this ain't cricket

The Hotspur/Wizard

 

I

 

when we lived over the arse end of Lambeth Walk that’s me my brother Chris & poor Westy above us dwelt a French onion seller the real deal every morning bar Sunday the geezer donned cape & beret boarded the owl pushbike & pedaled down Embankment to New Covent Garden where he bought his strings of golden Spanish balls then crossed the river into the narrow curving streets & mews of Pimlico or Kensington & Chelsea to flog them off to well-heeled patrons of the culinary arts he & his boyfriend a carpenter or plumber I forget which went on occupying the top flat long after we’d moved on to Camberwell the final remaining terrace of Lambeth Walk site of the 1930s dancehall craze had been condemned decades before but should have been preserved a travesty the whole area the demesne of the Black Prince latterly Charley Windsor’s that couple hung on there till the bulldozers moved in we had an argument one time about music Iggy Pop’s The Passenger Remote Control by the Clash or Elvis Costello Watching The Detectives it was far too loud the year Punk came of age 1978 even so we were inconsiderate little shits while the Frenchman & the English guy were showing their age a tad thankfully we were reconciled somehow & after that had friendly chats on the narrow staircase behind the boarded up paintshop on the ground-floor you accessed the flats above from Sellon Mews via a hole in the wall door in the backyard oh now I remember how we became friends Chris & Westy shared the large rear bedroom which had a shocking damp patch so we swallowed our pride & asked the couple if we could climb through their kitchen window onto the roof of the room to clear the gutter out a hairy operation & only partially successful because the drop into the backyard below was fifteen maybe twenty foot & me with vertigo so afterwards we started chatting now & then & once I asked them why they chose to live in London wasn’t Paris friendlier & supposedly more tolerant don’t forget back in the 70s gays were picked on night & day by stupid cops & other thugs who thought themselves duty bound to beat up any folks they didn’t understand when the guy said something I’ve heard several times from French people never mind the exile of Oscar Wilde in gay nineties Paris or the Jazz Age in fact the UK was good because the people didn’t care what went on behind closed doors so long as you kept yourself to yourself in public which strikes me now as true of most places but then again how the hell should I know

 

 

II

 

the 10 40 Machine performs ten billion sums in forty seconds only it’s less a calculator than a code syphon whose human operators Gül Redmond and Deuce Kaplan are agents of the WPO that’s the World Peace Organisation who can access all kindsa data sources like the UN World Bank Internet Europol private phone calls & the top ten multinational corps plus various dark net communities & constantly analyse such risks to world peace as day & night the machine monitors a googleplex of texts & images from all four corners & many dives or holes pinpointing individuals groups & zones that pose risks once alerted Redmond & Kaplan go into action setting up the 10 40 to catch the prime movers usually red handed state or private actors bent on causing havoc I pitch my treatment of a pilot episode to the Acme Media Corp along with theme tune & outlines for Series One to Four only to find the exact same idea has come up endless times so it’s get thee back in the queue buster don’t you think greater minds than yours have been working on this half their miserable lives so go home sonny stick your headphones & kettle on cool out on Schubert or Mahler you sad faced schmuck & leave serious entertainment to your elders & betters oh puck

 

III

 

if you would have your cake & eat it note the use of anaesthesia in this procedure a tot of the craythur seldom goes awry but wary of slapping one’s forehead comes with risks of its own ahem the operation itself couldn’t be simpler yet for many the first step is neither rosy nor a reflex action therefore in such cases recourse to remedial therapies can yield results remember you are not sowing oats wild or otherwise but taking part in an exchange perhaps the oldest human activity on the planet steady as she goes me lad & by the way should it be a purse of coin and not a folder of notes the same applies whether it’s reaching into a handbag or the pocket of your jeans matters little be bold & generous to thyself employ both hands if you have them and never take your eyes off the job it’s the start that determines the finish as much as how you follow through now don’t be coy though having said that neither brash nor offhand flashing the cash is only obscene in the eyes of the jealous or those who covert others’ take your time be decisive open sesame needn’t pass your lips smooth rather than slick movements will keep attention to a minimum don’t empty the contents it’s better to be short at first than overpay perhaps the seller will be happy with less when they see the colour as it were of your dough count under the breath hold the receptacle firmly while dispensing the loot & above all try not to cry or make other tell-tale noises while the exchange is under way these are the conventions observed in public how you behave at home is your own affair but during the handover there will be a moment’s pause when neither side is in complete possession either of the goods services or payment legally & aesthetically it must be so enjoy

 

 

IV

 

when I was 9ish there was Peter Grimes at our school the Wild Man of Afghanistan he was not but sorta played togga barefoot & we were like The Leftovers who no one had chosen for their teams so the dozen or so of us still kicking our heels at the end of the picking would have the most fantastic knockabout games no teachers to ref with Peter Grimes when he got the ball running towards the goal with a native cry and no one could stop him short of a foul tackle which never occurred to us complete young gentlemen only playing for the hell of it couldn’t bring a fellow down in his joy cos everyone had their moments in our games so Grimes & his little brother came to school one day in moulded plastic shoes the like of which I’d never seen and wouldn’t see again until decades later when I came to Turkey they were almost toy shoes never could they pass for real lace ups but despite that had the impression of brogues with fake eyes for laces knots and the tip of a tongue peeking out the top so at break times we’d play footie with a tennis ball in the yard and because we were only five or six kids it’s be goalie-stick or goalie-in-and-out but this day Peter Grimes said he couldn’t play on account of the shoes which wouldn’t take the punishment moaned their dad would be angry if they came home with them already worn out after one day and I was cut to the quick in a second suddenly perceived the whole poverty trap syndrome because Pete and his brother came from a poor family everyone knew that because their clothes were never quite new or smart and they had free school meals but I could see how their dad had forked out on these plastic shoes presumably because they couldn’t afford real shoes but they would soon fall apart anyway leaving them back where they started so we joined in a big game of Al Alley-O and still Peter Grimes was gingerly taking care not to scuff the uppers or skid on the thin soles of his plastic shoes and it’s really odd because for a moment I wished I was poor I suppose I was jealous of the sympathy I felt for him kids really are screwed up creatures always trying to get a handle on what’s going down

No Bones!