Comely greetings, my charming cottaging kindreds, despatched roundly from yours truly as he foot-drags his sorry way across the off-season hinterland.
Are you, like me, a little hungry?
No, I don’t mean I’m aching for some belly timber. Around this market, there’s always a kumquat to suck on, if you give the right trader the wink. And, at the day’s death, there’s always a warm stubby of Super Malt from Mr Tjinder in the corner shop.
No, good friends, I am hungry for football.
So, what have I been doing then, during this gloomy hiatus? Engaging in the hugger-mugger of international finance? Consumer-testing gas umbrellas? No, I’ve been flexing my leather uppers, skulking endlessly around the avenues of this glorious parish: the Gowans, the Ringmers, the Hestercombes, but always, always ending up back at the gates of our beloved ground.
Have you, like me, found yourself going five fathoms past doolally with it all?
Yes, I can press my face against those gates, half-close my eyes, and kid myself within my noggin that I can see a fully-restored Mr Bullard, scrawny and liquid-waisted, executing exquisite fouettés before block DL, bedazzling his lumpen, dreary-eyed opponents.
But I want more than a penny peep on the palace pier. I want the whole shebang, the entire oeuvre, the complete sha-la-la. I want some full-on horizontal refreshments with a football flavour.
Face it, fellow Fulhamers, without football, life is little more than a loosely-tangled hairball of fripperies and bagatelles. A farrago of distractions and empty asides.
But, like Ms Ross, I’m still waiting: waiting in vain, waiting for the man, waiting in the waiting room.
Like some Beckett decrepit, waiting, waiting, waiting…
Once underway, a season gives us structure, don’t it? It gives our meagre existences a shape, a framework on which to hang our mundane mitherings, and our duty-bound, day-to-day dealings. Imminent fixtures on the calendar can punctuate our emptiness, can’t they, like little ships of hope bobbing on the horizon of our subconscious. Thirty-eight reasons to carry on living.
Now I’ve handed over my craftily-earned cutter, I can’t wait to get my adolescent luppers on that freshly-minted Season Ticket. I’ll be there at Mr Wenger’s Marvellous Soccer Theme Park for the season bully-off in my best three and nines and, believe me chums, when that inaugural whistle toots I’ll be as pleased as a punch-drunk pug on butter puffs.
Yes, I’m an eager beaver, and like fanny am I looking forward to sampling Mr Sanchez’s fresh fish; with the right purchases, the upcoming season becomes a shush bag of expectations. I dare say I can feel a pan-handle forming in the basket of me tufnells!
Anyway, we’ve all got time to pass, and some more than others, so I’m off to polish me new brogans.
Until then, go easy on the bark juice, consider foot-binding, and shake your angry fists at killjoys and cheap jacks.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Pomegranates & Polonies
Mind your beeswax, Fulham-striped friends, the football/fashion dichotomy has just taken a fist to the solar plexus!
You’ve noticed – surely, you have – that our boys have just received a brand-new outfit to peddle their footballing wares in – it’s the butcher’s best ain’t it, and that’s not even close to being a fib.
I like the new kit. It’s simple, like me. And, as we all know, simplicity is the hand-maiden of style’s younger brother.
Well, now that the team are all correctly kitted-out, there’s no excuse for not mounting a realistic challenge on 15th place next season. And if they ultimately under-achieve – like fanny they will! - at least they’ll do so in a dapper fashion.
Anyway, I’m off to spit pomegranate pips at all the teenage polonies scowling down Munster Road – somebody needs to.
And in the meantime my good chums, remember: it’s easier to break the egg of style than to lay it.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
You’ve noticed – surely, you have – that our boys have just received a brand-new outfit to peddle their footballing wares in – it’s the butcher’s best ain’t it, and that’s not even close to being a fib.
I like the new kit. It’s simple, like me. And, as we all know, simplicity is the hand-maiden of style’s younger brother.
Well, now that the team are all correctly kitted-out, there’s no excuse for not mounting a realistic challenge on 15th place next season. And if they ultimately under-achieve – like fanny they will! - at least they’ll do so in a dapper fashion.
Anyway, I’m off to spit pomegranate pips at all the teenage polonies scowling down Munster Road – somebody needs to.
And in the meantime my good chums, remember: it’s easier to break the egg of style than to lay it.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Buddhists & Bully-Boys
Fairest Fulham disciples, who are you and where have I been?
You are a sentient sack of bone and spittle what’s using your noggin to pontificate on these words, right now.
Me, I’ve been polishing doorknockers on and around North End Road, and building a life-size curlew out of curled-up cabbage leaves merely in order to earn a bit of spare trouser-cash.
Well, spiritually-leaning chums, in a facsimile of the great Buddhist cycle of Death and Rebirth, football is dead, only to be born again in a few short summer months’ time.
In the meantime, mid-knocker polishing, I‘ve been squatting on the Stevenage kerbside gazin’ up at that beautiful stand, idly shaking hands with my most sombre and deep-lying thoughts.
I’ve been tickling myself into believing that I can hear the matchday hubbub: the fluttering of Fluts, and the monotone boom of the programme sellers.
I fancy I can see the ghosts of former players, taking flight and manufacturing magic from the mastery of their lithe limbs, and limitless imaginations.
I sense I’m somehow seeing the spectres of spectators, drifting through the turnstiles, repeating a similar cycle: that of returning again and again to support their team. And yet another one, that of renewing one’s enthusiasm, weekly, in the midst of relentless, recurring disappointments.
Hope dying, hope being reborn.
Eventually, the reverie gives way, and I realise it’s just the low-level thrum of my grandfather’s pocket watch, ticking away constantly within my best vest pocket, impervious to life’s ups, oblivious to it’s downs.
Then, amazingly for a low-educated (but honest) cripple like me, a small thought hatches itself from within the incubating warmth of me stovepipe. I realise, that that’s how we all need to be in these ever-changing times. Constant like a clock, anchored on a stormy sea, whilst renewing ourselves each and every day.
Well, whilst your testing those telling truths I’m limping from the scene. All that thinking has given me a right backwards headache, and what’s more, I’ve got to pick up some faggots for throwing at the market inspector later on. Fascist bully-boy!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
You are a sentient sack of bone and spittle what’s using your noggin to pontificate on these words, right now.
Me, I’ve been polishing doorknockers on and around North End Road, and building a life-size curlew out of curled-up cabbage leaves merely in order to earn a bit of spare trouser-cash.
Well, spiritually-leaning chums, in a facsimile of the great Buddhist cycle of Death and Rebirth, football is dead, only to be born again in a few short summer months’ time.
In the meantime, mid-knocker polishing, I‘ve been squatting on the Stevenage kerbside gazin’ up at that beautiful stand, idly shaking hands with my most sombre and deep-lying thoughts.
I’ve been tickling myself into believing that I can hear the matchday hubbub: the fluttering of Fluts, and the monotone boom of the programme sellers.
I fancy I can see the ghosts of former players, taking flight and manufacturing magic from the mastery of their lithe limbs, and limitless imaginations.
I sense I’m somehow seeing the spectres of spectators, drifting through the turnstiles, repeating a similar cycle: that of returning again and again to support their team. And yet another one, that of renewing one’s enthusiasm, weekly, in the midst of relentless, recurring disappointments.
Hope dying, hope being reborn.
Eventually, the reverie gives way, and I realise it’s just the low-level thrum of my grandfather’s pocket watch, ticking away constantly within my best vest pocket, impervious to life’s ups, oblivious to it’s downs.
Then, amazingly for a low-educated (but honest) cripple like me, a small thought hatches itself from within the incubating warmth of me stovepipe. I realise, that that’s how we all need to be in these ever-changing times. Constant like a clock, anchored on a stormy sea, whilst renewing ourselves each and every day.
Well, whilst your testing those telling truths I’m limping from the scene. All that thinking has given me a right backwards headache, and what’s more, I’ve got to pick up some faggots for throwing at the market inspector later on. Fascist bully-boy!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Plums & Pom-Poms
My most esteemed cottage-flavoured companions: are you ready?
Internet-ready, battle-ready, oven-ready, HD-ready, ready steady go, Ready Steady Cook, ready for action, Ready Brek, ready or not here I come. I don’t care which stripe you aspire to. Just be ready.
These last weeks I‘ve tried to rally my best black and white chums using, like, verbs and nouns and things. Now, I don’t by any stretch see myself as a cheerleader and, to be brutal, walking ‘round the market bearing a brace of pompoms would have got me a swift toe-cap up the harris many moons ago. Polish on the seat of me tufnells for the sake of a bit of cross-dressing? No thank you, Mr La Rue!
But I’m beseeching you once again to holler to the heavens.
Over a stale lardy bun just yesterday, I was pondering thoughts from within my noggin: we’ve raised ourselves up for the Reading game; we braced ourselves for the Blackburn; we got aroused for the Arse. With the refractory periods becoming ever-more exhausting can we possibly enliven ourselves for the Liverpool?
Mr Jewry (at the next stall), he says that supporting this club is like “eating plums off a barbed-wire plate”. Well, if you love this club right down to your bones and sockets, as I do, then you know all too well that the sweetness of plums in the mouth often carries a bitter aftertaste, however much you masticate.
So this next coming Saturday, mouth full or not, let’s collectively spit pips for our boys.
Indulge in whatever foreplay gets you fruity, get entangled on the terraces, and let’s come together as one. Let’s fill the Fulham air with unrestrained ejaculations, with no worrying about what stains we may leave behind.
Until then, make like monks!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Internet-ready, battle-ready, oven-ready, HD-ready, ready steady go, Ready Steady Cook, ready for action, Ready Brek, ready or not here I come. I don’t care which stripe you aspire to. Just be ready.
These last weeks I‘ve tried to rally my best black and white chums using, like, verbs and nouns and things. Now, I don’t by any stretch see myself as a cheerleader and, to be brutal, walking ‘round the market bearing a brace of pompoms would have got me a swift toe-cap up the harris many moons ago. Polish on the seat of me tufnells for the sake of a bit of cross-dressing? No thank you, Mr La Rue!
But I’m beseeching you once again to holler to the heavens.
Over a stale lardy bun just yesterday, I was pondering thoughts from within my noggin: we’ve raised ourselves up for the Reading game; we braced ourselves for the Blackburn; we got aroused for the Arse. With the refractory periods becoming ever-more exhausting can we possibly enliven ourselves for the Liverpool?
Mr Jewry (at the next stall), he says that supporting this club is like “eating plums off a barbed-wire plate”. Well, if you love this club right down to your bones and sockets, as I do, then you know all too well that the sweetness of plums in the mouth often carries a bitter aftertaste, however much you masticate.
So this next coming Saturday, mouth full or not, let’s collectively spit pips for our boys.
Indulge in whatever foreplay gets you fruity, get entangled on the terraces, and let’s come together as one. Let’s fill the Fulham air with unrestrained ejaculations, with no worrying about what stains we may leave behind.
Until then, make like monks!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Friday, 27 April 2007
Kennedy & Knock-Knees
“The future’s made of virtual insanity.” That’s what he said.
This morning, all of a sudden like, whilst deep in a relegation-centred reverie, an unseen force lifted me up on to me tippy-toes. Violently. This sudden growth spurt was not by virtue of eating a fistful of baby spinach for breakfast, but as a result of Mr Jewry (at the next stall) a-twisting my ear‘ole between his thumb and forefinger whilst simultaneously grinding a whelk into the North End Road tarmac with the heel of his superannuated Loakes. Obstreperous bumpkin!
“The future’s made of virtual insanity”, he ejaculated whilst performing this grievous act.
Now, I may be little more than an honest cripple with a crafty aspect, but whatever the future is, in fact, made of, my immediate one will see me knock-kneeing it up the Holloway Road this coming Sunday afternoon. Not even Mr. Jay Kay is gonna stop me from doing that!
Of necessity, I shall be decidedly post-prandial, having had an apron full of belly timber, pre bully-off. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to cheer in the face of overwhelming odds on an empty stomach. P’raps I should eat the form book for lunch! That’ll be a superior remedy chums, killing, as it were, two sparrows with one stone.
Now, my most admirable black-and-white comrades, once inside that unholy corporate dustbowl, we may well be little more than the equivalent of a few sprats in a Sperm Whale’s gullet, but that’s no excuse for being shrinking scaredy-cats, or sickly, weak-limbed lightweights. We need gallons of spunk, spine, spirit, and steel. We must merge together, into a kind of seething amorphous mass, and will ourselves to become more than the sum of our parts. To make a sound that science can’t contain.
Whatever the flavour of the on-pitch shenanigans, however grisly in nature the goings-on in front of us, we must continue to rage regardless. Like oaks in a gale, like clocks in a thunderstorm.
We must inspire our fragile heroes to step out from under the shadow of underachievement, to liberate themselves, and to shake hands with greatness.
Because as we all know, friends: the mediocre are many but the prime number few.
So prepare yourself, one and all. As Mr. Kennedy may have once said: “ask not what your club can do for you; ask what you can do for your club.”
Now is the time to do it: let’s set the day on fire!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
This morning, all of a sudden like, whilst deep in a relegation-centred reverie, an unseen force lifted me up on to me tippy-toes. Violently. This sudden growth spurt was not by virtue of eating a fistful of baby spinach for breakfast, but as a result of Mr Jewry (at the next stall) a-twisting my ear‘ole between his thumb and forefinger whilst simultaneously grinding a whelk into the North End Road tarmac with the heel of his superannuated Loakes. Obstreperous bumpkin!
“The future’s made of virtual insanity”, he ejaculated whilst performing this grievous act.
Now, I may be little more than an honest cripple with a crafty aspect, but whatever the future is, in fact, made of, my immediate one will see me knock-kneeing it up the Holloway Road this coming Sunday afternoon. Not even Mr. Jay Kay is gonna stop me from doing that!
Of necessity, I shall be decidedly post-prandial, having had an apron full of belly timber, pre bully-off. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to cheer in the face of overwhelming odds on an empty stomach. P’raps I should eat the form book for lunch! That’ll be a superior remedy chums, killing, as it were, two sparrows with one stone.
Now, my most admirable black-and-white comrades, once inside that unholy corporate dustbowl, we may well be little more than the equivalent of a few sprats in a Sperm Whale’s gullet, but that’s no excuse for being shrinking scaredy-cats, or sickly, weak-limbed lightweights. We need gallons of spunk, spine, spirit, and steel. We must merge together, into a kind of seething amorphous mass, and will ourselves to become more than the sum of our parts. To make a sound that science can’t contain.
Whatever the flavour of the on-pitch shenanigans, however grisly in nature the goings-on in front of us, we must continue to rage regardless. Like oaks in a gale, like clocks in a thunderstorm.
We must inspire our fragile heroes to step out from under the shadow of underachievement, to liberate themselves, and to shake hands with greatness.
Because as we all know, friends: the mediocre are many but the prime number few.
So prepare yourself, one and all. As Mr. Kennedy may have once said: “ask not what your club can do for you; ask what you can do for your club.”
Now is the time to do it: let’s set the day on fire!
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Monday, 23 April 2007
Churchill & Consummation
Holy unconsummated desire, Fulham-minded mates of mine!
What was last Saturday just gone all about then? Hatfuls of sunshine, but precious little plunder.
It was what Mr Churchill might have called: “a fatal neutrality”.
To labour my metaphor from last week just a touch longer, Saturday was like romancing the woman of your dreams into bed, only to find out that it was your sister, and that the law of the land prevented you from progressing. Your pistol’s cocked, but the target’s moved.
I don’t know what we do with ourselves for the next week now. I can’t take much more of this 11-a-side hole-and-corner intrigue. I reckon Mr Dante could conjure up a more welcoming retreat than that which we have to occupy over the next few days.
I‘ve already spent a whole day moping around the church, whilst Ma freshened up the font with some tallow and beeswax. I was supposed to be helping her, placing some fresh rushes up the old rector’s passage, but my noggin just wasn’t working proper.
I kept drifting off into these spacious, left-handed reveries, where Mr Sanchez was forcing the players to undergo a kind of penitence, thrashing each other with fresh leeks, and poking each other in the eyes with sticks of celery. I know what your thinking: I’d been tea-leafing magic mushrooms from the hippy fella in the market. The ones he reckons are capable of making you see people what, like, aren’t really there. Well no, my suspicious ones, I hadn’t, but I reckon some of our players might have indulged a touch, what with their strange habit of passing the ball into places where the sober amongst us can’t see a dicky bird.
Anyway, you know I’d swap a skip full of shin plasters and the seat of my smartest puppy-tooth tufnells for us to survive this current episode. And I know you know.
“Wars are not won by evacuations”, the great man said. And I’m of a mind to agree with him.
In the meantime chums, lets keep our collective peckers up, and our upper lips resolutely stiffened.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
What was last Saturday just gone all about then? Hatfuls of sunshine, but precious little plunder.
It was what Mr Churchill might have called: “a fatal neutrality”.
To labour my metaphor from last week just a touch longer, Saturday was like romancing the woman of your dreams into bed, only to find out that it was your sister, and that the law of the land prevented you from progressing. Your pistol’s cocked, but the target’s moved.
I don’t know what we do with ourselves for the next week now. I can’t take much more of this 11-a-side hole-and-corner intrigue. I reckon Mr Dante could conjure up a more welcoming retreat than that which we have to occupy over the next few days.
I‘ve already spent a whole day moping around the church, whilst Ma freshened up the font with some tallow and beeswax. I was supposed to be helping her, placing some fresh rushes up the old rector’s passage, but my noggin just wasn’t working proper.
I kept drifting off into these spacious, left-handed reveries, where Mr Sanchez was forcing the players to undergo a kind of penitence, thrashing each other with fresh leeks, and poking each other in the eyes with sticks of celery. I know what your thinking: I’d been tea-leafing magic mushrooms from the hippy fella in the market. The ones he reckons are capable of making you see people what, like, aren’t really there. Well no, my suspicious ones, I hadn’t, but I reckon some of our players might have indulged a touch, what with their strange habit of passing the ball into places where the sober amongst us can’t see a dicky bird.
Anyway, you know I’d swap a skip full of shin plasters and the seat of my smartest puppy-tooth tufnells for us to survive this current episode. And I know you know.
“Wars are not won by evacuations”, the great man said. And I’m of a mind to agree with him.
In the meantime chums, lets keep our collective peckers up, and our upper lips resolutely stiffened.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Tragedies & Trollopes
Thursday-shaped greetings, Fulham friends.
It may, indeed, be Thursday, but I say: enough of this dilly-dandering! The hour is, is it not, at hand. Or at least it will be come 3.00 this next Saturday coming.
A tall, thin gentleman from Ireland once mused: “The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes over life and death and other tuppeny aches”
Meanwhile, some shorter, less thin, and marginally less austere fellows once expounded: “Tragedy – when the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on.”
Whatever the great poets might have said about it, the question currently buzzin’ ‘round my noggin, Cottaging associates, is this one: are we about to enter into a slow-time waltz with Lady Tragedy? Are we about to slip ‘tween the bedclothes with Dame Disaster? Come Saturday tea-time will be collectively fingering the gusset of Madame Misfortune?
Or, and this is the twenty-bob poser, will we be gang-banging the Trollope of Triumph?
And if we are, will we, post-coitus, be gorging ourselves on the victuals of victory: to be specific, will we be eating SW6 out of turnip crudités and hare-pie scramble come Saturday evening?
I don’t know what you lot drape your languid frames in of a Sunday, but I, for one, don’t want to be spending this coming next one, mooching around the North End Road in my mourning jewellery, considering the pros and cons of watching our crestfallen, emasculated, black and whiters playing 22-man kickaround against Burnley next season.
Therefore, and to be perfectly blunt, now is not the time for indulging in fruitless chin music, or pondering how you narrowly missed a career as Yannick Noah’s foot masseuse. We need to have our eyes lined up on the prize, strutting shoulder to shoulder down the Stevenage, buttocks taut, and chins a-juttin’.
As Mr Dickens might say “Give it mouth!”
For one brief interlude, let’s put the inexpressible, unavoidable, malaise of human existence from our minds, and make it a glorious day, filled with sunshine and plunder.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
It may, indeed, be Thursday, but I say: enough of this dilly-dandering! The hour is, is it not, at hand. Or at least it will be come 3.00 this next Saturday coming.
A tall, thin gentleman from Ireland once mused: “The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes over life and death and other tuppeny aches”
Meanwhile, some shorter, less thin, and marginally less austere fellows once expounded: “Tragedy – when the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on.”
Whatever the great poets might have said about it, the question currently buzzin’ ‘round my noggin, Cottaging associates, is this one: are we about to enter into a slow-time waltz with Lady Tragedy? Are we about to slip ‘tween the bedclothes with Dame Disaster? Come Saturday tea-time will be collectively fingering the gusset of Madame Misfortune?
Or, and this is the twenty-bob poser, will we be gang-banging the Trollope of Triumph?
And if we are, will we, post-coitus, be gorging ourselves on the victuals of victory: to be specific, will we be eating SW6 out of turnip crudités and hare-pie scramble come Saturday evening?
I don’t know what you lot drape your languid frames in of a Sunday, but I, for one, don’t want to be spending this coming next one, mooching around the North End Road in my mourning jewellery, considering the pros and cons of watching our crestfallen, emasculated, black and whiters playing 22-man kickaround against Burnley next season.
Therefore, and to be perfectly blunt, now is not the time for indulging in fruitless chin music, or pondering how you narrowly missed a career as Yannick Noah’s foot masseuse. We need to have our eyes lined up on the prize, strutting shoulder to shoulder down the Stevenage, buttocks taut, and chins a-juttin’.
As Mr Dickens might say “Give it mouth!”
For one brief interlude, let’s put the inexpressible, unavoidable, malaise of human existence from our minds, and make it a glorious day, filled with sunshine and plunder.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
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