My fairest Cottaging cousins, I trust you’ll be dragging your exquisite corpses out of your local brandy shops and joining me this coming Friday, as we set about shooting a few hoops?
See, following a well-meaning, but rather bewildering ear-bending about shepherds’ bushes, public conveniences, and back alleys, Ma’s granted me the keys to the city (well, the White one, anyways).
It’s a must-see, ain’t it, what with Mr Sanchez recently enjoying one of Chairman Mo’s glorious golden showers. Such largesse, deployed as it has been with keen managerial acumen, and bullish business dealing, has provided us with a spanking set of new players to ogle. They might even be good!
The leading question at this particular time is, will we be parading cheeky, simian-featured Mr Cook in front of his only recently ex-employers? Won’t that be peculiar for the fellow. It’ll be a bit like toddling off to Mr Tjinder’s corner shop to buy a stale tuppeny starver, only to meet yourself on your doorstep upon your return.
So, yes, I’ll be attending, and it’s a bet safe as houses that my Crombie pockets are gonna be packed with kiwis and bruised plums, ripe for lobbing. I’ll even be using my newest silk fogle as a slingshot, if the locals get uppity.
And once my intimate fruitery has been exhausted, I’ll be pelting all those grimy-collared steptoes with turns of phrase, figures of speech and all manner of pithy rejoinders.
It’s gonna be a massacre of thesaurus-type proportions!
In fact, if you keep your glazzes open, post-victory, you might witness me fizzing past the old Palais (R.I.P.), hanging grim and death-like to the bumper of a speeding saloon, with a set of sofa casters lashed to my brogues.
I need to race home and retire early, see, as I’ve a promise to keep to Miss Wetherby (next-door-but-one) on Saturday morning; she’s asked me to rake over her smallholding. I don’t know what cribbins that entails, but she said that me tufnells could come undone, and me hair could end up parted on the opposite side to when I got up.
With such queerness to consider, I’ll see you all on Friday.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Monday, 9 July 2007
Tiling & Tartlets
Well, well, and well, black and white brothers and sisters!
Although our transfer window is open, it seems as though almost no one and his uncle wants to defenestrate themselves in our direction!
So, while Mr Sanchez continues to schlep across the football desert in search of some footballing nomads what, like, might actually want to play for us, I’ve been on my knees at Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one), up to my cuff links in grout.
As a favour for letting me finger the knobs on her old Bakelite whenever our boys’ away matches are being broadcast on The National Wireless, I’ve been half-tiling her scullery.
In black and white, of course.
Thing is, pals, whenever the aroma of her freshly-baked lemon-zest tartlets mingles with the pungent tang of tile-paste, I can feel myself going giddy sideways. I start to think I’m in the changing rooms at the Cottage, and before I know it I’m smearing adhesive all over me little limbs like linament, and executing star jumps, banging me bonce on the bare light bulb! It’s like playing truant from common sense school.
It’s hard work, and sure to leave me on the far side of fagged, but it beats flogging hand-made knick-knacks on Ma’s stall, and that’s not even the brother-in-law of a lie.
Anyways, I’m sure that soon enough, some of Mr Harrods Al Fayed’s hard-earned tourist cash will be flowing out from one of his offshores, in exchange for another willing new recruit.
Until then, turn the corner for SW6, and do-si-do your partners.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Although our transfer window is open, it seems as though almost no one and his uncle wants to defenestrate themselves in our direction!
So, while Mr Sanchez continues to schlep across the football desert in search of some footballing nomads what, like, might actually want to play for us, I’ve been on my knees at Miss Wetherby’s (next door but one), up to my cuff links in grout.
As a favour for letting me finger the knobs on her old Bakelite whenever our boys’ away matches are being broadcast on The National Wireless, I’ve been half-tiling her scullery.
In black and white, of course.
Thing is, pals, whenever the aroma of her freshly-baked lemon-zest tartlets mingles with the pungent tang of tile-paste, I can feel myself going giddy sideways. I start to think I’m in the changing rooms at the Cottage, and before I know it I’m smearing adhesive all over me little limbs like linament, and executing star jumps, banging me bonce on the bare light bulb! It’s like playing truant from common sense school.
It’s hard work, and sure to leave me on the far side of fagged, but it beats flogging hand-made knick-knacks on Ma’s stall, and that’s not even the brother-in-law of a lie.
Anyways, I’m sure that soon enough, some of Mr Harrods Al Fayed’s hard-earned tourist cash will be flowing out from one of his offshores, in exchange for another willing new recruit.
Until then, turn the corner for SW6, and do-si-do your partners.
Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Hunger & Hallucinations
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!
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
