet lathered by voluptuous concubines.

Ha! Ha! Not really mates! More like rummaging around in the decaying organic detritus what lines the floor of North End Road for the rest of the day or, at least, until the streetlights flicker on, refracting through the drizzle, and Ma comes a-calling for me.

In the meantime, cultivate comradeliness and keep ‘em keen: the revival’s on it’s way!

Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!