Wednesday, August 25, 2021

I Love Me (Who Do You Love?) by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1994)



The red-headed winger just laughed and placed the ball in the quarter-circle. He wiped his hands on the arse of his shorts before setting up to take the kick. He wasn't happy, though, and removed three blades of grass from in front of the ball and two from behind it.

'YOU WATCHING HIM. YA USELESS BASTARD EVER HEARD OF TIME-WASTING?'

The linesman, though, wasn't listening to Andy, he was too busy concentrating on the jostling in the box. Should anyone fall down clutching their face, the linesman would be able to describe the incident and point out the guilty party. That was what got you mentioned. 'The linesman spotted an elbow ... After consultation with his linesman ...' Cause if you get mentioned folk got to hear of you, and if they heard of you they might just remember you when it came round to deciding who would be going over to officiate at the World Cup, the World Cup in the good old US of A. Yeah, spotting one of those was worth a million times more than whether or not you seen all those stupid wee deflections the crowd seemed to get so worked up about.

The red-headed winger was wiping his hands again. This time, though, he finished by pulling his shorts right up two reveal two fleshy, freckled buttocks.
And then:

i) Andy went spare.

ii) The red-headed winger swung over a head-high bullet which was met on the six yard line by his centre-half.

iii) In this, his 792nd appearance for the club, a club record, the centre-half scored his first ever competitive goal.

iv) The linesman, displaying a turn of pace somewhat at odds with his previous ability to keep up with the game, pelted back to the half-line.

v) The red-headed winger turned and made an ugly face and a rude gesture at the support.

vi) Andy, bawling and shouting, raced after the linesman but was prevented from entering the enclosure by the skinheaded steward, the one who had 'I kill' tattooed on his forehead.

McDonald & Dodds (2020)

 


Sunday, August 22, 2021

50 for 49 . . .

 Hurricane Henri's in the neighborhood and my first three darts of the day:



Sunday, August 15, 2021

The Crafty Cockney : the autobiography by Eric Bristow (Arrow Books 2008)

 


Streetwise
‘You play like a poof!’

These were, the words my dad George said to me when he first watched me play darts. I was eleven years old and he'd just bought me a board for my birthday. I was playing in my bedroom.

‘I can't take you down the pub if you play like that,' he said.

I’d never played darts before, but three weeks later I was getting regular three-dart scores of a hundred plus. The trouble was 1 had a unique style of throwing that in my dad's eyes looked suspect. It involved standing to the side and holding the dart lower down the barrel so my little finger rested on the tip of it. This hindered my throwing action. To overcome this I raised my little finger in the air so there was no contact with the point.

‘You look like a little posh boy holding a china teacup,’ he said.

‘Give it a rest, Dad,' I said to him. This is the way I play, and this is the way I'll always play.’

He didn’t like it, but it was a style that gave me five World Championships, five World Masters, two News of the World titles, four British Opens, three Butlins Grand Masters and numerous Open wins in Sweden, Denmark and North America, plus a host of other tides — and pretty soon everybody was copying my throwing style. As soon as I got good there were thousands of other players in pubs and clubs up and down the country all playing with raised pinkies. They thought they could be great darts players just by lifting up their little finger. What a bunch of wallies!

Sunday, August 08, 2021

Happy/Sad

  . . . and I had so much of the bullseye to aim at with that third dart.