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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!