FOSDYKE AND ME
A SAGA
© John Gilham 2000
Fosdyke and Me
The
reason the 12th West Middlesex Boys' Brigade football team
Never
won a match was Fosdyke and me
Week
after week Fosdyke and me
would stand there in the freezing rain
Peering
through the West London grunge to where
The
tall, lithe, athletic, skilful, bodies of our team-mates
Leapt
and plunged after the entirely unpredictable movements
Of a
small, sodden, leather mass that me and Fosdyke were
there to stop
Right
back, him, and left back, me
We got
agitated when figures loomed out of the drizzle, coming our way
Fosdyke and me would paw
the ground like nervous thoroughbreds
Dash
this way and that, look threatening behind our NHS
specs
Though
our legs, I seem to remember, developed all the elegance of a new-born giraffe
As the
ball was tapped expertly between them and on towards goal.
Every
Saturday me and Fosdyke used to cycle out to some forgotten
field,
No
changing rooms, no bogs, no spectators, except dogs
(Who'd
cock their leg on your bike)
And
spend an afternoon being shouted at, pushed in the mud, or told by the
goalkeeper to
"Leave
it to me!" just when we might have had a kick at it.
Fosdyke and me were
responsible, I'm sure,
For our
Captain's permanent sore throat, instructing us from a distance.
"Cretins"
he called us, which wasn't polite, or p.c., but understandable,
Unlike
"Mark your man!" or "Lob!"; and
the offside rule eludes me still,
Though
I was shouted at about it quite a lot
Fosdyke and me got
elbowed aside quite a lot too,
If not
by the casual thundering force of the opposition
So that
by the time I'd cleaned the mud off my glasses
They'd
scored another three goals,
Then by
exasperated members of our own team,
Desperately
trying to save the day.
Stopping
me and Fosdyke getting the ball got to be quite
important for our side
Usually,
we lost ten-nil or so, though once it was only one - nil
When
the other side had only six men.
Me and Fosdyke
used to commiserate between spurts of action.
"Only
another seventy-three minutes to go."
We
didn't always remember to change ends at half time
And
when our glasses steamed up and our knees froze beneath our shorts
And
everything else beneath our shorts as well,
And
we'd been knocked over and trod on and shouted at for nearly 90 minutes
I
sometimes used to wonder why me and Fosdyke were there at all
Except
that I knew. They needed us. We made a
full squad.
No-one
could ever say the 12th West Middlesex Boys' Brigade
Was two players short of a footballteam.
Fosdyke and me and football remained strangers to
the end
Even
when we both simultaneously slide tackled a player coming out of the mist
And it
was the referee, even when, once, we scored - and it was an own goal
They
knew we were loyal and dutiful, me and Fosdyke
And we
kept going one whole season, even though no-one ever said thanks
or "Well-played" (which
anyway would have been a lie)
Fosdyke and me, we had our day."'
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Me and Fosdyke,
Again.
Every
time the Heston and Isleworth Young Socialists held a dance, I'd go with Fosdyke
Me and Fosdyke
would get on the bus, self-conscious in Italian suits, winklepickers,
slimline ties, and national health
spectacles,
We'd
pat our pockets for the dance tickets, the ten-bob note for drinks, the packet
of Durex we'd bought last time and never used but
still hoped to, and a stolen tube of K Y jelly just in case
(though we weren't sure in case of what, or where you applied
it, or when)
And
we'd spent all day curling our lips like Elvis, pouting like Billy Fury, moving
real slow like Gene Vincent, fixing them with a look
And in
the mirror, anyway, our chat-up lines worked every time, like Brylcreem in the ads.
Not
that we were ever real Young Socialists, me and Fosdyke.
We felt
left out. All that heady talk of
comrades and the Trots made us think of horses, or diarrhea
And we
weren't Young Conservatives either - wrong clothes, wrong accents, wrong
breeding, wrong kind of dancing, wrong politics even,
Those
long-legged, horse-riding, bacardi drinking, weekend
sailing, super girls were not for us
And we
weren't anybody's idea of a bit of rough, even.
No,
when Fosdyke and me went dancing, we went for the
girls who went for Johnny Red and the Pirates and if they couldn't have Johnny
up there on the stage would maybe have us, on the rebound Girls came in twos
and we'd always say "I don't think much of yours", hoping that we'd
get the pretty one and not her fat friend
And
then we'd close in and ask them to dance, try to keep 'em
going till the band did a slow one and we could touch them, smell their perfume,
Look
down the front of their dresses at their teen bras
Me and Fosdyke
had one thing in mind - our virginity, our inexperience
And
consumed with lust, we'd paw and fumble round the dance floor
Hoping
that the low light wouldn't show the lump in our trousers
Hoping
the Clearasil was hiding our spots and not cracking (you had to put it on thick
to hide the big ones and the blackheads)
Worrying
whether our breath smelled, should we be using Amplex,
and what was Amplex anyway,
if she minded blokes with
glasses, if she'd come outside
When
there was a break, we'd compare notes in the bog
"Did
you get a feel? Were they real?
Did she
put her tongue out when you kissed her?
Will
she go?"
But
inside ourselves, we wondered what it all meant, me and Fosdyke
We
wondered why the girls we chose always had their father coming to collect them
at 11,
Or
wanted their friend with a flat chest, tartan gymslip and knee socks to come
outside too, who moved your hand when it approached an erogenous zone (and they
seemed to be everywhere)
Who
wouldn't open their lips when kissing, who giggled with their friends and
talked behind their hands and who didn't make up for our lack of conversation
and savoir faire by talking to us themselves,
And who
were the only ones we dared ask to dance because the ones with the very short
skirts and the red lipstick and the tight, pert, sexy little bodies that they
enticed us with
And who
smiled and who knew everything and how to do it, or pretended they did and were
only our age or even younger -
Were
just too scary !
And wanked, and dreamed of stocking tops, and buttocks,
And
what it must be like to be Johnny Red and take your pick.
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Me and Fosdyke Do Poetry
When me
and Fosdyke did poetry, we wanted to do it right
It's
not easy, poetry
We had
to know about metre and measure and rhyme schemes and stress schemes and
spondees and dactyls and sonnets and alliteration and epics and epigrams,
And
epithalamia and sestinas and couplets and triolets
and haiku and similes and assonance and dissonance and consonants,
And
euphony and bathos and pathos and onomatopoeia and sprung rhythm and the
Writers and Artists year Book and how to type
And you
had to have a subject, we believed
Well, me and Fosdyke did some of that -
some of it was "O" level after all
You
could pick it up from Wordsworth and the Metaphysicals,
(Getting
it done like Donne was marvellous)
We'd
slip in a dash of Hopkins, and a pinch of bible-black,
(But
careful with the Tennyson, too much could spoil it),
And
then the merest hint of Eliot, to give a taste of greatness.
And we
said "Right, no good hiding our lights under the flight path to Heathrow,
out here in the Kipling-reading, nodding-dog suburbs,
We need
a sophisticated metropolitan audience"
So we
took our poems up to Speakers Corner, on a Sunday.
You had
to have a soapbox, we knew that, but I didn't know what a soap-box was - our
soap came in a paper bag - no elevation to that.
So we
took an old wooden box my mum kept the shoe-cleaning in and we went up on the
Tube and Trevor Huddleston was standing up there
And all
the black power guys and the hell fire guys and not yet the women's lib guys cos this was the sixties -
And the
Communists and the Nazis and the flat earth people and not yet the gay rights
people cos this was the sixties
And the
CND people and Bertrand Russell (cos this ’was’ the
sixties) and a old woman with an umbrella who heckled everybody and waved it in
your face and said we were rubbish
And me and Fosdyke doing our poetry.
We got
an audience, and some of 'em stayed longer than it
took to find out what we were talking about,
And
some of 'em heckled
And
sometimes we ad libbed back like early rappers
And
when we stopped rhyming moon with June and moved on from our adolescent sexual
fantasies, full of euphemism and sublimation
Masturbation
on paper
And got
stuck in to the Vietnam war and LBJ and McNamara and
Field Marshall Ky and all those men we loved to hate
(Before
Thatcher introduced an equality of hatred)
Then
all the American tourists in the audience would wake up a bit and some of them would shout about
patriotism and communism and the threat to freedom
And
then some other Americans would start yelling about imperialism and fascism and
the military industrial complex and killing women and children
And
pretty soon we'd have to take our shoebox somewhere else
While
they kept the audience.
And a
few people who didn't know much about poetry or who didn't speak English or who
had designs on our bodies told us how good we were
And
some made obscure invitations to what I only now realise were illegal practices
but which slid off our innocence like KY jelly
'Cos this was the sixties
And
somehow we got invited to read our poetry at the Norwegian YWCA one evening
And the
place was just stacked with young Norwegian Christian women in relaxed poses
And me and Fosdyke read our poems of
wistful schoolboy lust until they and their blonde hair and their long legs
were all put under lock and key at ten-o-clock
And we
were put out on the street.
Poetry
never did pull the girls like we hoped it would
For
somehow, when we moved from the carefully crafted expressions of undying
passion on the page to real life on the settee,
We got
into difficulties of articulation and communication and presentation and
premature ejaculation
And we
entered competitions and didn't win anything
And we
wrote out haiku in neat calligraphy and hung them on the railings of the
Bayswater Road for sixpence and didn't sell anything
Me and Fosdyke
did poetry all one spring and summer
We lyricised, we elegised, we sonnetised
We
blank versed, we rhymed, we limericked
We grew
long hair, we looked mysterious, we practised epigrams
We
confessed shyly to girls that we were poets
And
they giggled and found they had something else to do
And we
faced the dilemma, me and Fosdyke
That
you can alliterate and resonate and carbonate your words
Till
the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea
But you
have to write about something
(And at
seventeen, me and Fosdyke had bugger all to write
about)
You
know, you get some poets, like Wordsworth and Tennyson and Armitage
Who
grind on long after the inspirations's gone - living
on their fame
But
fame had never come to me and Fosdyke, nor inspiration,
And the
mainspring of our feelings was frustration
For oh
how we wanted to lie in bed with a girl on a sunny morning
And
make poetry out of used tea-bags and last-night's stockings hanging over the
radiator
Like
all the other poets who wore long scarves and cord jackets
And had
girlfriends with long hair and short skirts to be their bed-sit Muse.
Me and Fosdyke packed up our haikus and picked up our
shoebox
And
went home through the sodium lighted evening to our separate semis in our
identical streets, underneath the flight path to Heathrow
And waited
for something to happen, so we could write about it.
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Me and Fosdyke on
Holiday.
The
year Fosdyke's Dad gave him a second-hand, beat-up,
almost-undesirable-even-to-Fosdyke Hillman as a
birthday present,
We
drove to Spain.
Or
rather, Fosdyke drove.
Spain
was where it was hot and sunny
And you
could laze on the beach all day and drink all night
And the
clubs were full of purple light and girls who were over 16
And
just ripe for a holiday romance on the beach by moonlight.
And it
was cheap.
Me and Fosdyke
believed all of this.
So we
packed our short-sleeved shirts and light-coloured drainpipes and the faithful Durex and Fosdyke's mask and
flippers into the Hillman
And we
drove through France, far into the night.
We had
some of those tie-on plastic adaptors that re-align the headlight for the wrong
side of the road
And we
roared down the Route Nationale illuminating the tops
of the poplars and the opposite verge like a lit-up Quasimodo
Until
we were so tired and not far enough on so we stopped for the night in Toulouse
We went
into the first cheap-looking hotel we came to -
Where
there were women guests standing in the doorways who didn't have much on and
what they did have wasn't the sort of underwear our mothers or sisters wore
back in Hounslow
And we
passed several male customers loitering in the hallways, waiting, or
negotiating, and some didn't look like very nice men at all,
So we
jammed a chair under the door knob and I slept in my sleeping bag for
protection
Which
was just as well because when we woke up there was a cockroach under Fosdyke's coat on the door.
Then we
drove on down to the Costa Brava and parked by the beach and Fosdyke threw off his shirt
And he
had so many cockroach bites all red and swollen on his chest and back he looked
like an epidemic
Then we
booked into a hotel which was nice and clean and cheap in a dusty area just
reclaimed from the Spanish desert
And we
started to drink rum and cokes quite early on empty stomachs
Which
we washed down mid-evening with some chicken and chips
And
watched some girls dancing over a few more rum and cokes and thought we'd try
them another day.
That
was the night we found out that this town had a policeman and he was very fat
and very greasy and wore a moustache and dark glasses, even at night,
That he
kept an alsatian and that
they both hated the English
Even
before I was sick over his jackboots from where I was resting in the gutter.
It must
have been bad because the alsatian
didn't even offer to lick it up.
And
another thing was that the night porter at the hotel would give you your room
key if you could remember the number
But he
wouldn't help you find your room or give you a little assistance with the
stairs or the lift or anything
Which
wasn't very friendly
And we
said we'd stay there anyway but we might not come back next year
And I
think what he looked at us with was contempt (but I wasn't seeing very clearly)
In the
morning it got hot and we took our headaches to the beach and read some English
papers which turned out to be yesterdays
And
watched the fat policeman and his dog stopping the girls from sunbathing
topless
Which me and Fosdyke had been in favour
of;
And we
went swimming and that was actually pretty good -
If I
borrowed Fosdyke's flippers and snorkel I could see
shoals of fish, and sea urchins and if you smashed a sea urchin with a rock
there'd be a feeding frenzy of little fishes for its insides
Then we
hired a pedalo and swam from that which was really
great fun
And we
came back to lie down on our towels and gradually remembered that we weren't
just kids anymore -
That we
were here by ourselves without our families and this could be the one golden
opportunity to lose our virginity.
So we
sauntered up and down the beach a bit, one of us very white, turning a nasty
red and the other a sort of uncomfortable pink with serious blotches where the
cockroach bites were turning septic
And there
seemed to be quite a lot of local competition for the little English roses we'd set our sights on
For the
beach was littered with the limbs and bodies of off duty waiters and bartenders
and night club bouncers,
Brown
and handsome, with muscles where it mattered and tiny tiny
little black swimming trunks which bulged unashamedly at the front
And
they were caressing our English roses and staring into their eyes and promising
them nights of latin passion
That
was when me and Fosdyke's
confidence began to falter.
Though
we played the game.
We'd go
to the discos and dance crazily with any girl who'd acknowledge our existence.
We'd
use up all our best lines and then go back and sit at their table and learn
they came from Formby or Goole or Port Talbot
And
just what their Mums had to say about them coming here on their own, with
Janice.
But
though Fosdyke and me tried to look Latin and
romantic and got a few kisses and twined a few tongues and pressed our trousered erections against a few tummies
And he
says he got his hand far enough up a skirt to feel the soft, delicately fluffed
curve of a buttock
And I know
I had my fingers on a nipple
That
was just the time when they had to go -
Doubtless
to wait in the moonlight for their Spanish lovers
Whose
touch would be so much surer and more experienced and more forceful and more
successful than ours.
And I
remember that me and Fosdyke
accepted our lot in the end, and that the best nights we had were in the
chicken and chips taverna
Where
they had a guy with a guitar who could sing the Beatles and Guantanamara
and Auld Lang Syne and Sally in our Alley and Viva LEspana and Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover
And all
of the audience except us was over 40 and sang along till there wasn't a dry
eye in the house
And me
and Fosdyke sang too because that was all there was
And
nobody seemed to mind
And
maybe Mums and Dads away from their kids and their homes and their politics are
all right really.
We
drove home
As the
Hillman crossed the Spanish border we lost top gear
And
around Brive in the middle of the night we lost
bottom gear
And
when there was only one gear left we ground on at about 20 miles per hour
through thick fog
Which
made us nervous because all the other cars going the same way were doing about
100 and every one of them chose to blare their horn as they swerved past
So when
Fosdyke went to sleep at the wheel and we slewed off
the road before I could wake him, missing all the evenly spaced French trees
and ending up in a French field
I
wasn't sorry when the car wouldn't start.
It
turned out to have no water and hadn't had for long enough for things to get
hot and weld themselves together and perhaps some of the thick fog had been
smoke.
So we
waited till it got lighter and started pushing and it turned out to be only 100
metres to a garage
But the
garagiste at 6-o-clock on a Sunday morning in rural
France wouldn't wake up
So we
left a note on the windscreen and followed a sign to the railway station and
got a train to le Mans and another to Paris and on to Boulogne
And so
back home a few hours earlier than anticipated,
To the
amazement of Fosdyke's father.
Who was
more dazed than amazed by the time he got the car back and had sold it for
scrap and paid off the costs to the AA and the ferry and got 20 quid
(Which
was more then than it is now)
But
he'd paid 200 for it so Fosdyke was in the doghouse
for a very long time
And me and Fosdyke came back with our
virginity and our unused Durex
But not
Fosdykes flippers and snorkel which he'd left in the
car
Because
some bugger or bougre had stolen them -
And
neither me nor Fosdyke has
ever had a rum and coke since.
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Me and Fosdyke
Go Repping.
Some
time around 4 o clock in November, in Dewsbury, or Scunthorpe, or Runcorn,
looking out at the rain and the already dark,
By
chance, as we sometimes did, me and Fosdyke met in
some bleak reception area of some filthy factory, off some pitted by-pass,
Both
waiting to see the same arrogant Buyer, who despised as we despised him,
And as
the light outside decayed and the receptionist started touching up her nail
varnish, we decided that life had somehow given us the slip,
Or we
wouldn't be here, in Heckmondwyke or Skelmersdale or Doncaster,
Trying
to sell things we had no faith in to someone who didn't want to know,
On
behalf of firms who saw me and Fosdyke as Hobson's
choice in the repping line, but expendable, and cheap
For Fosdyke and me, who wanted to be poets, had been snared in the end by the need
to replicate our genes,
And by
mortgages and disposable nappies and detached breeze block boxes in destroyed
villages with gardens and integ.gar.
Each
was a "Sales Representative", with a company car.
We were
the reps that you see, in any layby, watching the
clock tick over till it's safe to go home,
Falsifying
time sheets, signing for calls on contacts who won't
see us, who were always in meetings,
Who had
had to go out and who'd read
your literature if you cared to leave it, (and I don't mean poetry).
Me and Fosdkye we tried:
When I
was in rubber and asbestos and he was in valves,
What I
knew about packings and O rings and nitrile and neoprene he knew about diaphragms and gate
valves and flanges and linings
And
when I was in switchgear he was in lifts and when I was selling toothbrushes he
was selling tampons
And we
found that the hearty jokes we had carefully learned and that creased up the
engineer at Naburn Sewage Works just pursed the lips
of the feminine hygiene buyer at Boots
And had
us out of the door pretty quick,
And we,
who'd been told that reps don’t sell the product but sell themselves, wondered
what we had to offer to a pig farmer in a hurry for a valve for slurry, or a
nun running a distillery, or indeed, anybody.
Oh, we
did try,
We
learned about football and remembered who supports whom and who the star
players were
And
listened patiently while Buyers and Engineers and Storekeepers wasted our time
and theirs reliving what they saw on the tele on
Saturday and read about on the back pages on Sunday and about which they didn't
have an original thought in their head
And
they always told us what sort of car they got from the firm and how big its
engine was and how much poke it had on the motorway and left us in no doubt
that size matters
And me
and Fosdyke sat there and pretended to agree with
their racist and misogynist and homophobic and jingoistic and bigoted views in
order to make the sale of the rubber gloves or the valves with stainless steel
balls or whatever we were representing at the time
And
then we went home and kicked the cat for brown-nosing and prostitution.
And we
went to sales conferences and listened to the other reps tell tales about sex
with secretaries and barmaids and the managing director's p.a.
And
even the female buyers who were a real challenge
And we
watched them enjoying themselves by pissing out the window and vomiting in the
aspidistras and throwing nursery puddings and fumbling up the skirts of the
waitresses
And we
shrank and apologised for them and asked the staff if we could help clear up
And
then our bosses thought we lacked committment and
team spirit and hadn't signed up to company values
And
when they came down in the morning with hangovers and feelings of guilt they bollocked us over breakfast for being miserable bastards
who didn't know how to enjoy ourselves anyway
And who
with sales figures like ours were likely to get the company award of the golden
wanker at the end of the session
And we
sensed it was time to move on
And I'd
wind up once a week in Stirling, on a Wednesday, and have sex with Stella, who
worked as a waitress in the café on the ring road, thinking
that I was a real rep now
And I
told Fosdyke all about it and he told me he had
Stella on Tuesdays (he was in rubber boots at the time)
And
that there was a chap in rosaries and vestments on Mondays and one in corned
beef on Thursdays and at the weekend her husband came home - (and he was in haggis)
And
their company cars would stand in the street all night and in the morning
they'd slip her a fiver and she'd make out a fifteen quid receipt for the Wee Deoch and Doris Guest House for their expenses - and mine,
and Fosdyke's.
And
Christ it was lonely out there on the motorways between rejections
Except
at Christmas when they'd all want to see you and walk you out to your car in
the company car park so you could slip the hamper or the crate of whiskey into
their boot and they wouldn't have to declare it ,
And I
never met one you could give a boxed set of Brandenburgs
to, or a free ticket to a poetry reading
Though
the illustrated Karma Sutra in hand tooled leather or a subscription to
Paedophiles Monthly might have tickled a few and got you an order for pickled
eggs or incontinence pads or whatever you were representing at the time
And
they'd ring us at home on a Saturday because their production line was down and
they needed a spare part they knew we happened to keep in our boot
And we
had to say to our wives - let's go to Immingham today dear rather than Whitby,
I've never showed you Immingham
And the
only reason we stayed married was because we were at home a lot and could take
the kids to school and collect them while our timesheets said we were in Gilberdyke
And
because the company gave us a car and we could lie about the mileage
And
sometimes we could be in bed with our own wives, in the afternoon while the
boss thought we were in Cleckheaton
And me and Fosdyke would hail each
other wearily across the bar at Scotch Corner, or in the queue at the Watford
Gap services,
Indistinguishable
from all the other pin-striped, tired men with clean shoes, escaping from
selling bog rolls and Duraglit and combine harvesters
And sit
over our pints or our inedible fry-ups and swap complaints about our bosses and
compare performance of our company cars
And
show each other pictures of our kids and tell each other all about our dull
holidays on identical hot beaches in Mablethorpe on
the Med.
And we
don't go back to that moment of revelation in Pudsey, or Widnes, or West Hartlepool
Because
to know that life has passed you by doesn't pay for the dishwasher, or the home
computer, or the subscription to several years of unread "Poetry
Review",
And
besides, life maybe has something for us yet, some small tragedy, some minor
disappointment, some even smaller joy.
return to the top of this
page
A Dream of Fosdyke.
I had a
dream
I had a
dream that I was old, and alone, and that some of the more unsatisfactory bits
about my body
(The
hearing, the plumbing, the waste disposal)
Didn't
work as well as they used to
And I
dreamed that I was banged up in some nursing home miles from anywhere, with a
high wall
Where a
man who called me John all the time and to call him Barry
Shoved
my wheelchair into the sun lounge next to another old bloke in a wheelchair and
said,
"I'll
leave you here, John. Perhaps you two can be friends. Wouldn't that be nice?
Take your mind off your troubles"
And I
looked at the old chap with two day's stubble and not enough teeth and a skein
of drool looping off his chin and liver spots and the shakes
And it
was Fosdyke.
So I
said, "Christ, Fosdyke, what the hell are you
doing here?"
And he
said nothing
His
eyes were light blue and they didn't blink or turn or flicker
So I
wheeled myself round to where he ought to be able to see me clearly and said,
"Fosdyke old chap".
And I
thought maybe he'd gone deaf so I touched his arm and said "Fosdyke, it's Me".
His
chin quivered a little and some more spittle ran down onto his dressing gown
but the shakes continued at the same tempo in the same parts of his body
And I
suddenly knew the answer to "What are “’you“’ doing here?"
It was
what I was doing there too.
Dying.
I had a
dream
For I
had a dream that me and Fosdyke had to sell up our
houses and turn ourselves in to the Honeysuckle Nursing Home to look after with
the proceeds,
Following
some government instruction;
Three
meals a day and some almost edible though Fosdyke
doesn't get that as no-one feeds him -
He's
thin.
And
when I do he slobbers on the spoon
Then
Barry comes by and tells me not to bother, he'll only have to change his
dressing gown again, and his nappy.
And if
I were to ask "why the fuck don't you give him a bib and take the time to
feed him with a bottle or some skill and love or something?"
I might
lose my place in here for challenging behaviour so I don't
Because
my incontinence, although part of the deal, is perhaps challenging enough for
now,
I have
to put up with Barry
I have
to put up with Shirley too.
Shirley,
who is relentlessly positive:
"Well
at least you haven't sat in it all night";
"Soon
get you a clean set of pajamas, lovey",
and
"I
think Mr Fosdyke enjoyed that"
When
he's been dumped in front of the Teletubbies and
something about dissecting worms for schools
And his
pale blue eyes haven't moved or focussed the whole rancid, mindless, dumbed down time.
But I'm
so moved by someone calling him "Mister Fosdyke" that I forget how stupid she is and how
mistaken she is and my heart goes out to her for treating him with respect,
Although
he's so far gone he doesn’t know she exists.
Me and Fosdyke.
Poor Fosdyke, by whom I measured my own failures, precedes me
now into the dark,
Has
already gone beyond the frustrations of consciousness,
And
will soon lay down the indignities of life in glorious resurrection,
When me
and Fosdyke, risen again,
will be turned out onto some marbled platform and will take the escalator
towards the light above
To find
there great empty halls, with lost, desultory souls, picking their way through
idle crush barriers, prepared for ten times their number,
Towards
a vast millennial empty heaven, vaulted beyond purpose,
Where
we play football with angels, read poetry to saved and empty schoolkids in the literature zone, and are
condemned forever to dance with Young Conservatives, chaste and sober.
I had a
dream
And
when I woke up I went down the pub with Fosdyke and
we watched the 60th Anniversary of Dunkirk, and Dad's Army and England losing 5 - nil to the Faeroe
Islands
And we
remembered how we won the 1966 World Cup
And how
we were in Soho after and we all loved the Germans and they loved us
And we
sat in the French Pub with some guys from Munich and exchanged addresses and
never heard from them again, nor wrote,
Then we
sang and danced in Trafalgar Square until it got light and me and Fosdyke took the first tube home.
We'll
always remember that night
It was
probably the nearest we ever got to heaven in all our lives.
I
didn't tell Fosdyke about my dream.
We had
another pint and embroidered a few more histories and resolved to get shot of
it all and take our bikes and cycle across Australia, or maybe France,
Or if
we had time, to the Ship at Cawood next Sunday week.
return to the top of this
page
(Appendix)
Me and
Fosdyke at Christmas.
“I hate Christmas”, said Fosdyke.
Me and Fosdyke
were resting up from Christmas Shopping in the Sleigh and Reindeer,
Supping
a pint of Duckworthy’s Old Turkey Droppings, full of
malt and hops and festive chemicals, 1.9% proof,
And
wondering whether we could face another minute of too much choice for too
little value
And to
whom could we give festive knickers with holly on, or a London Rubber Company
gift pack – for this was the sixties.
“I
hate Christmas”, said Fosdyke. “Me Mum’s Mum comes.
One
year we sat down to dinner and she said “I’m a vegan now”
So she
sat and ate sprouts with no gravy and an air of martyrdom
And
flinched every time we took a bite of turkey and said “Oh no, you just go on
enjoying yourselves”
And me
Dad said he wished she’d told us and she said “I thought you would’ve
guessed, what with me looking so much fitter and younger and having such a
clear skin and everything.”
And me
Dad said he should’ve guessed from the polyester pants suit and plastic
sandals
Replacing
the tweed skirt and brogues and he bet Baby Jesus didn’t turn up his nose at a
lamb chop, or camel steak;
And
another year”, said Fosdyke, “we all sat round the
tree and waited for her to put her stuff there so we could start opening
presents
And
then she said she wasn’t giving any this year; she’d given the equivalent
amount in money to the donkey sanctuary
So my
Dad said “Hee Haw, none of them asses would get very
fat on that then” and he took back the set of paper doilies she was going to
get from us.
And I
said “Don’t you go to Church?” and Fosdyke said
“We
used to – but me Dad insisted on singing While Shepherds Watched very loudly to
the tune of Ilkley Moor which no-one else was doing
So they
asked us not to come back. I hate
Christmas”, said Fosdyke.
“What about presents? Do you get any ?” I
said and Fosdyke sighed
“Last
year”, he said, “I got a shaving kit cos I was grown
up now and a copy of “The Eleven Plus Facts of Life” by Kenneth Barnes which
they’d got out of the Family Doctor years ago to tell me why I’d had pubic hair
since I was 12
But it
didn’t go into what happens next because I wouldn’t be emotionally mature
enough to cope with the wave of powerful sensations which might overcome me.”
“But
you’re 18”, I
said. “Yes,” said Fosdyke “– and never been
kissed".
"And
one year”, he said, “they gave me an ant town (collect your own ants) and by
the time the ants arrived in the Spring I’d lost half the bits
And a Dickie Valentine LP when I’d asked for the Stones and “Two
Little Boys” by Rolf Harris on a single when I’d wanted “Come On Let’s Do It in
the Road !”
I hate
Christmas,” said Fosdyke.
He
said “Me Mum gets up at 6 to start the dinner so we can eat at 12 which is when
Dad gets hungry
And
she overcooks the sprouts and undercooks the turkey and incinerates the
Christmas Pudding and gets flustered
And
then she washes up till tea time and lays the table with loads of cakes and
things and nobody eats any cos they’re all still
stuffed with turkey and mash
So she
goes away into a corner and cries
It’s
no wonder I hate Christmas”, said Fosdyke
“So,”
I said, “come to us – make a change.
My
Mum,” I said, “takes the day off.
She
wants to be looked after cos she says the Virgin Mary
was a mother
So me
Dad does beans on toast and the fire smokes and goes out
And if
you’re lucky me Dad’ll get over-excited on three
glasses of ginger wine and throw the whole Christmas tree out into the yard and
set light to it
And pour some brandy on it to make it burn faster -
He’s
done that three years running now - the neighbours expect it
And me
Mum says Let
him – it’s Christmas – people should do what they like – and she rests up some
more on the sofa.”
Fosdyke brightened. “And do you have
relations”, he said, “and the Queen?”
I said
no, they won’t come – and me Mum won’t forgive the
Queen for marrying a foreigner so either we don’t watch it and sing the Red
Flag at 3 – o – clock
Or we
do watch it and develop a Marxist critique of the Commonwealth
But me
sister usually drags in someone homeless from the shelter cos
she’s into evangelism and the Hindus from next door so they can see how we do
Christmas in our religion
And me Mum gives ‘em a chocolate
orange and some sugar mice
And me
Dad sings some carols and puts on his Santa Claus hat
and beard and ho-ho-s at them until they go home or back to the shelter
So Fosdyke came to us and learnt to say Happy Christmas in
Hindi
And
how to make a whole ciggy out of tab ends, and he
sang carols out of tune with me Dad and danced to the Stones with me Mum cos it was her day off
And Fosdkye snogged
me sister for ages under the mistletoe (and that was a first)
And on
Boxing Day, at the bar of the Flatulents’ Return “I
still hate Christmas”, said Fosdyke “but now I enjoy
doing it.”