Stanley selected the thigh bone of a cow and tossed it into the hopper. A second later it made a satisfying clunk, crunch sound as it hit the steel blades. Satisfying to Stanley, that is, as he had imagined the bone he had just dispatched was the thigh bone of the Unibond League team central defender who had crocked one of the Frogley Town team in their recent friendly.
Clunk, crunch again, as the shin bone of a pig hit the blades, this time the shin bone of the Unibond League left wing back who had tackled Frogley striker Darren Briggs just a little too vigorously for Stanley's liking.
Clunk, crunch yet again, this time a cow's skull, in Stanley's imagination the skull of the referee who had refused Frogley a blatant penalty in the same match. The official had raised his whistle to his lips but hadn't blown. Stanley could see the blind bugger now, whistle to his lips but no sound coming from it. But now he could hear the whistle. Strange? There it was again. Then he heard a voice.
“Are you bloody deaf, Stanley, or what!”
Stanley was amazed. How did the referee know his name? He shook his head to clear it, then dismissed the incident from his mind and made to pick up another bone. As he did he saw his foreman through the corner of his eye. He turned to him. The foreman did not look best pleased.
“Stanleeee!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
“Bert?”
“Shit a brick Stanley I've been stood here whistling and shouting at you for the past five minutes!”
“Sorry Bert, I were....”
The foreman butted in. “Daydreaming about that bloody football team of yours, I know what you were doing.” He calmed down a little, then said, “Mr Price wants to see you.”
Stanley's jaw dropped. “What?”
“You heard.”
Stanley's panic mechanism immediately went into overdrive. What on earth did Price want to see him for?
Stanley knew only too well that whenever Price sent for someone, especially a lowly factory-hand, it invariably meant the sack. What had he done to deserve it? He racked his brains. On a few occasions recently a piece of bone had shot back out of the Bone Pulveriser's hopper when he'd been loading it, and on one such occasion an errant lump of bone had chosen to spew back out of the hopper as Joe Price happened to be passing and had whistled narrowly past his head. But I can't be blamed for that, Stanley reasoned, because I'd reported the fault when it first happened.
He thought some more. Maybe it was because he'd pretended not to notice the bit of bone nearly hitting Price? Yes, that would be it. Price would have expected him to jump down off the platform and apologise to him, or at least ask him if he was all right after nearly being brained by a lump of bone. All right then, if that was the case he would just have to convince Price he hadn't seen the incident, because he certainly didn't want the sack, not now, by heck he didn't, especially with the new football season about to start, I mean how would he manage? What about the Town, how would he pay the printers for the Development Fund Prize Draw tickets?
He imagined what the scenario would be when he faced Price across his office table. “Well it were like this Mr Price....” No, take your cap off. And wring it in your hands like Willie Mossop did in that picture with Charles Laughton. That's better. “Well it were like this, Mr Price....and thank you for giving me t' chance to explain, Mr Price....very much, Mr Price....but I'd no idea you see, no idea at all, I didn't know a thing about it, I didn't see a thing.
“Bollocks, Sutton.”
“Yes Mr Price.”
Yes, that was how it would likely be. That was definitely how....
“Are you going to stand there all day, Stanley?” The foreman was getting annoyed, he couldn't stand here all day, he had his job to do or Price would be after his neck too.
Stanley wasn't far away from tears. “But….but I haven't done anything, Bert.”
The foreman however had had enough. He took a threatening step towards Stanley. “Or have I got to bloody well drag you there?”
Stanley instinctively grabbed hold of the rails surrounding the platform in case the foreman should be as good as his word. But he knew he would have to go eventually. Better to get it over with. Forlornly he let go off the handrail and walked down the steps of the platform, putting his fate in the hands of God. However he wasn't very hopeful, God not having troubled himself overmuch on Stanley's behalf up to now.
*
Donny had bought a new suit especially for the occasion. It was cream worsted, the finest that Next could supply. To complement it he wore a pink shirt, open at the neck so that he showed a little attractive chest hair, cream loafers, his fake Rolex wristwatch, and, of course, his gold medallion. He knew he looked good, and on the short walk from the car park of the Imperial, Frogley’s leading hotel, to the entrance of the hotel's Moorland Cocktail Bar, this was verified for him when he received a loud wolf whistle. He would have preferred it if the compliment had come from the lips of a pretty young woman rather than a young man with spots, but in Donny's view that didn't detract from the whistler's opinion of his appearance one little bit.
He breezed into the bar. At twelve noon there were only about half a dozen people in; two ladies who lunch, who at the moment were two ladies who drank glasses of chardonnay and slagged off their friends; two young men who looked like they could be homosexuals, seated close together in a dark corner sipping pina coladas; a man who had the look of somebody who has done something wrong but hasn't yet been found out; and a very large man in a very large suit which quite possibly contained as much flannel as Michael Parkinson.
The only other customer in the bar was a man with a briefcase seated on one of the barstools, more than likely a sales rep thought Donny. He was chatting to the young woman behind the bar. Donny couldn't blame him. She was gorgeous. Long black hair and short black dress, always a lethal combination.
The dress showed off the girl’s figure without at all flaunting it, the neckline cut so that you could only just see the start of her cleavage. Very classy, thought Donny, as he casually draped himself on a bar stool at the opposite end of the bar to where the sales rep and the girl were chatting.
A moment later the girl noticed him. She immediately walked over to him and smiled a welcome. “Can I get you something, sir?”
Donny could smile too. “A large brandy and coke, please.” Then, with only a trace of magnanimity - whilst wanting her to know that he always did this sort of thing he didn't want her thinking he was a bighead - “And whatever you're drinking.”
“Thanks, I'll have a gin and tonic.”
Donny watched her as she made the drinks. She was a corker and no mistake, she really was.
“I'm Big Donny Donnelly, by the way,” he said. “But then you probably recognised me.”
She looked him up and down. “No.”
Donny was surprised, but unfazed. “And you are?”
“Linda”
“Lovely name.”
“Thanks.” She placed the drinks on the bar.
Donny picked up the brandy and coke, silently toasted her, and took a drink. “So, how do you like working behind a bar, Linda?”
“It keeps me out of trouble.”
He put his glass down. “Guess what I do?”
“I've no idea.”
“I do the same as Ron Atkinson.”
“Sweat a lot?”
“What? No.” Donny put the poor girl right. “No, I'm the manager of Frogley Town.”
“Oh, football,” she said, with a distinct lack of interest.
Donny had interest enough for both of them. “Yes, we're going to be knocking on the door this season, Linda.”
“I hope they let you in.” She smiled and sipped her gin and tonic.
“And quite probably lifting the big one.”
“I hope it's not too heavy for you.”
Donny looked at her sharply. Was she taking the piss? No. Why should she? No, it was just that she was a woman; she just didn't understand football expressions such as knockin
g on the door and lifting the big one. She was still smiling at him. Good. He jumped in at the deep end. “You're a very attractive girl, Linda.”
“Thank you.”
“A very attractive girl indeed. How would you like to be my mistress?”
“How would you like to fuck off?”
As her reply seemed fairly definite, and her face suggested that a house call from Harold Shipman might have been more preferable, Donny quickly finished his drink and left.
*
The average Frogley Town footballer exhibited all the arrested development of Ant and Dec, and as the team sat in an around the centre circle of the Offal Road stadium taking a break in training their conversation reflected this.
“I reckon our entire squad is worth about as much as a clinker hanging from David Beckham's bum cleavage hair,” opined Gary Moggs, the Town's first choice goalkeeper.
“David Beckham won't have clinkers,” said Darren Briggs. “Posh wouldn't allow it.”
“No she wouldn't put up with him having clinkers, a woman like her,” agreed midfielder Gareth Rock. Originally from the Rhonda Valley, Rock had a soft Welsh accent and a soft Welsh head. “I mean....I mean well she's....you know, well she’s posh, isn't she boy.”
“I bet he does have clinkers,” argued Teddy Links. “I mean stands to reason, playing football, shooting TV commercials, modelling, I mean poor bugger won't have time to wipe his arse, will he.”
Higgs looked puzzled. “How have you worked it out we're only worth one of David Beckham's clinkers then, Moggsy?”
“If he has any,” Rock chipped in.
“If he has any,” Higgs conceded.
“Well I reckon our squad is worth about five hundred grand,” said Moggs. “And Beckham must be worth hundred million quid. So we're worth one two hundredth of him, and a clinker is about one two hundredth the size of somebody.”
“Not the soize of one of your clinkers Moggsy,” pointed out Hereward Stock, the central defender from central England. “If it was the soize of one of your clinkers you'd have to modify your calculations more than somewhat.”
“I'll modify your nose more than somewhat if you don't shut it, you Brummie tosspot,” threatened Moggs.
*
Lying down near the centre spot Danny Crooks was with Carl Cook.
“So anyway,” said Crooks, “there was Paul Gascoigne driving down Tottenham High Road the week after he'd been transferred from Newcastle United to Spurs, and he pulls up at the traffic lights. And this bloke wearing a Newcastle United shirt taps on his window. Gazza winds the window down and the bloke says 'You're a twat you, Gascoigne, leaving Newcastle for Spurs'. Gazza winds the window back up, the lights turn green, he drives off. Just down the road there's another set of traffic lights on red. Gazza pulls up and he sees in his rear mirror the same bloke in the Newcastle United shirt running after him. He catches up with Gazza's car and taps on the window, and Gazza, thinking the bloke has perhaps realised he's gone a bit over the top and wants to apologise, winds the window down again, and the bloke says ‘You're worse than a twat, Gascoigne, leaving Newcastle for Spurs, you're a twatting bastard.' Gazza winds the window back up, the lights turn green, he drives off. Just down the road there's another set of traffic lights on red. Gazza pulls up and he sees in his rear mirror the bloke in the Newcastle United shirt still running after him. Gazza thinks, 'Oh bollocks to this', so he drops his trousers, and just as the bloke is about to tap on the window Gazza winds it down and sticks his bare arse out. And the bloke looks at Gazza’s bare arse and says, 'And as for you, Beardsley’....”
Cook looked puzzled. “I don't get it.”
“Well Gazza stuck his bare arse out of the window and the bloke saw it and he said 'And as for you, Beardsley’....”
“What, you mean like he had a picture of Peter Beardsley painted on his arse?”
“What? No. The bloke thought it was Beardsley.”
“He thought it was Beardsley's arse?”
“No! Beardsley's face.”
“He thought Gazza's arse was Beardsley's face?”
“Yes!”
Cook thought about it for a moment. “Why would he think it was Beardsley when he knew it was Gazza who was in the car?”
“Because Beardsley's such an ugly bastard, isn't he. He’s so ugly that when Gazza stuck his arse out the bloke thought it was Beardsley's face.”
“So Gazza's got an ugly arse, you mean?”
“What? No. Well yes, he might have I suppose….Oh piss off, Cooky.”
Cook reflected on the joke for a moment before saying. “His wife's got a nice arse. Gazza's. His ex. Cheryl.”
“Yes, she has hasn't she.”
*
A little to their right Steve Parks turned to Trevor Hanks. “See if there's any mud in my hair would you, Hanksy?”
Hanks leaned over. “Let's have a butchers then.”
As Parks lowered his head so Hanks could get a better look his long blonde hair cascaded down, forming a curtain in front of his face.
The majority of today's footballers favour short hair, and many no hair at all. Not Parks. Parks knew that when you lose your hair you lose your beauty along with it, just as surely as Samson lost his strength the day that bitch Delilah visited his bedroom and gave him a number one while he was sleeping. David Ginola had it right. Ginola had known the score.
To prove the point Parks had once taken a pair of scissors to a photograph of the French international and cut all his hair off. In Parks' opinion it took away at least seventy per cent of Ginola's Gallic good looks.
The Blackburn midfielder Robbie Savage was another case in point. Deprive him of his flowing blonde mane and what you were left with would be more likely to frighten a child rather than attract a bit of fanny.
He himself acknowledged that he wasn't much to look at, verging on decidedly dodgy, without his long hair, but with it...phwhooaaaaah, Parksy could pull with the best of them. Which is why he cherished it to such an extent that if a highwayman were ever to accost him and demand of him 'Your money or your hair!' Parks would have immediately emptied his pockets of all his cash and probably have invited his assailant to accompany him to the nearest hole-in-the-wall for a top up.
When you love something as much as Parks loved his hair you tend to lavish attention on it, and in this regard Parks couldn't have lavished more attention on his hair if it had been Farrah Fawcett's hair in her Charley's Angel days. In fact it looked not unlike Farrah Fawcett's hair in her Charley's Angel days. Except that her hair was just blonde, it didn't have tawny streaks in it like his. And it wasn't as long or as wavy.
Parks spent sixty pounds on the maintenance of his hair every week, not counting the cost of transport to Manchester, the nearest place to Frogley that had a hairdresser who had sufficient tonsorial skills to be trusted with his crowning glory.
“Can you see anything?” he now asked Hanks, anxiously. If in fact there was some mud in his fair Barnet Fair it would be a disaster; it meant he would have to wash it and ruin his blow wave, and his next appointment in Manchester was still three days away.
“There's a bird's nest in here,” said Hanks, peering closely into Parks’ hair. “Sparrow I think.”
“Do you want a thump?” said Parks. “Just tell me.”
Hanks gave his colleague’s hair a final once over. “No, looks all right to me. Well as far as not having any mud in it is concerned,” he added. “Other than that it looks a bleeding sight.”
Parks ignored the jibe. “If it keeps being muddy like this I'm going to start wearing a shower cap.”
“A shower cap? Do they allow you to do that in the Coca-Cola League?”
“Well I don't see why not.” Parks reasoned. “I mean that bloke who played for Southend, what was he called, Sodje, he wore a bandana.”
Hanks looked puzzled. “A banana isn't going to keep much mud off your hair, Parksy.”
Parks looked at his team mate in disbelief. “A bandana, bollock bra
in, a bandana. Like a turban thing.”
“Oh,” said Hanks.
Such was the chit chat that morning which passed for conversation amongst the Frogley town squad.
*
Martin Sneed, the sports correspondent of the Frogley Advertiser, a tall, thin man with the jaundiced look of someone who has failed to achieve his ambitions, sat down at his computer, adjusted his trademark polka-dot bow tie and prepared to pen the first article he'd written about Frogley Town since the end of the last football season. As in previous years it would be a piece about the Town's prospects for the coming campaign.
Sneed was in a good mood today, having had a little tickle on the gee gees at last night's race meeting at Pontefract, thanks to information from an inside source, so he didn’t intend to be too hard on the town's football team this time round. Notwithstanding that he was a newspaperman, and whatever he wrote would have to be the truth. But he now had extra money in his pocket and the sun was shining at last, so he saw no reason why on this occasion the truth couldn't be written whilst his usual iron fist was sheathed in a velvet glove.
He already had his headline and now quickly typed it in. 'Whither Frogley Town?' Then he added 'By Martin Sneed, The Man They Can't Shut Up.' Although he knew that his by-line would be included automatically, Sneed always typed it in as he liked to see it written down in black and white as it served to remind him of what he was all about, journalistically speaking.
He considered the headline for a moment. Could it be improved on, made more meaningful perhaps? How about 'What's In Store For Frogley Town This Season?' which meant exactly the same but would be more easily understood by the sort of people who read the Advertiser, half of whom probably wouldn't know what the word 'whither' meant.
He quickly came to a decision. No, leave it as it was. Educate the buggers. Better still, why not make the headline into a pun? 'Wither Frogley Town?' Because that's what would continue to happen to the club, or his name wasn't Martin Sneed, The Man They Can't Shut Up. The football team had been withering for years, why should this year be any different? However he dispensed with the idea as quickly as he’d thought of it, reasoning that if the readership of the Advertiser didn't know what 'whither' meant then they certainly wouldn't understand the cleverness and subtlety of replacing it with the word 'wither'. Besides, hadn't he decided to go easy on the Town this once?
Football Crazy Page 3