Crotch-kissers and gusset-suckers of a SW6 allegiance, discard your dribble bibs, down the clouded dregs of your final, lovingly-supped pints, retrieve your ring fingers from your dilberry makers, and drape your attention across the ensuing ham-handed doggerel.
I shall pre-empt your most pressing enquiry, tout de suite: “Where have you been?” I hear you wail from deep within the reverberating nothingness of your existential dungeons.
Confabulating marshmallow alibis in a craftily uplit alcove?
Fondling a trombonist from Bow?
Poppycock in a knocking shop!
The harrowing, hand-wringing, actuality is that I’ve once again been cruelly deployed as an unwitting buffer in prevailing intra-parental hostilities. An impotent little sapper conscripted by opposing sides in a shabby campaign of matrimonial warfare, without even a tin helmet in which to ensconce my imperilled noggin.
It was late afternoon last Friday, and that incorrigible old North End Road was a crucible in which all kinds of canny, underhand commerce had been a-simmering since first light. Fruiterer and fishmonger alike had barked their hearts out and were now keenly shoe-horning themselves into any ale-dispensing aperture going.
As usual, my father, gin-pickled grumbletonian and feckless scourge of this exalted manor, had installed himself as captain of the HMS Oblivion. It was a ship that had left dry dock many hours earlier. He was denting the leather in The Goose, where he had been steadily coaxing himself into a profoundly kippered condition.
I had been skulking around outside for most of this time, getting bumped and buffeted by the crowds like a hapless little pinball. My only comfort came from a still-warm turnip and chive pasty from the Well Bread bakery smouldering away in the pocket of my charcoal, pin-stripe overcoat. A few baby carrots nestled in the breast pocket, cunningly camouflaged against an orange paisley pocket square.
But hasn’t a muddle-minded understrapper like me got fresher fish to fry? You know, brogues to buff, hats to steam, and tufnells to darn? Not to mention refraining from ogling the flower-seller’s daughter five times a day to kneel and pray in the direction of our black and white mecca?
In one, chums. Unfortunately, Ma had ordered me there on a sub-rosa scouting mission. Apparently, hovering over Pa recently as he plummeted the scuzzy depths of one his impenetrable post-booze slumbers, she had heard him mumble some kind of spittle-coated serenade: “Lovely lady G”, he had dribbled, “My beautiful, beautiful Ginny”. Her suspicion, as a consequence, had become inflamed.
To be brutal, the thought of him doing the blanket hornpipe with anything other than his imagination set my braces quivering. It was almost enough to send me scuttling away to the nearest seminary to take a life-long vow of non-penetrative canoodling.
Her interpretation of this seedy sleep-talk had no doubt been influenced by a previous incident shamefully engraved in family legend. Several years ago, Ma had discovered him in an unlit utility cupboard concealed beneath a dim and rancid stairwell in Clem Attlee Court. Squinting through a thicket of mops and brooms, she caught him touching giblets with ‘Easy’ Elsie Blow, notorious suet-fleshed slattern and bane of the North Fulham Purity League.
Later, pinned to his favourite armchair with a toasting fork poised to puncture his chest and skewer his heart, he claimed that Elsie was on a First Aid course and that he had merely been showing her his war wound, which was still prone to weeping. Well, Ma gave him a wound of her own that day that ensured his beard-splitting days were over. The meat tenderiser hasn’t been seen since.
Nevertheless, here I was in full-on, underage espionage mode, trying to catch sight of his festering spectre through intermittent chinks in the bustling clientele.
It was a tall task, as the pub was packed and poorly-lit. Thirsty men monopolised every seat and stool, coveted every livid inch of Pollock-patterned carpet: moth-eaten, wife-beaten, and all committed to liberation through alcohol. A porridge-coloured fog hung menacingly above a mottled array of trilbies, caps, depilated domes and disappointed hair-pieces. It was so dense that the watery yellow light leaking from the occasional light-bulb merely seeped onto and around it, fringing it with a sickly, jaundiced aura. Its constitution was not, as in days past, cigarette smoke, but a mouldering miasma of dust, dandruff, fugitive food particles and navel lint, coagulating within a bulbous cloud of steam and evaporating perspiration. Some punters have claimed, at the end of a complicated evening, to have seen it circumnavigate the ceiling of its own accord, like an airship that has slipped its moorings.
My initial sightings confirmed that he was alone, although quite clearly incubating a grudge of some design: he had a face like a flat tire. Even for one so constitutionally sour, he looked nettled. Eavesdropping on a few departing patrons, I learned that that he had become engaged in a particularly vindictive skirmish with the barman concerning Mr. Sparky Hughes. They were bitterly disputing which was the greater: his shirt-collar size, or the coefficient of friction between his upper thighs.
Apparently, the thick-tongued sophistry he had managed to exhume from the cognitive mulch of his crepuscular mind was so belligerent and off-beam that he had been threatened with immediate cessation of credit. They might as well have condemned him to the gallows. Dragging his feet like a scolded child, he returned to his seat where, bristling with insult, he had proceeded to inflict revenge by force-feeding pistachios to the landlord’s dog - a bellicose pug named Dowie that was last seen sliding on it’s belly towards the beer-cellar hatch.
It could have only been a cursory sulk, as the next time I caught sight of him he looked in thrall to some gormless euphoria. He was cradling a bottle of gin in the crook of one elbow whilst sliding a single, shaky fingertip through the condensation that embraced its subtle curves. Radiating an unconditional love to rival that of a mother for her newborn, he slurred the undertones of some long-forgotten lullaby, whilst simultaneously muttering an enigmatic paean to the cradled beverage. Elementary lip-reading suggested “My lovely lady G”...
The bent penny dropped.
What a mutton-headed, piss-the-bed he is! I was smarting all over: he had just wasted an afternoon that I could have wasted perfectly well myself. I immediately declared my career in reconnaissance over, and set about my pasty with grim intent.
Turning away, I dissolved into the decaying movements of the market, gathering up a few squares of navy tissue and a coil of twine as I went. Limping instinctively towards the Thames, I began to absent-mindedly mould my pickings into a makeshift football. I popped it under the faithful stovepipe and continued on to seek out the solace of a dusky kickabout with Mr. Haynes.
See, me and the Maestro, we have a relationship based on loyalty and respect, and that’s the only sort worth considering in the context of this tawdry tale, eh, chums?
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Friday, 17 September 2010
Ice Cream & Irises
Lazily gazing at the flower-seller’s daughter, I flicked my tongue across a Piccadilly Whip.
I was not of a mind to contemplate kipper salads, long-limbed spinsters, or the unknowable depths of another’s despair. No, not when I was languidly suspended in a bi-sensory heaven.
The heat of the day was a blanket that suffocated sound and inhibited movement. Floating motes of dust, encased in sunlight, looked like tiny bubbles of air trapped in glass. The streets flickered like a faded home-movie unfurling in slow-motion, a surreal dream-sequence swimming in muted hues.
I was sitting on the kerb opposite the flower stall, one elbow resting on the scorching fender of Miss Wetherby’s (next-door-but-one) plum-coloured Karmann Ghia, savouring my frozen treat. As its icy sweetness assailed my synapses the girl’s smooth, elegant movements appeared to emit slowly-dissolving trails of light, hypnotic patterns that shimmered and overlapped as though contained within a kaleidoscope.
In the aftermath of this clammy hallucination, the cogs of the Maurice noggin began a-turnin’. I concluded that just as the mind may become enlivened by psychotropic substances, so the eyes could become intoxicated too if the sights they absorbed were potent enough.
With such a bewitching vision before me, I had to blink to stay sober.
It was captivating to see her so wholly immersed in her work, tenderly plucking leaves from erect stems, and lovingly fondling swollen blooms. She raised a crisp and vivid carnation to her nose and inhaled its perfume, before nuzzling it like a post-partum beagle with an unlicked pup. You could see her senses devouring her.
I surveyed her alluring wares: endlessly seductive, eternally out of reach. With frustration I wondered why it was that some flowers spread their petals and allowed themselves to be penetrated by an eager proboscis, whilst others remained tightly-closed.
How does nature’s dating game operate, I pondered? What are the elusive rules of attraction and when will I learn ‘em? Are we mere, besotted stooges in some metaphysical Blind Date? Lovelorn puppets of a scheming celestial Cilla?
Realising that I was stretching my bijou thesis way beyond its capacity to endure scrutiny, I allowed the dilemma to disperse into the woozy Fulham air, like cottonwood fluff being teased from a branch by a tentative breeze.
Sucking lustily on my honeyed fingertips, I felt a small resolve begin to stiffen. I stood up and, palming away the dust of crumbled wafer from the weft of my pin-striped tufnells, determined to act on this slowly solidifying notion.
See, I had read about these pheromone characters in one of Mr. Rutter’s (antiquated bookseller) enigmatic tomes. I’d purloined it from the racy stash he keeps under his stall. But I didn’t need a book to know that if a theory cannot sustain itself in practice then it is worthless.
So, hands in pockets, plaid cravat askew, I strove to attenuate my limp as I aspired to a nonchalant swagger in her direction. I sincerely believed that I was reviving, right there on North End Road, the effortless dash of a Grant or an Astaire. Once up to speed, I strained to achieve the erotic chemical excretion that I had read about.
The ensuing sniggers and guffaws suggested that I was channeling Hugh rather than Cary. Those unwitting market-goers must have believed they’d stumbled upon the West Fulham heats of the Disabled Pimp Olympics. How hormones warp one’s self-awareness is one of evolution’s enduring cruelties.
A confluence of lush floral scents rippled from the stall and mingled with the dry, musty heaviness oozing from the market’s pores. It begat a somewhat curdled confection, suggestive of a drenched Afghan Hound on the rampage through the Selfridges perfume hall. Together with the heat and embarrassment, and a debilitating post-sugar dip, I was becoming somewhat light-headed.
However, approaching her sumptuous display I rallied. I feigned a casual fingering of the cuff-links, and began to whistle the opening bars of “If I Was A Chocolate Flake Would You Be My Ice Cream Cornet?” I felt that I was being consumed by fire, and struggled to maintain the melody through my sticky, sugared lips. I glanced directly at her, pleading silently for some connection but she was in thrall to her inner world.
Despite failing to penetrate her intimate circle, I was praying that the sentiment behind the song might nestle subliminally within her bosom. Buried there, perhaps it might find her rising one morning possessed of an irresistible urge to hunt me down, transport me to a secluded arbour in Bishop’s Park, and proceed to delicately weave fresh irises through my barnet.
With the tune dying on my lips and my hopeless strut unraveling, the entire conceit crumbled like a punctured meringue.
I was beginning to wonder if I should abandon what was increasingly looking like a unilateral romantic quest. As Mr. Rutter is wont to say: “When your horse dies, get off”.
Who knows, maybe it’s nature protecting me and I’m simply not ready for a paradiddle on Cupid’s kettle drums. Or even a little fiddle in the string section.
Yes, it was another one of life’s lead-filled gloves to the solar plexus.
I suppose, my black-and-white acquaintances, that by now we should be used to the unrequited love of a capricious mistress but, like soppy, forsaken spaniels, we keep coming back season after season, don’t we.
But can there be a purer love than that?
Scallions. Flamin’. Fulham. Up The.
I was not of a mind to contemplate kipper salads, long-limbed spinsters, or the unknowable depths of another’s despair. No, not when I was languidly suspended in a bi-sensory heaven.
The heat of the day was a blanket that suffocated sound and inhibited movement. Floating motes of dust, encased in sunlight, looked like tiny bubbles of air trapped in glass. The streets flickered like a faded home-movie unfurling in slow-motion, a surreal dream-sequence swimming in muted hues.
I was sitting on the kerb opposite the flower stall, one elbow resting on the scorching fender of Miss Wetherby’s (next-door-but-one) plum-coloured Karmann Ghia, savouring my frozen treat. As its icy sweetness assailed my synapses the girl’s smooth, elegant movements appeared to emit slowly-dissolving trails of light, hypnotic patterns that shimmered and overlapped as though contained within a kaleidoscope.
In the aftermath of this clammy hallucination, the cogs of the Maurice noggin began a-turnin’. I concluded that just as the mind may become enlivened by psychotropic substances, so the eyes could become intoxicated too if the sights they absorbed were potent enough.
With such a bewitching vision before me, I had to blink to stay sober.
It was captivating to see her so wholly immersed in her work, tenderly plucking leaves from erect stems, and lovingly fondling swollen blooms. She raised a crisp and vivid carnation to her nose and inhaled its perfume, before nuzzling it like a post-partum beagle with an unlicked pup. You could see her senses devouring her.
I surveyed her alluring wares: endlessly seductive, eternally out of reach. With frustration I wondered why it was that some flowers spread their petals and allowed themselves to be penetrated by an eager proboscis, whilst others remained tightly-closed.
How does nature’s dating game operate, I pondered? What are the elusive rules of attraction and when will I learn ‘em? Are we mere, besotted stooges in some metaphysical Blind Date? Lovelorn puppets of a scheming celestial Cilla?
Realising that I was stretching my bijou thesis way beyond its capacity to endure scrutiny, I allowed the dilemma to disperse into the woozy Fulham air, like cottonwood fluff being teased from a branch by a tentative breeze.
Sucking lustily on my honeyed fingertips, I felt a small resolve begin to stiffen. I stood up and, palming away the dust of crumbled wafer from the weft of my pin-striped tufnells, determined to act on this slowly solidifying notion.
See, I had read about these pheromone characters in one of Mr. Rutter’s (antiquated bookseller) enigmatic tomes. I’d purloined it from the racy stash he keeps under his stall. But I didn’t need a book to know that if a theory cannot sustain itself in practice then it is worthless.
So, hands in pockets, plaid cravat askew, I strove to attenuate my limp as I aspired to a nonchalant swagger in her direction. I sincerely believed that I was reviving, right there on North End Road, the effortless dash of a Grant or an Astaire. Once up to speed, I strained to achieve the erotic chemical excretion that I had read about.
The ensuing sniggers and guffaws suggested that I was channeling Hugh rather than Cary. Those unwitting market-goers must have believed they’d stumbled upon the West Fulham heats of the Disabled Pimp Olympics. How hormones warp one’s self-awareness is one of evolution’s enduring cruelties.
A confluence of lush floral scents rippled from the stall and mingled with the dry, musty heaviness oozing from the market’s pores. It begat a somewhat curdled confection, suggestive of a drenched Afghan Hound on the rampage through the Selfridges perfume hall. Together with the heat and embarrassment, and a debilitating post-sugar dip, I was becoming somewhat light-headed.
However, approaching her sumptuous display I rallied. I feigned a casual fingering of the cuff-links, and began to whistle the opening bars of “If I Was A Chocolate Flake Would You Be My Ice Cream Cornet?” I felt that I was being consumed by fire, and struggled to maintain the melody through my sticky, sugared lips. I glanced directly at her, pleading silently for some connection but she was in thrall to her inner world.
Despite failing to penetrate her intimate circle, I was praying that the sentiment behind the song might nestle subliminally within her bosom. Buried there, perhaps it might find her rising one morning possessed of an irresistible urge to hunt me down, transport me to a secluded arbour in Bishop’s Park, and proceed to delicately weave fresh irises through my barnet.
With the tune dying on my lips and my hopeless strut unraveling, the entire conceit crumbled like a punctured meringue.
I was beginning to wonder if I should abandon what was increasingly looking like a unilateral romantic quest. As Mr. Rutter is wont to say: “When your horse dies, get off”.
Who knows, maybe it’s nature protecting me and I’m simply not ready for a paradiddle on Cupid’s kettle drums. Or even a little fiddle in the string section.
Yes, it was another one of life’s lead-filled gloves to the solar plexus.
I suppose, my black-and-white acquaintances, that by now we should be used to the unrequited love of a capricious mistress but, like soppy, forsaken spaniels, we keep coming back season after season, don’t we.
But can there be a purer love than that?
Scallions. Flamin’. Fulham. Up The.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Decorations & Detritus
My little frost-flecked Fulham-flavoured sprites.
Where have I been?
Deadheading busy lizzies in neglected suburban graveyards?
Playing head tennis with Les Dennis?
Amidst the profane chaos of your unravelling psyches, perhaps.
In actuality, I’ve been mooning around this manor like some forsaken phantom with no-one to haunt.
Ringmer, Hestercombe and Gowan, and all their blessed allies, lie engloomed within the fug of a Christmas passed.
Seasonal detritus dots them, discarded, forlorn.
And how pathetic my leaking brogues, only sustained these days by Parade Gloss and prayer, as they listlessly toe transparent sacks of Christmas wrapping stacked against the bases of lamp-posts. Bright red ribbon veins the pavements, as the crimson ink on a discarded gift tag slowly bleeds it’s greeting towards the kerb.
It’s over. The goose has been cooked, the copper cleaned. The angel has descended to earth and the gaudy baubles have all been boxed.
As I float about, living-rooms are subdued and lounges no longer resonate with festivity. Windows are dark now, their lacy tableaus of blinking lights dimmed for another year.
Scrawny firs and pineless pines lie abandoned on corners, curls of tinsel, like silvered catkins petrified by frost, trapped within their branches.
It’s queer, chums, but this recurring new year limbo always tends to attenuate my sparkle. In fact, the other day Mr. Rutter (antiquarian bookseller) cuffed me for skulking. The predictable sermon followed: “If you can’t be chipper, Maurice, at least be downright miserable. Suicidal, even. Mediocrity is man’s biggest enemy. Don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween.”
It only addled me further.
This pagan gaiety is fine, but a low pecuniary ebb always limits us. Christmas day, then, is like most days: a stand-up wash followed by a sit-down meal. Drink is drunk, the uneasy peace ultimately ruptures, and soon a swarm of cooking utensils is clouding the kitchen like chaff. It’s like an improv session at a knife-throwers’ convention.
Indulgences are few. Grilled kippers might melt beneath an extra scrape of butter. A few lobes of some grey mechanically-recovered game might be crowned by a solitary cranberry, menacingly crushed beneath the heel of Pa’s shoe. A cube of Raspberry Chivers with a marble poked inside can double as a pudding and a present.
Similarly the Maurice refuge remains undecorated, as Pa refuses to purchase anything that is not at least 40% ABV. He tried to convince me that there would be a market for paper chains backed with Whisky-infused glue.
Thus, as usual, Ma and me improvised. She purloined a candle from her part-time cleaning job at the church (the vicar insists upon fresh rushes up the aisle at this time of year). Inspired, and lacking any bona fide phizogs of Ol’ Santa, I cut a picture of Mr. Hodgson from the Hammersmith and Fulham News, fixed it around an empty pickled egg jar with a few spots of wax, and placed the candle inside.
It proudly illuminated our mantlepiece, radiating benevolence, right through to Twelfth Night.
Apparently, some erudite scholar once posited a world in which he wished it could be “Christmas every day”, which sounds like some kind of gluttonous dystopia if you ask me. Christ, imagine the walnuts!
Well, I know he’s lauded aplenty ‘round these parts as it is, and I’m not one for prostrating before false idols, but with St. Roy steering the sleigh around SW6 it’s pretty much Christmas every week anyway!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Where have I been?
Deadheading busy lizzies in neglected suburban graveyards?
Playing head tennis with Les Dennis?
Amidst the profane chaos of your unravelling psyches, perhaps.
In actuality, I’ve been mooning around this manor like some forsaken phantom with no-one to haunt.
Ringmer, Hestercombe and Gowan, and all their blessed allies, lie engloomed within the fug of a Christmas passed.
Seasonal detritus dots them, discarded, forlorn.
And how pathetic my leaking brogues, only sustained these days by Parade Gloss and prayer, as they listlessly toe transparent sacks of Christmas wrapping stacked against the bases of lamp-posts. Bright red ribbon veins the pavements, as the crimson ink on a discarded gift tag slowly bleeds it’s greeting towards the kerb.
It’s over. The goose has been cooked, the copper cleaned. The angel has descended to earth and the gaudy baubles have all been boxed.
As I float about, living-rooms are subdued and lounges no longer resonate with festivity. Windows are dark now, their lacy tableaus of blinking lights dimmed for another year.
Scrawny firs and pineless pines lie abandoned on corners, curls of tinsel, like silvered catkins petrified by frost, trapped within their branches.
It’s queer, chums, but this recurring new year limbo always tends to attenuate my sparkle. In fact, the other day Mr. Rutter (antiquarian bookseller) cuffed me for skulking. The predictable sermon followed: “If you can’t be chipper, Maurice, at least be downright miserable. Suicidal, even. Mediocrity is man’s biggest enemy. Don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween.”
It only addled me further.
This pagan gaiety is fine, but a low pecuniary ebb always limits us. Christmas day, then, is like most days: a stand-up wash followed by a sit-down meal. Drink is drunk, the uneasy peace ultimately ruptures, and soon a swarm of cooking utensils is clouding the kitchen like chaff. It’s like an improv session at a knife-throwers’ convention.
Indulgences are few. Grilled kippers might melt beneath an extra scrape of butter. A few lobes of some grey mechanically-recovered game might be crowned by a solitary cranberry, menacingly crushed beneath the heel of Pa’s shoe. A cube of Raspberry Chivers with a marble poked inside can double as a pudding and a present.
Similarly the Maurice refuge remains undecorated, as Pa refuses to purchase anything that is not at least 40% ABV. He tried to convince me that there would be a market for paper chains backed with Whisky-infused glue.
Thus, as usual, Ma and me improvised. She purloined a candle from her part-time cleaning job at the church (the vicar insists upon fresh rushes up the aisle at this time of year). Inspired, and lacking any bona fide phizogs of Ol’ Santa, I cut a picture of Mr. Hodgson from the Hammersmith and Fulham News, fixed it around an empty pickled egg jar with a few spots of wax, and placed the candle inside.
It proudly illuminated our mantlepiece, radiating benevolence, right through to Twelfth Night.
Apparently, some erudite scholar once posited a world in which he wished it could be “Christmas every day”, which sounds like some kind of gluttonous dystopia if you ask me. Christ, imagine the walnuts!
Well, I know he’s lauded aplenty ‘round these parts as it is, and I’m not one for prostrating before false idols, but with St. Roy steering the sleigh around SW6 it’s pretty much Christmas every week anyway!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Butterflies & Buttocks
Sun-kissed associates, loosen your neck-ties, top-up your iced tipples, and tilt your wicker trilbys to a more forgiving angle.
Then, collectively quiz me as to my recent whereabouts.
Like, where have I been?
Boiling up the bones of regret in a fog-bound bothy?
Sprinkling pepper on a salt marsh?
Negative: no boiling, no sprinkling.
The fact is, I’ve been out liberating a few rustic impulses on Putney Common. Now, that notion alone should be enough to undermine your pre-existing knowledge of human nature, your investment in a non-random universe, and your faith in phenomenological reality. To willfully mis-quote that esteemed philosopher Mr. Tom Jones: it is unusual.
For not only am I as urban as a pigeon roosting in the wheel arch of the Lord Mayor’s carriage, I’m also currently bedevilled with what I’ve christened ‘close-seasonal affective disorder’. Consequently, I’ve been presenting a rather saturnine aspect to the North End Road environs and it’s populace.
Starved of football-infused nourishment, the Maurice metabolism starts to drag at this time of year. The humours thicken and slow. I begin to droop like parched wisteria, and slump like an under-stuffed guy on bonfire night. Morosely I loaf about under my own personal cloud, frowning at acts of human kindness.
To aggravate my malaise, Ma has evicted me from her stall. She claims she’s been forced to “reduce headcount” due to “fiscal hiccups” or somesuch, even though my labours remain uniformly unrewarded and, in truth, represent little more than a benign form of slavery. I think it was just a random act of heartlessness contrived to imply business acuity. With similar intent, she often boasts to fellow traders of how the meagre profits she extracts are “selflessly reinvested in the local community.” In practice this amounts to Pa pocketing them, and spending the day getting progressively guttered in The Goose. Unfortunately, his submersion renders me little more than a nebulous shadow skulking outside the pub door. To him, ‘bonding’ is something involving highly-flammable adhesives and a g-clamp.
Even my pals have evaporated, ferried away to caravan in Canvey, chalet in Clacton, and winkle-pick in Whitby. Meanwhile, the closest the Maurice family gets to a holiday is arguing over a strawberry Mivvi outside the travel agents.
But, so as not to appear ungrateful to be drawing breath whilst others fester and decay beneath the ground, I may occasionally, in the pre-market quiet, rescue a few flaccid kale and cauliflower leaves, curling mournfully by the kerb, and fashion something football-shaped from them with a length of waxy twine. Glumly, I then proceed to nudge this cruciferous cluster around the streets of SW6. With eyes cast downwards to keep it close to my good leg, navigation becomes arbitrary. Somehow though, I always seem to end up on Stevenage Road. Then, with the charmless bravado of youth, I inevitably go on to challenge Mr. Haynes to a keepy-up contest. He beats me every time.
Anyway, sensing the sun behind my ears, serotonin slowly dispersing the melancholic fog, I experienced a compelling desire to escape the arid streets and frolic in a leafy arbour for a few golden hours. Oddly inspired, I even made myself a ramshackle butterfly net from a discarded bamboo and pair of Miss Wetherby’s laddered nylons – she made me peel them from her actual legs, and that liberated a few impulses by itself. I prepared a bottle of redcurrant cordial and a beetroot and chive pasty for sustenance and, as an aide, wrapped up my rations in one of Ma’s old tea towels - the one depicting ‘Endangered Butterflies Of Britain’.
I resolved to bag myself a brace of Glanville Fritillarys, or at least a Lulworth Skipper. Once ensnared, I would decant them into the emptied pop bottle for safe-keeping. I then planned to deliver them to a fanatical conservationist in exchange for a generous settlement, the ensuing acclaim leading irresistibly to a life of coruscating fame and glamour.
Leaving Fulham behind, I sloped over Mr. Bazalgette’s stately bridge, and hurried past the spot where homicidal maniac and pubic-hair connoisseur John Christie was buttonholed by the law’s long arm. The thought induced a shiver as I pushed on along the lower of the Richmond Roads.
Upon arriving at the common, I surveyed that unkempt meadow there, glittering lazily in the haze, and instantly noticed something glinting as it fibrillated just above the tips of the tall grass. A dot-dot-dash of morse flashes seducing me like a siren’s sultry refrain.
With the immediacy of the hypnotist’s finger-click I am in a trance and at the mercy of urges I cannot control.
I cleave eagerly though the long grass like a besotted spaniel just reprieved from castration, intent on one last shot at extending it’s bloodline. My momentum is such that even my unwieldy gait assumes an elegance. I am consumed with the exertion, and hopelessly in thrall to the bounteous rewards I have envisioned. In my imagination the sunlight splintering through the trees is a volley of paparazzi flashbulbs. They merge into a continuous curtain of light and I see a future where I glide from moment to moment bathed in the effulgent glow of unending adulation.
As I approach, the vista narrows, whilst the flickering nucleus of my intentions expands until it seems to fill my vision. At the final instant, it is wafted upwards by a balmy breeze fresh from the river. I leave the ground, my trajectory destined to intercept it at it’s apex. As I climb, time recedes. My feet are en pointe, my net arm extended. I am Neil Armstrong, pioneering, ascendant. I am Rudolf Nureyev majestically mocking gravity. I have subjugated nature. I exclaim in triumph as the prey yields to my prowess and nestles sweetly in Miss Wetherby’s redundant gusset.
Mission accomplished, I begin my return to earth. However, with toes still pointing, my landing is prematurely curtailed. Glancing down, I see the gleaming tip of a freshly-buffed brogue daggered deep between the buff buttocks of a gentleman who is, in every sense, naked. A similarly-attired female, glistening with arousal, inspects me from over his shoulder.
From deep within my core I ignite with embarrassment. I fear I may combust. With my free foot dangling, I veer around on the other like an arthritic ballerina. Only suction is keeping me upright. It wasn’t just nature abhorring this vacuum, believe me: I attempted a few fractured pirouettes and eventually managed to extricate myself from the startled lothario’s rear-end embrace. The resulting sonic event scattered a knot of crows grazing nearby, intuitively alert to the farmer’s shotgun.
Fearing he may re-enact the posterior intrusion with my bamboo, I made off towards the river without delay.
Once I had reached the cover of the trees I remembered the pursuit that had spawned my disturbing encounter. Expectantly, I teased my fingers into the soft gauzy folds of the net. Alas, what I extracted was no priceless entomological specimen, safely delivered from extinction. No, it was nothing more than a crudely torn square of lurid coloured foil. Reassembling it, I managed to identify the words ‘lubrication’ and ‘sensitivity’, but I was by then too crestfallen to comprehend. Limp and deflated, I tossed it to a passing Pomeranian, prancing blindly through the grass after it’s master.
I toiled on for the best part of the morning, but only managed to apprehend a Grizzled Skipper (no, not Mr. Murphy), some green leaf weevils, and a solitary cockchafer. Bone-tired and with braces slackening, I made my way on down to the river, unwrapping my tucker on the slipway opposite the Cottage. As I sat there, gazing at the empty ground, standing silent and inscrutable like a sentinel watching protectively over the Thames, I tried to calculate how many tides it would witness before it was teeming and in full-cry again.
Well that was a sum too far for the nascent Maurice noggin but, nevertheless, I knew that soon this painful gestation period would end, and we would be witnessing the birth of a bright new season emerging, blinking and bonny, from within that historic shell opposite.
And right there and then I decided that, in future, that was the only species I was gonna be pursuing!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Then, collectively quiz me as to my recent whereabouts.
Like, where have I been?
Boiling up the bones of regret in a fog-bound bothy?
Sprinkling pepper on a salt marsh?
Negative: no boiling, no sprinkling.
The fact is, I’ve been out liberating a few rustic impulses on Putney Common. Now, that notion alone should be enough to undermine your pre-existing knowledge of human nature, your investment in a non-random universe, and your faith in phenomenological reality. To willfully mis-quote that esteemed philosopher Mr. Tom Jones: it is unusual.
For not only am I as urban as a pigeon roosting in the wheel arch of the Lord Mayor’s carriage, I’m also currently bedevilled with what I’ve christened ‘close-seasonal affective disorder’. Consequently, I’ve been presenting a rather saturnine aspect to the North End Road environs and it’s populace.
Starved of football-infused nourishment, the Maurice metabolism starts to drag at this time of year. The humours thicken and slow. I begin to droop like parched wisteria, and slump like an under-stuffed guy on bonfire night. Morosely I loaf about under my own personal cloud, frowning at acts of human kindness.
To aggravate my malaise, Ma has evicted me from her stall. She claims she’s been forced to “reduce headcount” due to “fiscal hiccups” or somesuch, even though my labours remain uniformly unrewarded and, in truth, represent little more than a benign form of slavery. I think it was just a random act of heartlessness contrived to imply business acuity. With similar intent, she often boasts to fellow traders of how the meagre profits she extracts are “selflessly reinvested in the local community.” In practice this amounts to Pa pocketing them, and spending the day getting progressively guttered in The Goose. Unfortunately, his submersion renders me little more than a nebulous shadow skulking outside the pub door. To him, ‘bonding’ is something involving highly-flammable adhesives and a g-clamp.
Even my pals have evaporated, ferried away to caravan in Canvey, chalet in Clacton, and winkle-pick in Whitby. Meanwhile, the closest the Maurice family gets to a holiday is arguing over a strawberry Mivvi outside the travel agents.
But, so as not to appear ungrateful to be drawing breath whilst others fester and decay beneath the ground, I may occasionally, in the pre-market quiet, rescue a few flaccid kale and cauliflower leaves, curling mournfully by the kerb, and fashion something football-shaped from them with a length of waxy twine. Glumly, I then proceed to nudge this cruciferous cluster around the streets of SW6. With eyes cast downwards to keep it close to my good leg, navigation becomes arbitrary. Somehow though, I always seem to end up on Stevenage Road. Then, with the charmless bravado of youth, I inevitably go on to challenge Mr. Haynes to a keepy-up contest. He beats me every time.
Anyway, sensing the sun behind my ears, serotonin slowly dispersing the melancholic fog, I experienced a compelling desire to escape the arid streets and frolic in a leafy arbour for a few golden hours. Oddly inspired, I even made myself a ramshackle butterfly net from a discarded bamboo and pair of Miss Wetherby’s laddered nylons – she made me peel them from her actual legs, and that liberated a few impulses by itself. I prepared a bottle of redcurrant cordial and a beetroot and chive pasty for sustenance and, as an aide, wrapped up my rations in one of Ma’s old tea towels - the one depicting ‘Endangered Butterflies Of Britain’.
I resolved to bag myself a brace of Glanville Fritillarys, or at least a Lulworth Skipper. Once ensnared, I would decant them into the emptied pop bottle for safe-keeping. I then planned to deliver them to a fanatical conservationist in exchange for a generous settlement, the ensuing acclaim leading irresistibly to a life of coruscating fame and glamour.
Leaving Fulham behind, I sloped over Mr. Bazalgette’s stately bridge, and hurried past the spot where homicidal maniac and pubic-hair connoisseur John Christie was buttonholed by the law’s long arm. The thought induced a shiver as I pushed on along the lower of the Richmond Roads.
Upon arriving at the common, I surveyed that unkempt meadow there, glittering lazily in the haze, and instantly noticed something glinting as it fibrillated just above the tips of the tall grass. A dot-dot-dash of morse flashes seducing me like a siren’s sultry refrain.
With the immediacy of the hypnotist’s finger-click I am in a trance and at the mercy of urges I cannot control.
I cleave eagerly though the long grass like a besotted spaniel just reprieved from castration, intent on one last shot at extending it’s bloodline. My momentum is such that even my unwieldy gait assumes an elegance. I am consumed with the exertion, and hopelessly in thrall to the bounteous rewards I have envisioned. In my imagination the sunlight splintering through the trees is a volley of paparazzi flashbulbs. They merge into a continuous curtain of light and I see a future where I glide from moment to moment bathed in the effulgent glow of unending adulation.
As I approach, the vista narrows, whilst the flickering nucleus of my intentions expands until it seems to fill my vision. At the final instant, it is wafted upwards by a balmy breeze fresh from the river. I leave the ground, my trajectory destined to intercept it at it’s apex. As I climb, time recedes. My feet are en pointe, my net arm extended. I am Neil Armstrong, pioneering, ascendant. I am Rudolf Nureyev majestically mocking gravity. I have subjugated nature. I exclaim in triumph as the prey yields to my prowess and nestles sweetly in Miss Wetherby’s redundant gusset.
Mission accomplished, I begin my return to earth. However, with toes still pointing, my landing is prematurely curtailed. Glancing down, I see the gleaming tip of a freshly-buffed brogue daggered deep between the buff buttocks of a gentleman who is, in every sense, naked. A similarly-attired female, glistening with arousal, inspects me from over his shoulder.
From deep within my core I ignite with embarrassment. I fear I may combust. With my free foot dangling, I veer around on the other like an arthritic ballerina. Only suction is keeping me upright. It wasn’t just nature abhorring this vacuum, believe me: I attempted a few fractured pirouettes and eventually managed to extricate myself from the startled lothario’s rear-end embrace. The resulting sonic event scattered a knot of crows grazing nearby, intuitively alert to the farmer’s shotgun.
Fearing he may re-enact the posterior intrusion with my bamboo, I made off towards the river without delay.
Once I had reached the cover of the trees I remembered the pursuit that had spawned my disturbing encounter. Expectantly, I teased my fingers into the soft gauzy folds of the net. Alas, what I extracted was no priceless entomological specimen, safely delivered from extinction. No, it was nothing more than a crudely torn square of lurid coloured foil. Reassembling it, I managed to identify the words ‘lubrication’ and ‘sensitivity’, but I was by then too crestfallen to comprehend. Limp and deflated, I tossed it to a passing Pomeranian, prancing blindly through the grass after it’s master.
I toiled on for the best part of the morning, but only managed to apprehend a Grizzled Skipper (no, not Mr. Murphy), some green leaf weevils, and a solitary cockchafer. Bone-tired and with braces slackening, I made my way on down to the river, unwrapping my tucker on the slipway opposite the Cottage. As I sat there, gazing at the empty ground, standing silent and inscrutable like a sentinel watching protectively over the Thames, I tried to calculate how many tides it would witness before it was teeming and in full-cry again.
Well that was a sum too far for the nascent Maurice noggin but, nevertheless, I knew that soon this painful gestation period would end, and we would be witnessing the birth of a bright new season emerging, blinking and bonny, from within that historic shell opposite.
And right there and then I decided that, in future, that was the only species I was gonna be pursuing!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 20 February 2009
Myths & Melancholy
There are people and proceedings apparently assembled entirely from hearsay.
Biographies that persist through whispered myth, spun from wide-eyed playground hyperbole, promoted via bar-room boasting.
Infamous exploits that thrive within a loosely-tangled hairball of fact and fable.
Around North End Road, history pits the brickwork; it impregnates yellowing ceilings. There, through common conversation alone, people may be rendered real enough to rub shoulders with. And although no-one you know has seen them, everyone claims to know someone that has.
Is, for example, the existence of Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy mere conjecture, or does he occupy a realm in the here and now? Many say they have seen him swing a gay parasol in the dusky twilight. Several attest to spying him saunter past Olive’s on the corner of Wardo Avenue, pausing momentarily to finger the leaves of the box ball tree that stands there.
Consider Mr. Dave, notorious brick-built barman of The Goose. Has he only ever pulled pints in the unrequited dreams of dry-mouthed drunkards, or did he really force-feed a 20 x 22 gram card of Mr. Porky pork scratchings (packaging ‘n’ all) to a hapless punter for “looking at him funny”, as market folklore decrees?
And what of ‘Easy’ Elsie Blow? Have you ever accelerated her sputtering pulse, or smudged her clumsy rouge with the heel of your hand? Perhaps her history solely resides in lines written on walls: grotesque slogans proclaiming her to be dirtiest puzzle in SW6; alleged invites to underage lads scratched in the bubbling cream emulsion of unheated, busted-seated, public conveniences.
She could be nothing more than an ongoing narrative of Chinese whispers, dictated via the urgent imaginings of deprived youth, but through the years she has been depicted in a litany so vivid that anyone would know her the moment she appeared.
Mooning around the kitchen once, I pressed Ma on the veracity of Elsie’s existence, but she didn’t answer. Instead she fixed me with her flinty eyes, and with grim vigour continued chopping the courgette she held pinned to the kitchen table. She clearly felt such topics to be forbidden fig for a freshly-weaned whelp like me so, sadly, my blinkers remained.
And yet, like a mercurial striker penetrating a well-drilled back four, the truth will ultimately wheedle its way though the most densely-woven deception. Like dogged chickweed winding through hairline concrete cracks to sprout into the light.
Last week, I was loping along towards the river to take in the tides. Hard sunshine kicked off corroding fenders and the market roar gradually decayed as I drifted further away. Generally looking like I couldn’t help it, I was struggling within my brain to evaluate the difference between a chamfer and a bevel when a tiny bulb of light burst in the corner of my vision.
I looked down the alleyway I was passing by, and there, through the opened doors of someone’s garage was, unmistakably, Elsie. Elsie. Unmistakably. At once, that multitude of after-hours murmurs found itself reconstituted into an irrefutable, copper-bottomed fact.
Frozen in mid-pucker, she was modelling hourglass corsetry for the readers of some rank magazine. She had spilled herself over the bonnet of a burnt-out Hillman Imp, like a marshmallow congealing on a hot stove.
I was dimly hypnotised. There she actually was, like some queasy conflation of a blowsy brothel madam and a dinner lady on Viagra.
The director of this squalid scene, weaselly in his soiled gabardine, flashgun primed, was evidently aspiring to some kind of Ballardian tableau. Framed as it was by the garage doorway, it looked more to me like a road safety poster targeting mature nymphomaniacs.
Where is the allure, I wondered, of exposing one’s chassis and gaskets to the world? Why divulge one’s vitals in the centre spreads of catchpenny publications that are doomed to curl and bleach in wire carousels standing off-kilter on suburban station forecourts? What fate for one’s flesh to be fondled only in facsimile by the grubby thumbs of bored salesmen with gout?
Collecting copper’s a diminishing trade right now, but are a few photographer’s farthings slipped into the willing gusset going to put sufficient steam on the table to justify such bruising indignity?
As I slipped away I sensed a rare melancholy consuming me. That uncomplicated optimism that springs, some say, from a robust dim-wittedness, felt punctured.
It got me thinking about the dead-ends and disappointments that might be awaiting me one day. It was like a future memory of a life unlived.
But how could I feel things I hadn’t encountered yet?
Had I acquired this awareness via the eye peeping through the door crack, the ear straining at the keyhole? Had half-remembered conversations and splinters of market chatter been absorbed subliminally, just like the tall stories spawned in these here streets?
Or perhaps it had been learned through actual experiences elsewhere, from recurrent episodes where the chafe of failure is felt first-hand. Speaking of which – I’ll see you at the school of hard knocks on Sunday!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Biographies that persist through whispered myth, spun from wide-eyed playground hyperbole, promoted via bar-room boasting.
Infamous exploits that thrive within a loosely-tangled hairball of fact and fable.
Around North End Road, history pits the brickwork; it impregnates yellowing ceilings. There, through common conversation alone, people may be rendered real enough to rub shoulders with. And although no-one you know has seen them, everyone claims to know someone that has.
Is, for example, the existence of Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy mere conjecture, or does he occupy a realm in the here and now? Many say they have seen him swing a gay parasol in the dusky twilight. Several attest to spying him saunter past Olive’s on the corner of Wardo Avenue, pausing momentarily to finger the leaves of the box ball tree that stands there.
Consider Mr. Dave, notorious brick-built barman of The Goose. Has he only ever pulled pints in the unrequited dreams of dry-mouthed drunkards, or did he really force-feed a 20 x 22 gram card of Mr. Porky pork scratchings (packaging ‘n’ all) to a hapless punter for “looking at him funny”, as market folklore decrees?
And what of ‘Easy’ Elsie Blow? Have you ever accelerated her sputtering pulse, or smudged her clumsy rouge with the heel of your hand? Perhaps her history solely resides in lines written on walls: grotesque slogans proclaiming her to be dirtiest puzzle in SW6; alleged invites to underage lads scratched in the bubbling cream emulsion of unheated, busted-seated, public conveniences.
She could be nothing more than an ongoing narrative of Chinese whispers, dictated via the urgent imaginings of deprived youth, but through the years she has been depicted in a litany so vivid that anyone would know her the moment she appeared.
Mooning around the kitchen once, I pressed Ma on the veracity of Elsie’s existence, but she didn’t answer. Instead she fixed me with her flinty eyes, and with grim vigour continued chopping the courgette she held pinned to the kitchen table. She clearly felt such topics to be forbidden fig for a freshly-weaned whelp like me so, sadly, my blinkers remained.
And yet, like a mercurial striker penetrating a well-drilled back four, the truth will ultimately wheedle its way though the most densely-woven deception. Like dogged chickweed winding through hairline concrete cracks to sprout into the light.
Last week, I was loping along towards the river to take in the tides. Hard sunshine kicked off corroding fenders and the market roar gradually decayed as I drifted further away. Generally looking like I couldn’t help it, I was struggling within my brain to evaluate the difference between a chamfer and a bevel when a tiny bulb of light burst in the corner of my vision.
I looked down the alleyway I was passing by, and there, through the opened doors of someone’s garage was, unmistakably, Elsie. Elsie. Unmistakably. At once, that multitude of after-hours murmurs found itself reconstituted into an irrefutable, copper-bottomed fact.
Frozen in mid-pucker, she was modelling hourglass corsetry for the readers of some rank magazine. She had spilled herself over the bonnet of a burnt-out Hillman Imp, like a marshmallow congealing on a hot stove.
I was dimly hypnotised. There she actually was, like some queasy conflation of a blowsy brothel madam and a dinner lady on Viagra.
The director of this squalid scene, weaselly in his soiled gabardine, flashgun primed, was evidently aspiring to some kind of Ballardian tableau. Framed as it was by the garage doorway, it looked more to me like a road safety poster targeting mature nymphomaniacs.
Where is the allure, I wondered, of exposing one’s chassis and gaskets to the world? Why divulge one’s vitals in the centre spreads of catchpenny publications that are doomed to curl and bleach in wire carousels standing off-kilter on suburban station forecourts? What fate for one’s flesh to be fondled only in facsimile by the grubby thumbs of bored salesmen with gout?
Collecting copper’s a diminishing trade right now, but are a few photographer’s farthings slipped into the willing gusset going to put sufficient steam on the table to justify such bruising indignity?
As I slipped away I sensed a rare melancholy consuming me. That uncomplicated optimism that springs, some say, from a robust dim-wittedness, felt punctured.
It got me thinking about the dead-ends and disappointments that might be awaiting me one day. It was like a future memory of a life unlived.
But how could I feel things I hadn’t encountered yet?
Had I acquired this awareness via the eye peeping through the door crack, the ear straining at the keyhole? Had half-remembered conversations and splinters of market chatter been absorbed subliminally, just like the tall stories spawned in these here streets?
Or perhaps it had been learned through actual experiences elsewhere, from recurrent episodes where the chafe of failure is felt first-hand. Speaking of which – I’ll see you at the school of hard knocks on Sunday!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 13 February 2009
Horns & Hand-Washing
I was in the scullery rinsing linen for a shilling.
She was in the study playing scales on her flugelhorn.
Miss Wetherby (next-door-but-one) is a valued family friend, and often supplies vital subsidy when the pockets of the Maurice breeches become barren.
She’s also a liberal source of solace when the Mighty Whites are stymied. On the many occasions that they’ve reneged on the ‘mighty’ part of the deal, she’s entered her parlour to find me prostrate over the decaying Bakelite on which she allows me to listen to away games. Without hesitation she gathers me up and absorbs me into her bosom. Whilst not necessarily assuaging the pain of defeat, it does readily spawn other feelings that strive to compete with it.
As well as paying me to knead her smalls, she had promised that later on she would be serving me her ‘Cherry Delight’. I would be the first to savour her special recipe. It was already cooking she had confirmed with a wink.
There was a tidy pile of underwear resting on the draining board. Sunlight shimmered through the cobwebs criss-crossing the skylight and dappled the terracotta tiles underfoot. A sour smell leeched from the small iron drain cover in the centre of the floor.
With my hands plunged deep within her pants, it occurred to me that the benefit of conducting simple repetitive manual tasks is that the unrelenting rhythm often lulls one into a kind of meditative state. Untaxed, the mind is clear to pursue whims and fancies at will. And so it was that I, sluicing merrily away, allowed myself to indulge in a pleasant reverie involving the flower-seller’s daughter, and an alluring Banana Inbetween - a speciality of the renowned Well Bread bakery.
The stack was slowly diminishing, and the daydream’s denouement growing closer, when a small knot of suds liberated itself from the sink and floated up to settle on my nose. Unfortunately, being up to my elbows in borax, I was unable to attend to the irritation. I began twitching and puffing, trying to dislodge the offending bubbles when, unannounced, a pair of hands appeared before my face and gently wiped them away. I had been so embroiled in my imaginary escapade that I hadn’t noticed that the music drifting in from the study had stopped. The arms lingered there, encircling me from behind.
Suddenly my collar felt a little tight, my braces rather constricting. A prickly heat flickered up and down my legs. The aroma of Miss Wetherby’s signature dish baking slowly nearby became overwhelming.
She invited me into the study. She said she wanted to reveal her special piece. It was time for me to enjoy her “Così fan tutte”. The Maurice noggin began pulsating and reverberating like a boneshaker rattling along a cobbled street. What was she talking about? For a cork-brained upstart like me it was like to trying to crack a cryptic clue written in a foreign language. Confounded, I padded after her like a soppy-eyed spaniel.
Tripping dimly through to the study, I struggled to rescue a few shards of sense, tossed asunder in the mental turbulence. I lashed them together into a cogent thought and reassured myself that, as the woman before me was honorary treasurer of the highly-respected North Fulham Purity League, I was in safe hands.
And after that I remember nothing.
When I came to I was slumped in a voluptuous leather Chesterfield. The lady of the house was sitting opposite me, pert on a straight-backed chair, pressing a freshly-plucked stem between the pages of Flugelhorn For Beginners. Her face was fixed with a queer, beatific smile.
I managed to haul myself up from the depths of the armchair. I stood there wavering like a drunken captain on the prow of a storm-tossed ship, blearily scanning the horizon. It felt like all the strength had sapped from my little legs. She glided towards me serenely and, pressing a coin into my palm, leaned over and whispered a fragile “thank you” in my ear.
I turned to leave and, glancing at my reflection in the hallway mirror, noticed that my braces were twisted, and my hair was parted on the opposite side from usual.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around the market trying to resolve my confusion, struggling to give things a name. Eventually I conceded that perhaps some of life’s little mysteries are just a little too far out of
reach for a young ‘un.
For the time being, anyway.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
She was in the study playing scales on her flugelhorn.
Miss Wetherby (next-door-but-one) is a valued family friend, and often supplies vital subsidy when the pockets of the Maurice breeches become barren.
She’s also a liberal source of solace when the Mighty Whites are stymied. On the many occasions that they’ve reneged on the ‘mighty’ part of the deal, she’s entered her parlour to find me prostrate over the decaying Bakelite on which she allows me to listen to away games. Without hesitation she gathers me up and absorbs me into her bosom. Whilst not necessarily assuaging the pain of defeat, it does readily spawn other feelings that strive to compete with it.
As well as paying me to knead her smalls, she had promised that later on she would be serving me her ‘Cherry Delight’. I would be the first to savour her special recipe. It was already cooking she had confirmed with a wink.
There was a tidy pile of underwear resting on the draining board. Sunlight shimmered through the cobwebs criss-crossing the skylight and dappled the terracotta tiles underfoot. A sour smell leeched from the small iron drain cover in the centre of the floor.
With my hands plunged deep within her pants, it occurred to me that the benefit of conducting simple repetitive manual tasks is that the unrelenting rhythm often lulls one into a kind of meditative state. Untaxed, the mind is clear to pursue whims and fancies at will. And so it was that I, sluicing merrily away, allowed myself to indulge in a pleasant reverie involving the flower-seller’s daughter, and an alluring Banana Inbetween - a speciality of the renowned Well Bread bakery.
The stack was slowly diminishing, and the daydream’s denouement growing closer, when a small knot of suds liberated itself from the sink and floated up to settle on my nose. Unfortunately, being up to my elbows in borax, I was unable to attend to the irritation. I began twitching and puffing, trying to dislodge the offending bubbles when, unannounced, a pair of hands appeared before my face and gently wiped them away. I had been so embroiled in my imaginary escapade that I hadn’t noticed that the music drifting in from the study had stopped. The arms lingered there, encircling me from behind.
Suddenly my collar felt a little tight, my braces rather constricting. A prickly heat flickered up and down my legs. The aroma of Miss Wetherby’s signature dish baking slowly nearby became overwhelming.
She invited me into the study. She said she wanted to reveal her special piece. It was time for me to enjoy her “Così fan tutte”. The Maurice noggin began pulsating and reverberating like a boneshaker rattling along a cobbled street. What was she talking about? For a cork-brained upstart like me it was like to trying to crack a cryptic clue written in a foreign language. Confounded, I padded after her like a soppy-eyed spaniel.
Tripping dimly through to the study, I struggled to rescue a few shards of sense, tossed asunder in the mental turbulence. I lashed them together into a cogent thought and reassured myself that, as the woman before me was honorary treasurer of the highly-respected North Fulham Purity League, I was in safe hands.
And after that I remember nothing.
When I came to I was slumped in a voluptuous leather Chesterfield. The lady of the house was sitting opposite me, pert on a straight-backed chair, pressing a freshly-plucked stem between the pages of Flugelhorn For Beginners. Her face was fixed with a queer, beatific smile.
I managed to haul myself up from the depths of the armchair. I stood there wavering like a drunken captain on the prow of a storm-tossed ship, blearily scanning the horizon. It felt like all the strength had sapped from my little legs. She glided towards me serenely and, pressing a coin into my palm, leaned over and whispered a fragile “thank you” in my ear.
I turned to leave and, glancing at my reflection in the hallway mirror, noticed that my braces were twisted, and my hair was parted on the opposite side from usual.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around the market trying to resolve my confusion, struggling to give things a name. Eventually I conceded that perhaps some of life’s little mysteries are just a little too far out of
reach for a young ‘un.
For the time being, anyway.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 6 February 2009
Peas & Philosophies
Flimsy conceits rarely endure, do they.
I was concentrating keenly, for concentration is required to perfect the art of wearing a hat in a built-up area.
As I moodled along Racton Road, the sharp winter sunshine sprung the colours from my schmutter, the air was cold and precise, and the wind rattled ‘round my ears.
I felt pristine, like a pea freshly-popped from its pod, and my braces were vibrating at some kind of mystically harmonious frequency that created an aura of serene wellbeing.
I imagined I was a demobbed squaddie recently recognised for acts of uncommon bravery on the front line, strutting past a line of court-marshalled malingerers loitering at lamp posts.
Increasingly spry, I felt my momentum smoothing out my congenital limp, and the fleeting grace it afforded allowed me to swivel crisply on my newly-cobbled heels into Tamworth Street.
Soon, however, my lofty reveries were fractured by the raucous approach of a gaggle of local girls. A giddy riot of jelly rolls, rouge, and rudeness, they were bawling in each others’ ears and collapsing against each other with laughter. Indeed, they seemed to find their very existence hysterical.
They were brash enough, blurting schwas all over the place, but I was so taken with the vision I’d spun of myself that I prepared to indulge in a slither of dangleation with them.
As they approached, I fancied I was filling out me tufnells nicely.
Alas, it was the bait that hides the hook. Drawing level, and about to give them the trusty wink and hat-tip combination, my fragile imaginings shattered:
“Does your grandad know you’ve nicked his trousers?” one of them shrieked, sending my eardrum into spasm.
“What a shockin’ bad hat,” yelled another.
“Are you minding those legs for someone else?”
It had become clear that there was fat chance of a tupenny fumble today, let alone taking one of ‘em up the Trocadero.
Now, I align with the axiom that apparel maketh the man, but just look at the trouble a silk handkerchief, a whistle of herringbone, and a wayward gait can get you in. In fact it tempts one to disappear into the drab parade, to make every day a ‘dress-down Friday’, just for a quiet life.
Still, there’s a salve for every sore.
See, Ma’s forever instructing me to disregard goading and leg-pulling. She advises employing philosophy as my ally. The insight of the wise will defend me ably, whatever the situation, she insists.
She’s always arming me with gnomic and knowing epithets from the Greek and Latin eggheads; regularly serving me a snippet of Socrates or a Sun Tzu strategy to suck on, and then recall whenever I find myself the object of opprobrium.
So, while these frenzied harpies were spinning me around, fingering my lapels, and tossing my hat like a Harris tweed frisbee onto a nearby rose bush, I recalled the maxim that she whispers in my little ear‘ole most often. I don't know if it issued forth from the noggin of Mr. Aristotle, or if it was coined by his mentor Mr. Plato, but she always dispenses it immediately before turfing me out into the world:
"Ridicule is nothing to be scared of," she says, and “don’t you ever…” - but I’m out the door before she can finish, enlightened and emboldened.
And so, as these mouthy frippets skitted off into the distance, still intoxicated with their own cleverness, I managed to still my quivering bottom lip by reciting that line. It’s true my delusions took a bruising, but it demonstrated that when the outlook is Lanesborough-grey, and life’s put the kibosh on your adolescent esteem, it’s not events what’s important, but how you look at ‘em.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
I was concentrating keenly, for concentration is required to perfect the art of wearing a hat in a built-up area.
As I moodled along Racton Road, the sharp winter sunshine sprung the colours from my schmutter, the air was cold and precise, and the wind rattled ‘round my ears.
I felt pristine, like a pea freshly-popped from its pod, and my braces were vibrating at some kind of mystically harmonious frequency that created an aura of serene wellbeing.
I imagined I was a demobbed squaddie recently recognised for acts of uncommon bravery on the front line, strutting past a line of court-marshalled malingerers loitering at lamp posts.
Increasingly spry, I felt my momentum smoothing out my congenital limp, and the fleeting grace it afforded allowed me to swivel crisply on my newly-cobbled heels into Tamworth Street.
Soon, however, my lofty reveries were fractured by the raucous approach of a gaggle of local girls. A giddy riot of jelly rolls, rouge, and rudeness, they were bawling in each others’ ears and collapsing against each other with laughter. Indeed, they seemed to find their very existence hysterical.
They were brash enough, blurting schwas all over the place, but I was so taken with the vision I’d spun of myself that I prepared to indulge in a slither of dangleation with them.
As they approached, I fancied I was filling out me tufnells nicely.
Alas, it was the bait that hides the hook. Drawing level, and about to give them the trusty wink and hat-tip combination, my fragile imaginings shattered:
“Does your grandad know you’ve nicked his trousers?” one of them shrieked, sending my eardrum into spasm.
“What a shockin’ bad hat,” yelled another.
“Are you minding those legs for someone else?”
It had become clear that there was fat chance of a tupenny fumble today, let alone taking one of ‘em up the Trocadero.
Now, I align with the axiom that apparel maketh the man, but just look at the trouble a silk handkerchief, a whistle of herringbone, and a wayward gait can get you in. In fact it tempts one to disappear into the drab parade, to make every day a ‘dress-down Friday’, just for a quiet life.
Still, there’s a salve for every sore.
See, Ma’s forever instructing me to disregard goading and leg-pulling. She advises employing philosophy as my ally. The insight of the wise will defend me ably, whatever the situation, she insists.
She’s always arming me with gnomic and knowing epithets from the Greek and Latin eggheads; regularly serving me a snippet of Socrates or a Sun Tzu strategy to suck on, and then recall whenever I find myself the object of opprobrium.
So, while these frenzied harpies were spinning me around, fingering my lapels, and tossing my hat like a Harris tweed frisbee onto a nearby rose bush, I recalled the maxim that she whispers in my little ear‘ole most often. I don't know if it issued forth from the noggin of Mr. Aristotle, or if it was coined by his mentor Mr. Plato, but she always dispenses it immediately before turfing me out into the world:
"Ridicule is nothing to be scared of," she says, and “don’t you ever…” - but I’m out the door before she can finish, enlightened and emboldened.
And so, as these mouthy frippets skitted off into the distance, still intoxicated with their own cleverness, I managed to still my quivering bottom lip by reciting that line. It’s true my delusions took a bruising, but it demonstrated that when the outlook is Lanesborough-grey, and life’s put the kibosh on your adolescent esteem, it’s not events what’s important, but how you look at ‘em.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 26 January 2009
Afros & Apostrophes
That was an interlude, weren’t it.
So, a new year has begun. Apparently it’s traditional at this time. Still, more days are always welcome, ain’t they.
Of late I’ve been silenced. Some skinny-trousered squirt spilt luke-warm Super Malt over Mr. Tjinder’s fat-fibre web connection and spooked it. I’ve tried hollering through a rolled-up programme on matchdays but my words disappear amid the chat and blether of the black and white masses.
To be honest, I’ve forgotten most of what’s happened, and remembered a lot of what hasn’t.
But life, as ever, continues to veer from the prosaic to the poetic and back again. And although I haven’t read the book, I know it remains a queerly-waddled world. For starters, there’s a tennis player called Mardy Fish.
Still, so long as your braces remain taut and your shirt-collar’s kept scrubbed, life will deliver larks ‘til the coffin shop calls.
Admittedly, I’ve been frustrated at being unable to discharge my bulging lexicon into your yearning maws, so here’s a few aide-mémoire from the Maurice Moleskine:
One day, I found a box of greengrocer’s apostrophes and went ‘round randomly adorning the stall-holder’s signs. There’s nothing like a bit of grammatical terrorism to keep the cold at bay, and it’s always good to see plum’s, fire-lighter’s, and duster’s selling well!
On another occasion, I caught some nippers giggling over a postcard of a fat man on a motorcycle. Then one went past. It was a riot.
I’ve noticed that the voluminous afro hair arrangement is in vogue amongst the young ‘uns ‘round here, but it’s too late to lionise Kareem Abdul Jabaar, I say. Trumps corn-rows though, sartorially-speaking.
Mainly, I’ve been spending a lot of time teetering on a stack of milk-crates on Stevenage Road trying to meet Mr. Haynes’ stare in the hope that there might be some transference of greatness. Alas, sublime balance is not something we share. Thank heavens for Holloway’s Ointment – “it cleanses before it heals!”
Must go, some coves have brogues to polish: the Kettering mosh-pit has left them scuffed beyond acceptability!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
So, a new year has begun. Apparently it’s traditional at this time. Still, more days are always welcome, ain’t they.
Of late I’ve been silenced. Some skinny-trousered squirt spilt luke-warm Super Malt over Mr. Tjinder’s fat-fibre web connection and spooked it. I’ve tried hollering through a rolled-up programme on matchdays but my words disappear amid the chat and blether of the black and white masses.
To be honest, I’ve forgotten most of what’s happened, and remembered a lot of what hasn’t.
But life, as ever, continues to veer from the prosaic to the poetic and back again. And although I haven’t read the book, I know it remains a queerly-waddled world. For starters, there’s a tennis player called Mardy Fish.
Still, so long as your braces remain taut and your shirt-collar’s kept scrubbed, life will deliver larks ‘til the coffin shop calls.
Admittedly, I’ve been frustrated at being unable to discharge my bulging lexicon into your yearning maws, so here’s a few aide-mémoire from the Maurice Moleskine:
One day, I found a box of greengrocer’s apostrophes and went ‘round randomly adorning the stall-holder’s signs. There’s nothing like a bit of grammatical terrorism to keep the cold at bay, and it’s always good to see plum’s, fire-lighter’s, and duster’s selling well!
On another occasion, I caught some nippers giggling over a postcard of a fat man on a motorcycle. Then one went past. It was a riot.
I’ve noticed that the voluminous afro hair arrangement is in vogue amongst the young ‘uns ‘round here, but it’s too late to lionise Kareem Abdul Jabaar, I say. Trumps corn-rows though, sartorially-speaking.
Mainly, I’ve been spending a lot of time teetering on a stack of milk-crates on Stevenage Road trying to meet Mr. Haynes’ stare in the hope that there might be some transference of greatness. Alas, sublime balance is not something we share. Thank heavens for Holloway’s Ointment – “it cleanses before it heals!”
Must go, some coves have brogues to polish: the Kettering mosh-pit has left them scuffed beyond acceptability!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 16 June 2008
Celebrations & Circumlocutions
Fellow great escapees of a black and white hue, concur without embarrassment or delay that being aligned to The Fulham Football Club is, at times, a pleasure akin to squatting on the very doorstep of Number 1, Heaven Place, dressed in one’s craftiest schmutter, whilst chomping nonchalantly on a freshly-baked Banana Inbetween from the Well Bread bakery.
Even I, playing fast and loose with Mr. Einstein’s enshrined decrees as I am wont to do, could not have conjured an ‘up’ from a ‘down’; but that is what our esteemed Mr. Hodgson somehow managed to achieve. And we are all, are we not, still feeling ourselves borne aloft on the balmy zephyr of exultation that emanated from that logic-defying feat.
So, my post-celebratory, premier-league-dwelling chums, where in the name of Mr. Murphy’s numinous noodle have I been?
Developing a steam-powered pencil-sharpener?
Playing Yahtzee! with the Glitter Band’s drum technician?
Wrong times two my chipper little sticklebacks.
But fret not, and quell your collective curiosity forthwith. Replace your foaming pints of wallop upon the nearest table, and allow your befuddled craniums to become becalmed.
For I continue to dwell, as I always will, within the Fulham demimonde. I cannot leave, and it cannot leave me.
The simple, copper-plated fact of it all, is that I’ve been nowhere of note, doing nothing noteworthy, not knowing nor caring what is not mine to negotiate. But that’s fine and I’m a little dandy: for it’s the more prosaic pursuits what throw the highlights of our little lives into such sharp relief, is it not?
Whilst your still bathing in the fragrant cloud of existential clarity that I’ve just expelled, I shall pencil in a little detail for the more bewildered amongst you.
Specifically, I‘ve been populating this typically barren between-season hinterland with my usual concerns: limping gamely along the glorious thoroughfares of this parish (Racton, Ringmer, Hestercombe – why, the very names chime) whilst seeking variegated detritus to sell in an illegal under-age fashion at Ma’s stall; throwing sprouting tubers and bruised Delbard Estivales at unwelcome market interlopers; and pining like an unlicked pup for the flower-seller’s daughter.
When not engaging in any or all of the above, I gad about in a dim and unguarded manner, aspiring to mirth and mischief with my like-witted pals. Polishing door-knockers for cash, admiring Miss Wetherby’s (next door-but-one) furbelow, and sabotaging understrappers from rival manors with cunning ruses.
But without doubt, the most fruitful excursion of recent weeks was on that singularly effulgent Sunday in May. The one that’s branded itself upon our memories forevermore. Me and my chuckle-headed pal, Lil’ Larkins, well, we jigged ourselves into a deranged, hyperventilating delirium in the garden of the Golden Lion that day. Fuelled by a bevy of bracing cordials, we fizzed like a brace of 5 year-olds dosed-up on ‘E’ numbers.
Afterwards we repaired, pleasantly spent, to Bishop’s Park. By now, my braces were sagging, and the Larkins’ whipple hat was flaccid from the absorption of a continuous rain of airborne ale, sent into orbit by the carousing throng.
But we didn’t care: we were in raptures.
Woozy in the afterglow, we spent a few shining hours constructing a life-sized effigy of the aforementioned Mr. H. from discarded cardboard clappers, right there in the shadow of the ground. It was a famous creation, fashioned in gratitude and respect, and if it survives the attentions of the local mutts, it could well become a pre-match shrine for the Cottage-bound faithful.
I know where I’ll be worshipping next season.
See you soon if not before!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Even I, playing fast and loose with Mr. Einstein’s enshrined decrees as I am wont to do, could not have conjured an ‘up’ from a ‘down’; but that is what our esteemed Mr. Hodgson somehow managed to achieve. And we are all, are we not, still feeling ourselves borne aloft on the balmy zephyr of exultation that emanated from that logic-defying feat.
So, my post-celebratory, premier-league-dwelling chums, where in the name of Mr. Murphy’s numinous noodle have I been?
Developing a steam-powered pencil-sharpener?
Playing Yahtzee! with the Glitter Band’s drum technician?
Wrong times two my chipper little sticklebacks.
But fret not, and quell your collective curiosity forthwith. Replace your foaming pints of wallop upon the nearest table, and allow your befuddled craniums to become becalmed.
For I continue to dwell, as I always will, within the Fulham demimonde. I cannot leave, and it cannot leave me.
The simple, copper-plated fact of it all, is that I’ve been nowhere of note, doing nothing noteworthy, not knowing nor caring what is not mine to negotiate. But that’s fine and I’m a little dandy: for it’s the more prosaic pursuits what throw the highlights of our little lives into such sharp relief, is it not?
Whilst your still bathing in the fragrant cloud of existential clarity that I’ve just expelled, I shall pencil in a little detail for the more bewildered amongst you.
Specifically, I‘ve been populating this typically barren between-season hinterland with my usual concerns: limping gamely along the glorious thoroughfares of this parish (Racton, Ringmer, Hestercombe – why, the very names chime) whilst seeking variegated detritus to sell in an illegal under-age fashion at Ma’s stall; throwing sprouting tubers and bruised Delbard Estivales at unwelcome market interlopers; and pining like an unlicked pup for the flower-seller’s daughter.
When not engaging in any or all of the above, I gad about in a dim and unguarded manner, aspiring to mirth and mischief with my like-witted pals. Polishing door-knockers for cash, admiring Miss Wetherby’s (next door-but-one) furbelow, and sabotaging understrappers from rival manors with cunning ruses.
But without doubt, the most fruitful excursion of recent weeks was on that singularly effulgent Sunday in May. The one that’s branded itself upon our memories forevermore. Me and my chuckle-headed pal, Lil’ Larkins, well, we jigged ourselves into a deranged, hyperventilating delirium in the garden of the Golden Lion that day. Fuelled by a bevy of bracing cordials, we fizzed like a brace of 5 year-olds dosed-up on ‘E’ numbers.
Afterwards we repaired, pleasantly spent, to Bishop’s Park. By now, my braces were sagging, and the Larkins’ whipple hat was flaccid from the absorption of a continuous rain of airborne ale, sent into orbit by the carousing throng.
But we didn’t care: we were in raptures.
Woozy in the afterglow, we spent a few shining hours constructing a life-sized effigy of the aforementioned Mr. H. from discarded cardboard clappers, right there in the shadow of the ground. It was a famous creation, fashioned in gratitude and respect, and if it survives the attentions of the local mutts, it could well become a pre-match shrine for the Cottage-bound faithful.
I know where I’ll be worshipping next season.
See you soon if not before!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 11 April 2008
Meringues & Malingerers
Fellow Fulham-leaning down-in-the-mouths.
We remain, do we not, collectively hunkered down ‘neath the swirling clouds of foreboding what’s spiralling up from the Stevenage Road environs; the fallout of this wretched season settling on our psyches like toxic dust on lush foliage.
I reckon soon they’ll need to create a dedicated FFC ward at the Royal Hospital & Home for Incurables, Putney. Padded in black and white it’ll be, with restraints on the beds, and Andy Williams crooning on a never-ending loop.
For solace, I’ve been petting the flower-seller’s daughter’s Maine Coon. It’s a mutually-beneficial pursuit: the cat likes it, and I get to loiter around the lass with the latch-keys to my heart. One day she’ll notice me.
Those of you that have no recourse to feline fondling, consider this lively tonic:
Strip to your skin. Then, patiently re-adorn yourself in your dandiest schmutter. Flick a freshly-laundered silk fogle over your forehead, assume a forthright aspect, and inhale defiantly.
Now re-established, cast a panoramic eye over all the associated joys of your lives in order to swathe these prevailing football-flavoured agonies in a contextualising blanket. This dilemma won’t seem so bad then.
Newly invigorated, reward yourselves with a cunning shufti at my humble lexicon before life swindles you irretrievably.
But first, I sense you wondering where I have been.
Playing gin rummy with a tripe dresser in the back of a maroon Morris Oxford?
Skinny-dipping in a teacup outside Lotte Berk’s?
No, I’ve been needling away at life, with only my innately retarded glee to chivvy me along, spending most of my time, yes, looking like I’ve just found a badger’s nest and can’t stop laughing at the eggs.
But even the slow workings of my dense noggin have revealed to me that, as a club, we most assuredly have our eyebrows on the Queen’s iron. Yes, we are incarcerated in relegation chokey, gazing ‘tween the unforgiving bars as the Premiership escapees gambol in the exercise yard.
Now, I’m not about to drown myself in a half-empty glass of misery water – life has too many greater tragedies to warrant dangling oneself like a human pendulum from Bishop’s Park’s sturdiest bough - but recalling pleasurable instances from this season is like trying to extract winkles with a claw-hammer.
I think it’s true to say that by now the whites are well and truly beaten. Perhaps this is what you get from trying to make a meringue with addled eggs? And who is the man wielding the whisk of blame: Commis Chef Sanchez, or Head Chef Hodgson?
It’s a queer old kitchen whichever serving hatch you look through.
And yet, the sterile parish of Reading calls me thither.
Are we to witness once more a gaggle of flimsy malingerers defiling the sacred black and white? Or will they rally, like the condemned man granted a last repast at the foot of the scaffold?
Whatever the conclusion to this miserable procession of performances, we remain shackled to the source of our misery, for better or worse. All spouses lose their looks eventually, but love, if unconditional, will prevail.
As for making a weekend in Burnley or Barnsley romantic: now there’s a challenge to consider.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
We remain, do we not, collectively hunkered down ‘neath the swirling clouds of foreboding what’s spiralling up from the Stevenage Road environs; the fallout of this wretched season settling on our psyches like toxic dust on lush foliage.
I reckon soon they’ll need to create a dedicated FFC ward at the Royal Hospital & Home for Incurables, Putney. Padded in black and white it’ll be, with restraints on the beds, and Andy Williams crooning on a never-ending loop.
For solace, I’ve been petting the flower-seller’s daughter’s Maine Coon. It’s a mutually-beneficial pursuit: the cat likes it, and I get to loiter around the lass with the latch-keys to my heart. One day she’ll notice me.
Those of you that have no recourse to feline fondling, consider this lively tonic:
Strip to your skin. Then, patiently re-adorn yourself in your dandiest schmutter. Flick a freshly-laundered silk fogle over your forehead, assume a forthright aspect, and inhale defiantly.
Now re-established, cast a panoramic eye over all the associated joys of your lives in order to swathe these prevailing football-flavoured agonies in a contextualising blanket. This dilemma won’t seem so bad then.
Newly invigorated, reward yourselves with a cunning shufti at my humble lexicon before life swindles you irretrievably.
But first, I sense you wondering where I have been.
Playing gin rummy with a tripe dresser in the back of a maroon Morris Oxford?
Skinny-dipping in a teacup outside Lotte Berk’s?
No, I’ve been needling away at life, with only my innately retarded glee to chivvy me along, spending most of my time, yes, looking like I’ve just found a badger’s nest and can’t stop laughing at the eggs.
But even the slow workings of my dense noggin have revealed to me that, as a club, we most assuredly have our eyebrows on the Queen’s iron. Yes, we are incarcerated in relegation chokey, gazing ‘tween the unforgiving bars as the Premiership escapees gambol in the exercise yard.
Now, I’m not about to drown myself in a half-empty glass of misery water – life has too many greater tragedies to warrant dangling oneself like a human pendulum from Bishop’s Park’s sturdiest bough - but recalling pleasurable instances from this season is like trying to extract winkles with a claw-hammer.
I think it’s true to say that by now the whites are well and truly beaten. Perhaps this is what you get from trying to make a meringue with addled eggs? And who is the man wielding the whisk of blame: Commis Chef Sanchez, or Head Chef Hodgson?
It’s a queer old kitchen whichever serving hatch you look through.
And yet, the sterile parish of Reading calls me thither.
Are we to witness once more a gaggle of flimsy malingerers defiling the sacred black and white? Or will they rally, like the condemned man granted a last repast at the foot of the scaffold?
Whatever the conclusion to this miserable procession of performances, we remain shackled to the source of our misery, for better or worse. All spouses lose their looks eventually, but love, if unconditional, will prevail.
As for making a weekend in Burnley or Barnsley romantic: now there’s a challenge to consider.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Mutton & Materialism
Debauched friends, grant me a pause in your wallop-soaked badinage, and allow me to decant these musings into your gaping maws.
Yesterday morning, as I idled along Fabian Road toeing a bundle of rags I’d snitched from the recycling bank, I visualised myself as an elegant arabesque of poise and balance. In actuality, I lumbered forwards lop-sided as a paper kite.
I was on my way to Maisie Cloves’s flat in the Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings. Ma had sent me there to collect an upside-down shallot tart that Maisie had baked for her in return for disinfecting her chute.
I was anxious. Although antiquated and barely six stone seven-pence, Maisie is a redoubtable article, especially to a diffident, short-harrissed chit like me. Keen as a Loch Fyne kipper and wiry as a whippet’s whisker, she looks like she’s had an onion and chive pasty inserted under the skin of each upper arm, so proud are her biceps.
Even today, she could strangle a goose with one hand, whilst churning her cast iron mangle with the other. It’s little wonder she was the North End Road carpet-beating champion of 1947. The dust devils she conjured from that finely-woven Oriental throw were still swirling through the neighbouring streets the following day. Residents along Lillie Road thought that hostilities had resumed, and that a radiation-tinged miasma was descending upon the Fulham borders.
Her physique is the product of long days toiling as a stove blacker on Strutton Ground, longer evenings ironing pound notes on Cold Blow Lane. Back then, it was blunt maternal devotion that enabled her to put steam and prayers on the table for the four hungry children whose scruffs she was single-handedly responsible for.
Her selflessness and fortitude got me thinking about professional footballers, and how flimsy and acquisitive most of ‘em are. Instead of seeing solemn endeavour as a reward in itself, they crave ostentatious baubles of every voguish brand: mock-croc washbags; vulgar, plate-sized timepieces; and a Bentley on a stick, "to go."
These days, there’s pressure on us to acquire every jot and tittle what’s dangled it front of our little lamps. We all know the devil’s in the retail, and these fellers have got more coinage than their tufnells can contain.
Yet, how flaky they present when confronted with adversity. They buckle and fold like cheap umbrellas in a squall.
It’s a shame that Mr. Vuitton doesn’t sell own-brand “hard work”, or the House of Gucci knock out Limited Edition “gumption”. Maybe then these players might be tempted to spend some of their easy-earned cutter on something less frivolous, and of a tad more merit to us long-suffering supporters.
I know it’s not like I’ve got any choice, but I don’t particularly hanker for this consumerist society’s over-egged desiderata. A well-turned trouser: yes. A sturdy-soled brogue: naturally.
Most days however, a fresh mutton fritter and a swig of Heathen’s Disdain and I’m as chuffed as a butler in the buff. Yet even those paltry delights cost copper. If we’re talking bona fide buckshee, there’s always a firm-handed ruffle of the hair from a kindly market aproneer; that, and a benign wink from their autumny eyes, and I’m set steady for the rest of the day.
Despite my parsimonious leanings, if Mr. Jimmy manages to whistle in another one of those speculative benders on Saturday, I’ll gladly shower him with all my worldies. A meagre pledge, I know, considering there are days when I struggle to muster tuppence, but if he delivers, watch out for fifteen pair of threadbare braces raining down on the Bullard bonce.
Anyway, mustn’t dwell, Ma’ll have my giblets for mincemeat if she notices I've sloped away.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Yesterday morning, as I idled along Fabian Road toeing a bundle of rags I’d snitched from the recycling bank, I visualised myself as an elegant arabesque of poise and balance. In actuality, I lumbered forwards lop-sided as a paper kite.
I was on my way to Maisie Cloves’s flat in the Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings. Ma had sent me there to collect an upside-down shallot tart that Maisie had baked for her in return for disinfecting her chute.
I was anxious. Although antiquated and barely six stone seven-pence, Maisie is a redoubtable article, especially to a diffident, short-harrissed chit like me. Keen as a Loch Fyne kipper and wiry as a whippet’s whisker, she looks like she’s had an onion and chive pasty inserted under the skin of each upper arm, so proud are her biceps.
Even today, she could strangle a goose with one hand, whilst churning her cast iron mangle with the other. It’s little wonder she was the North End Road carpet-beating champion of 1947. The dust devils she conjured from that finely-woven Oriental throw were still swirling through the neighbouring streets the following day. Residents along Lillie Road thought that hostilities had resumed, and that a radiation-tinged miasma was descending upon the Fulham borders.
Her physique is the product of long days toiling as a stove blacker on Strutton Ground, longer evenings ironing pound notes on Cold Blow Lane. Back then, it was blunt maternal devotion that enabled her to put steam and prayers on the table for the four hungry children whose scruffs she was single-handedly responsible for.
Her selflessness and fortitude got me thinking about professional footballers, and how flimsy and acquisitive most of ‘em are. Instead of seeing solemn endeavour as a reward in itself, they crave ostentatious baubles of every voguish brand: mock-croc washbags; vulgar, plate-sized timepieces; and a Bentley on a stick, "to go."
These days, there’s pressure on us to acquire every jot and tittle what’s dangled it front of our little lamps. We all know the devil’s in the retail, and these fellers have got more coinage than their tufnells can contain.
Yet, how flaky they present when confronted with adversity. They buckle and fold like cheap umbrellas in a squall.
It’s a shame that Mr. Vuitton doesn’t sell own-brand “hard work”, or the House of Gucci knock out Limited Edition “gumption”. Maybe then these players might be tempted to spend some of their easy-earned cutter on something less frivolous, and of a tad more merit to us long-suffering supporters.
I know it’s not like I’ve got any choice, but I don’t particularly hanker for this consumerist society’s over-egged desiderata. A well-turned trouser: yes. A sturdy-soled brogue: naturally.
Most days however, a fresh mutton fritter and a swig of Heathen’s Disdain and I’m as chuffed as a butler in the buff. Yet even those paltry delights cost copper. If we’re talking bona fide buckshee, there’s always a firm-handed ruffle of the hair from a kindly market aproneer; that, and a benign wink from their autumny eyes, and I’m set steady for the rest of the day.
Despite my parsimonious leanings, if Mr. Jimmy manages to whistle in another one of those speculative benders on Saturday, I’ll gladly shower him with all my worldies. A meagre pledge, I know, considering there are days when I struggle to muster tuppence, but if he delivers, watch out for fifteen pair of threadbare braces raining down on the Bullard bonce.
Anyway, mustn’t dwell, Ma’ll have my giblets for mincemeat if she notices I've sloped away.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 21 January 2008
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!
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!
Friday, 14 December 2007
Sermons & Shellacs
Come closer, my rib-shivering colleagues, and let your cockles be warmed by this wintry tale.
There I was, this last Thursday, lingering at the intersection of North End and Racton roads, with my pal, the Pelican Whippersnapper (a puckish sort, with a crafty aspect, and a fellow alumnus of the ragged school), and indulging, quite snugly, in a spot of adolescent chin music.
He’d just returned from helping his father de-louse some bedding in Rickman's Rents (Narrow Street, Limehouse, thanks for asking). He still had a few traces of permethrin powder on his clothing. I leant over to brush some off his shoulder.
We were jawing over the state of the local polonies, and how the curve of some of their ankles reproduced the delicate sweep of the pediments that sit atop that handsome façade in Stevenage Road.
We were also reflecting upon how our beloved boys, them what ply their trade in the black and white, might prosper this coming Saturday evening when confronted with those lesser black-and-whiters from Tyneside.
Presently, our most high-minded wittering was disturbed by some muffled thunderings, underway further down the market. Someone had been on the loud-mouth soup.
We dandied on down to the site of the ructions.
A crowd had gathered, no doubt expecting either a glorious epiphany to part the clouds of their existential gloom or, at the very least, a gratis set of kitchen knives. Alas, today they would be going home blade-less, and with their moral compasses still spinning like billy-o.
Some low-rent twicer had constructed a makeshift hustings upon which to deliver a scalding sermon to the unassuming market-dwellers, harmlessly trying to assemble a few victuals.
An obstreperous knocker from the gospel shop, he was giving all of those within earshot a right verbal handbagging. Haranguing quite liberally he was, accusing his audience of being slack and back-handed. He was the distillate of all that is vexatious and pernickety.
Nudging through the throng, we could see that he was in fact balancing upon on an unwieldy pile of scratched and cracked shellacs. As he rattled out his bilious volleys of pelting-speech, punctuating his accusations with prods and pokes, he rocked like a storm-tossed sailor, yielding helplessly to the stack’s unsteadiness.
The tone of his tirade was apparent: we were all crumbs ‘neath the Devil’s fingernails (and quite possibly, the scurf on his tail, and the tarnish on his trident too, for all I could surmise).
He was bellyaching about the state of the neighbourhood: how we were sinners, spinners, infidels and n’er-do-wells, and how we were all overdue a one-to-one with old Mr. Grim.
The stuff about being lowly and forsaken I could weather: after all, we’re all of us only ever one step from the gutter. But his dockside manner chafed my sensibilities no end. It was like someone adjusting me braces without introducing themselves first.
What a sixpenny schlemiel he was!
His oratory technique grated too: there were glottal stops and non-sequiturs tumbling out of his gob like some kind of anti-grammatical ectoplasm.
At any minute I was expecting him to spout some hackneyed trader’s spiel: “Four linen shifts, two pair of muslin ruffles, and a set of copper-bottomed saucepans…sold! to the shrinking lady in the violet affair. I’d get some ointment on that, love!”
Well, he got some hackles up and no shamming.
But oh! how he fled when the turnips and beets began raining down upon his evangelical bonce, courtesy of yours truly and the Pelican. He thought that Old Scratch himself had singled him out for some kind of divine tuber-related retribution. All of his past transgressions went rattling along behind his eyes like some kind of debauched ticker-tape.
As he tried to dodge this plague of produce, he tottered and fell, spawning a swirling confetti of pious pamphlets amid the shrapnel of splintering 78s.
He then skidded off down Tournay Road like copper off a collection plate. That’ll teach him not to be so sudden and upfront on our territory.
If he wants a lesson in expounding in a succinct and direct manner, he wants to come down the Cottage when a game’s pulsating and everyone’s dander’s up, and hear the practised eloquence on offer there.
So thick is the air with cusses and expletives that, at times, you could reach up, and fair pluck them out of the ether with your pinkies.
Then, if you were so inclined, you could thread them onto a piece of waxy twine and fix ‘em up so that they stretched from one side of the Johnny Stevenage Stand to the other like a string of sparkly X-rated Christmas lights.
Even the cherub-faced understrappers join in sometimes. I’ve even seen a few little ‘uns hoisted on to their parents shoulders so as to reach up and seize some filthy idiom in their chubby little mittens.
Anyway, having stood lapel to lapel as unelected guardians of our beloved parish, we opted to let modesty form the better part of valour and slipped away.
Knowing that the tide would be low, we wandered off down to the river for a swift session of ducks and drakes on the foreshore.
So, friends, until the next time, steer clear of trumpery and take care to avoid the morning drop.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
There I was, this last Thursday, lingering at the intersection of North End and Racton roads, with my pal, the Pelican Whippersnapper (a puckish sort, with a crafty aspect, and a fellow alumnus of the ragged school), and indulging, quite snugly, in a spot of adolescent chin music.
He’d just returned from helping his father de-louse some bedding in Rickman's Rents (Narrow Street, Limehouse, thanks for asking). He still had a few traces of permethrin powder on his clothing. I leant over to brush some off his shoulder.
We were jawing over the state of the local polonies, and how the curve of some of their ankles reproduced the delicate sweep of the pediments that sit atop that handsome façade in Stevenage Road.
We were also reflecting upon how our beloved boys, them what ply their trade in the black and white, might prosper this coming Saturday evening when confronted with those lesser black-and-whiters from Tyneside.
Presently, our most high-minded wittering was disturbed by some muffled thunderings, underway further down the market. Someone had been on the loud-mouth soup.
We dandied on down to the site of the ructions.
A crowd had gathered, no doubt expecting either a glorious epiphany to part the clouds of their existential gloom or, at the very least, a gratis set of kitchen knives. Alas, today they would be going home blade-less, and with their moral compasses still spinning like billy-o.
Some low-rent twicer had constructed a makeshift hustings upon which to deliver a scalding sermon to the unassuming market-dwellers, harmlessly trying to assemble a few victuals.
An obstreperous knocker from the gospel shop, he was giving all of those within earshot a right verbal handbagging. Haranguing quite liberally he was, accusing his audience of being slack and back-handed. He was the distillate of all that is vexatious and pernickety.
Nudging through the throng, we could see that he was in fact balancing upon on an unwieldy pile of scratched and cracked shellacs. As he rattled out his bilious volleys of pelting-speech, punctuating his accusations with prods and pokes, he rocked like a storm-tossed sailor, yielding helplessly to the stack’s unsteadiness.
The tone of his tirade was apparent: we were all crumbs ‘neath the Devil’s fingernails (and quite possibly, the scurf on his tail, and the tarnish on his trident too, for all I could surmise).
He was bellyaching about the state of the neighbourhood: how we were sinners, spinners, infidels and n’er-do-wells, and how we were all overdue a one-to-one with old Mr. Grim.
The stuff about being lowly and forsaken I could weather: after all, we’re all of us only ever one step from the gutter. But his dockside manner chafed my sensibilities no end. It was like someone adjusting me braces without introducing themselves first.
What a sixpenny schlemiel he was!
His oratory technique grated too: there were glottal stops and non-sequiturs tumbling out of his gob like some kind of anti-grammatical ectoplasm.
At any minute I was expecting him to spout some hackneyed trader’s spiel: “Four linen shifts, two pair of muslin ruffles, and a set of copper-bottomed saucepans…sold! to the shrinking lady in the violet affair. I’d get some ointment on that, love!”
Well, he got some hackles up and no shamming.
But oh! how he fled when the turnips and beets began raining down upon his evangelical bonce, courtesy of yours truly and the Pelican. He thought that Old Scratch himself had singled him out for some kind of divine tuber-related retribution. All of his past transgressions went rattling along behind his eyes like some kind of debauched ticker-tape.
As he tried to dodge this plague of produce, he tottered and fell, spawning a swirling confetti of pious pamphlets amid the shrapnel of splintering 78s.
He then skidded off down Tournay Road like copper off a collection plate. That’ll teach him not to be so sudden and upfront on our territory.
If he wants a lesson in expounding in a succinct and direct manner, he wants to come down the Cottage when a game’s pulsating and everyone’s dander’s up, and hear the practised eloquence on offer there.
So thick is the air with cusses and expletives that, at times, you could reach up, and fair pluck them out of the ether with your pinkies.
Then, if you were so inclined, you could thread them onto a piece of waxy twine and fix ‘em up so that they stretched from one side of the Johnny Stevenage Stand to the other like a string of sparkly X-rated Christmas lights.
Even the cherub-faced understrappers join in sometimes. I’ve even seen a few little ‘uns hoisted on to their parents shoulders so as to reach up and seize some filthy idiom in their chubby little mittens.
Anyway, having stood lapel to lapel as unelected guardians of our beloved parish, we opted to let modesty form the better part of valour and slipped away.
Knowing that the tide would be low, we wandered off down to the river for a swift session of ducks and drakes on the foreshore.
So, friends, until the next time, steer clear of trumpery and take care to avoid the morning drop.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Reserve & Resolve
In the most recent of days, where have I been? Where indeed, my warm-minded Fulham contemporaries, have I been?
Out on manoeuvres with The Parsons Green Fundamentalist Militia?
Eating skylarks in a freezing garret?
No, fellas: neither. Last evening I limped on down to the Cottage, floodlights blazin’ by the river, to view the latest gaggle of Black and White understrappers attempting to catch teacher’s eye. We all like a tryer don’t we, chums, and enthusiasm’s the father-in-law of achievement, or so Ma says.
Well, these boys were plenty keen, and you would hope so considering how callow most were: some had less bum fluff than me. So, on the seesaw of virtues, resolve might be on the “up” end, and panache on the “low”, but I’m sure that by the time they’re sporting shadows at five o’ clock, they’ll be shaving with the first team.
It was particularly cheering to see that cheeky renaissance man Mr. Volz striding out. I had donned a pair of suedette bib-shorts, and waved around an antique stein of Ma Knows Best, to hearten him following his sideline spell. I think he appreciated it. I hope he did, for by the end of the game my shanks were a-shivering like nobody knows. I had to race home for a vigorous rub down with some Dante’s mustard liniment.
Last night I did see the future, mateys, so ready yourself. For when it comes today will be yesterday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Out on manoeuvres with The Parsons Green Fundamentalist Militia?
Eating skylarks in a freezing garret?
No, fellas: neither. Last evening I limped on down to the Cottage, floodlights blazin’ by the river, to view the latest gaggle of Black and White understrappers attempting to catch teacher’s eye. We all like a tryer don’t we, chums, and enthusiasm’s the father-in-law of achievement, or so Ma says.
Well, these boys were plenty keen, and you would hope so considering how callow most were: some had less bum fluff than me. So, on the seesaw of virtues, resolve might be on the “up” end, and panache on the “low”, but I’m sure that by the time they’re sporting shadows at five o’ clock, they’ll be shaving with the first team.
It was particularly cheering to see that cheeky renaissance man Mr. Volz striding out. I had donned a pair of suedette bib-shorts, and waved around an antique stein of Ma Knows Best, to hearten him following his sideline spell. I think he appreciated it. I hope he did, for by the end of the game my shanks were a-shivering like nobody knows. I had to race home for a vigorous rub down with some Dante’s mustard liniment.
Last night I did see the future, mateys, so ready yourself. For when it comes today will be yesterday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 3 December 2007
Manchester & Mannequins
It’s the morning of a Manchester evening, my Cottaging cheerios.
And despite the innate glories of a south west six existence, I feel a miasma of foreboding looming o’er us all.
Even a beetle-headed ninnyhammer like me recognises that pickings tonight are likely to be decidedly slim. No, I won’t be expecting a flurry of pocket-sized epiphanies to be igniting within my noggin during the course of the game; even with Mr. Sanchez’s assertion that our heroes are to “have-a-go.”
Now, I might proceed on knock-knees, but I don’t have gambler’s elbows. Nevertheless, if our boys conspire to overcome those mercenary-headed reds, I will personally accept a forfeit.
At first twinklings tomorrow morning, I will construct a life-sized effigy of The Sanch from the seventeen yards of soufflé gauze and two pair of worsted stockings that I recently purloined from a doorway on Racton Road.
I will then slice open the back of my hand-crafted mannequin with a keen–bladed Stanley and climb inside. I then pledge to spend the rest of the day terrorising the market like a kind of inverse Santa, an anti-Christmas if you will, roaring at the little ‘uns, and lobbing Battersea Bundles at all the bleary-eyed backchatters who doubted Lawrie’s logic.
Anyway, I’m off for a steaming hot slice of Hare Pie Scramble and a Conny Wabble chaser to calm the nerves.
I’ll then set about adjusting my braces extra tight in readiness for tonight’s game.
See you on the other side, mateys!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
And despite the innate glories of a south west six existence, I feel a miasma of foreboding looming o’er us all.
Even a beetle-headed ninnyhammer like me recognises that pickings tonight are likely to be decidedly slim. No, I won’t be expecting a flurry of pocket-sized epiphanies to be igniting within my noggin during the course of the game; even with Mr. Sanchez’s assertion that our heroes are to “have-a-go.”
Now, I might proceed on knock-knees, but I don’t have gambler’s elbows. Nevertheless, if our boys conspire to overcome those mercenary-headed reds, I will personally accept a forfeit.
At first twinklings tomorrow morning, I will construct a life-sized effigy of The Sanch from the seventeen yards of soufflé gauze and two pair of worsted stockings that I recently purloined from a doorway on Racton Road.
I will then slice open the back of my hand-crafted mannequin with a keen–bladed Stanley and climb inside. I then pledge to spend the rest of the day terrorising the market like a kind of inverse Santa, an anti-Christmas if you will, roaring at the little ‘uns, and lobbing Battersea Bundles at all the bleary-eyed backchatters who doubted Lawrie’s logic.
Anyway, I’m off for a steaming hot slice of Hare Pie Scramble and a Conny Wabble chaser to calm the nerves.
I’ll then set about adjusting my braces extra tight in readiness for tonight’s game.
See you on the other side, mateys!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 30 November 2007
Lemons & Leads
Famously Fulham colleagues, I’m not wrong am I?
Collectively - that’s all of us together, like - our humours are a little sluggish, aren't they? Our faces are somewhat long, and our peckers require upping.
In addition to the on-pitch misdemeanours that we suffer all too regularly, we each have our own little grievances that irk and confound us, and cause merry hell with our moods, don’t we chums.
Well, this time last week, I’d just paid a visit to the esteemed Mr. Saxby, on that there Fulham High Street, to avail myself of an exquisite pair of mustard-yellow moleskin breeches to wear to Sunday’s match against the Blackburners. The concept, as it germinated within my murky loaf, was to use the extra space provided by their inherent design to smuggle in a highly potent, citrus-style arsenal. Specifically, a slew of unwaxed Sicilian lemons packed around the thighs.
My squint-eyed plan being to bombard, mid-game, the lustrous noodle of that bellicose bully huff, Mr. Robinson Savage. Any queries from the security blowhards at the turnstiles were to be fended off with a convoluted alibi involving cellulite and water retention. Evidently, I was fully prepared.
Imagine my dismay then, when that flailing chancer didn’t even take to our sacred turf. I was so keen to give that cunning shaver his comeuppance, that the match result seemed even more depressing than it should’ve. The only thing that wasn’t deflated was my bloomin’ stupid fruity bloomers. I had to waddle all the way home before I could offload the contents into the coal scuttle.
I did think of presenting them to Mr. Lawrie as a kind of post-game consolation. You know, one lemon for each time we’ve surrendered a lead, that kind of biscuit. Thing is, he seems to be turning into something of a misery chops as it is, without sucking on a glut of de-trousered bitter fruits. He’s morphing into a right prickly grumble gizzard ain’t he. When he’s not having elbow digs at the whiskers and blazers, he’s penning peevish epistles to Mr. Hackett.
He’s certainly not one to let his sour grapes wither on the vine.
He wants to go easy. All that shaking your fist at the moon’s not good for the constitution, not to mention the risk of contracting glue-tongue from all the stamps he must be licking.
Anyway, I’m off to cheer myself up by throwing flaming celery sticks at the Jesus freaks leafleting on Lillie Road.
As for perking up our Sanch, I fear that only the presentation of Sir Fergie’s tallywags on a Harrods-branded salver next Monday evening could crack that grim visage at the moment.
Let’s all raise a glass to that potential canapé, eh fellas!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Collectively - that’s all of us together, like - our humours are a little sluggish, aren't they? Our faces are somewhat long, and our peckers require upping.
In addition to the on-pitch misdemeanours that we suffer all too regularly, we each have our own little grievances that irk and confound us, and cause merry hell with our moods, don’t we chums.
Well, this time last week, I’d just paid a visit to the esteemed Mr. Saxby, on that there Fulham High Street, to avail myself of an exquisite pair of mustard-yellow moleskin breeches to wear to Sunday’s match against the Blackburners. The concept, as it germinated within my murky loaf, was to use the extra space provided by their inherent design to smuggle in a highly potent, citrus-style arsenal. Specifically, a slew of unwaxed Sicilian lemons packed around the thighs.
My squint-eyed plan being to bombard, mid-game, the lustrous noodle of that bellicose bully huff, Mr. Robinson Savage. Any queries from the security blowhards at the turnstiles were to be fended off with a convoluted alibi involving cellulite and water retention. Evidently, I was fully prepared.
Imagine my dismay then, when that flailing chancer didn’t even take to our sacred turf. I was so keen to give that cunning shaver his comeuppance, that the match result seemed even more depressing than it should’ve. The only thing that wasn’t deflated was my bloomin’ stupid fruity bloomers. I had to waddle all the way home before I could offload the contents into the coal scuttle.
I did think of presenting them to Mr. Lawrie as a kind of post-game consolation. You know, one lemon for each time we’ve surrendered a lead, that kind of biscuit. Thing is, he seems to be turning into something of a misery chops as it is, without sucking on a glut of de-trousered bitter fruits. He’s morphing into a right prickly grumble gizzard ain’t he. When he’s not having elbow digs at the whiskers and blazers, he’s penning peevish epistles to Mr. Hackett.
He’s certainly not one to let his sour grapes wither on the vine.
He wants to go easy. All that shaking your fist at the moon’s not good for the constitution, not to mention the risk of contracting glue-tongue from all the stamps he must be licking.
Anyway, I’m off to cheer myself up by throwing flaming celery sticks at the Jesus freaks leafleting on Lillie Road.
As for perking up our Sanch, I fear that only the presentation of Sir Fergie’s tallywags on a Harrods-branded salver next Monday evening could crack that grim visage at the moment.
Let’s all raise a glass to that potential canapé, eh fellas!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
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!
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!
Friday, 2 November 2007
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!
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!
Monday, 29 October 2007
Fingers & Forecasts
Feelin’ Wear-y, Fulham friends?
Has the Stadium of Light left you a little darker in the soul?
Early this morning, I was helping Miss Wetherby (next door-but-one) de-gunge her griddle. She says that naïve fingers are more sensitive to small grooves. She was certainly all smiles afterwards.
Her antiquated Bakelite was rattling and droning in the corner, puffing out the weather forecast. I copped an ear:
“A deep depression over Craven Cottage, remaining steady, with a new low expected tea-time Saturday.
Warnings of gales in Brompton Road proceeding menacingly towards SW6.
Team failing, moving slowly south, 18 to 20. Squally showers expected, occasional brightness. Managerial position emptying by December, future outlook changeable.”
Galled by this prognosis, I sloped off up to the market, which was fussily arranging it’s skirts for the coming day’s trading.
I collared arch-grump and market sage Mr Jewry, and relayed these ominous projections to him. Ever tetchy, he waved a dismissive currant pasty, and said: “supporting Fulham is like being trapped in a slowly-deflating dinghy, circling clockwise in the North Sea: Forties-Fisher-German Bight-Dogger, and repeat until sunk.”
Well, that’s talking in tongues down my street, and it sent my noggin into a bit of a tailspin, and that’s no fib.
So, finding all this flimsy humbugging too heavy for a pair of hopeful shoulders like mine, I slipped away, and went briskly on down to the Cottage to unburden myself.
As ever, upon arriving, the prospects improved. Newly gladdened, I set about projecting some positive tidings towards that delightful Johnny Stevenage stand, before depositing a few protective karmic charms by each of the turnstiles.
You could say that I’ve swathed that old place in a kind of psychic bubble-wrap that’s rendered it impervious to all the downbeats and wiseacres.
With these dependable measures in place, we’re all set and fair to deliver a right Royals beating on Saturday, and squarely debag those gloomy harbingers what’s pooping on our parade!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Has the Stadium of Light left you a little darker in the soul?
Early this morning, I was helping Miss Wetherby (next door-but-one) de-gunge her griddle. She says that naïve fingers are more sensitive to small grooves. She was certainly all smiles afterwards.
Her antiquated Bakelite was rattling and droning in the corner, puffing out the weather forecast. I copped an ear:
“A deep depression over Craven Cottage, remaining steady, with a new low expected tea-time Saturday.
Warnings of gales in Brompton Road proceeding menacingly towards SW6.
Team failing, moving slowly south, 18 to 20. Squally showers expected, occasional brightness. Managerial position emptying by December, future outlook changeable.”
Galled by this prognosis, I sloped off up to the market, which was fussily arranging it’s skirts for the coming day’s trading.
I collared arch-grump and market sage Mr Jewry, and relayed these ominous projections to him. Ever tetchy, he waved a dismissive currant pasty, and said: “supporting Fulham is like being trapped in a slowly-deflating dinghy, circling clockwise in the North Sea: Forties-Fisher-German Bight-Dogger, and repeat until sunk.”
Well, that’s talking in tongues down my street, and it sent my noggin into a bit of a tailspin, and that’s no fib.
So, finding all this flimsy humbugging too heavy for a pair of hopeful shoulders like mine, I slipped away, and went briskly on down to the Cottage to unburden myself.
As ever, upon arriving, the prospects improved. Newly gladdened, I set about projecting some positive tidings towards that delightful Johnny Stevenage stand, before depositing a few protective karmic charms by each of the turnstiles.
You could say that I’ve swathed that old place in a kind of psychic bubble-wrap that’s rendered it impervious to all the downbeats and wiseacres.
With these dependable measures in place, we’re all set and fair to deliver a right Royals beating on Saturday, and squarely debag those gloomy harbingers what’s pooping on our parade!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 26 October 2007
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!
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!
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