Pie Chucker

Much as I have admired KP’s godless brilliance this summer, I must later take you through a dream I had about his wife. Later, later. A solitary summer has lately livened up. I’ve been following the progress of Highgate’s third and fourth teams with vigour, brass-rubbing (The stone flags are cold beneath your feet and the glass of lemonade the vicar just gave you is poisoned) and kayaking. And lately contemplating the England batting order.   One assumes a good deal of thought goes in to it at selection meetings. At least one of the England selectors is on heroin though, and this does lead to some strange picks, like we saw for the second test match at Headingley. What Mike Selvey described as “a good fast-bowler’s broad backside” may also have heped Pattinson in to the side. Callipygian might be the solution, and “what Geoff Miller thinks of Darren Pattinson’s arse” might well be the clue.  Cavaliers beware! The Roundheads are back in force. As for CMJ’s assertion that first morning, that this might be the first Darren to play for England…  Back to the batting order. Like a watch still ticking on the wrist of a dead soldier, Ambrose lurched to the wicket with a bat under his armHe must have known the solace that George Bernard-Shaw speaks of when he says ‘God is alone’ as Dale Steyn cranked up the heavy breathing and weird comments. His chirp is little short of unique, comprising limericks, toilet humour and incredible knowledge of a batsman’s own inside leg measurement. A very good reason why Tim Ambrose can’t bat at 6 is his habit for drinking cups of boiling water, instead of tea. He likes to savour and compare the taste of different boiling waters. Stuart Broad on the other hand has a habit of walking in to branches of McDonalds and asking for a “pot of Lapsangsouchon, a cup, a saucer, some toast and some gentlemen’s relish”, and as such is the natural choice to bat at six. The other night I slept under an old oak, where maids used to kick their legs, tired from walking in the graveyard picking off the lichen to reveal ….old names!! And as I slept I dreamt I was a woman and he were my man. Here is my dream…..“She got up. The sunlight cracked through the broken blinds, and she shuddered. A thin small line of urine, left in her tube these 18 hours of sleep, now seeped from her panties down her inner thigh. “Christ!” she exclaimed. “Fucking Christ…” But her shrill cry just tailed off into a whimper. The flannels still sat there, washed and ironed, where she had presented them. As commanded. But so much had happened since. So much of the usual, she thought to herself as she ran one manicured nail over the crease in the cricket trousers. And, before she knew humanly what she was doing, she was tugging off her cerise pink teddie, tearing at her stockings and replacing them with the pressed cricket flannels. She was wearing his whites. She vomited a small spew on the floor at sheer pleasure of feeling his trousers against her naked skin. Awoken to the sheer power of her dress, she made now for the old-fashioned ‘jock-strap’ he insisted on wearing. Something about “protecting the crown jewels for my little princess,” he used to say to her, with one thick hand around her chin and Remy Martin breath all over her face. She picked up the contraption and used a stray piece of elastic to tie it to her upper inner thigh. Next she bounded from the house and away, down the gravel drive, enjoying the pain of the stones ‘neath her feet. The jock-strap curiously gripped in to her with every stride. Expiation is impossible, sin is endless, she thought…..”As you can tell I had had a nosefull of African truth drug Iboga, that previous evening. This is an entirely legal substance garnered from the bark of a rare southern African willow. It cannot be used for the manufacture of cricket bats as it makes them go bendy. A sprite resembling former Gloucestershire and England wicket-keeper Jack Russell, appears across a small campfire in your mind and tells you secrets you instantly forget once the hallucination wears off. Mind blank … but small recollection… Graeme Smith. Something about Graeme Smith. Something… see you next Tuesday? I have a new woman in tow. She is partial to cricket whites on a man. Trial by sherry I can tell you. All the time thinking about Marjorie’s (my first wife, and secretary) cheese sauce. She sews though, always a useful skill in the age of modern pyjama style flannels. Mangina is the phrase, I recall.