| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) 20:54 - Dec 22 with 1102 views | Warkystache |
Yuletide greetings one and all. It's not beginning to feel a bit like Christmas here, mind. Wet mud caked up boots, two bastard days of work still to overcome, a boss who (seriously) suggested we stay til 6.30pm on Xmas Eve to "ensure we get the housekeeping in order before we all come back on the 30th" and then it magically became law the next day....it's a Christmas of whingeing and moaning and swingeing and crap mince pies.
I missed the Pompey trip yesterday. Truth was, it never felt right. I suffered enough at the Bristol Rovers home game. We've gone off quicker than a Happy Shopper pinta on a Qatar doorstep. I've even got sort of relatives in Southsea who invited me along (ex-wife's parents and her brother, so tight they'd have probably charged me Premier Inn rates for staying the night in the pseudo-Clacton sh*tehole). In the end, I settled for a bit of last-minute shopping and a haircut in Hadleigh.
Hadleigh was at least familiarly comforting. You drive, avoiding Benton Street and the constant stop-start as you let every other b*gger past you, with Dickensian visions of rosy-cheeked maidens in bonnets, giggling at the shop windows, the butcher in his Victorian garb sharpening knives out front as his assistants hang the capons and the hams and the gooses in the window, and lay the monumental pork pies to rest. A rotund Bumble, his waistcoat straining with the after-effects of a good luncheon of jugged hare and a decanter of claret, blusters local greetings, breath curling around his head. The snow falls. The sweet shop sells glistening mountains of sweetmeats, wrapped in ribboned boxes. The ale-houses tremble with laughter and the horse-driven carriages slip quickly down the high street.
The reality, once I'd parked, was old people on mobility scooters, middle-aged anorakers carrying wine in shopping baskets from Adnams and snot-nosed children wailing outside Greggs. Modern life eh? Still, the poorhouses have gone, and the rickets, and the little kids up chimneys. And they've still got Partridges.
It was Partridges I was aiming for. The only shop in modern civilisation where you walk through the door and somehow get rushed back to the early 1960's. In a fit of senile old b*ggery, my dad asked if I could get a serving tray (EPNS if I could) and a set of tumblers for their festivities tonight. They've invited friends and neighbours for "a few drinks and some nibbles" and had only just realised they were short on trays and glasses. "Try Partridges" said my dad on the phone. So I did.
Partridges is great, if you're the sort of person who likes whiling away whole afternoons looking for replacement valves for a water butt or appreciates faded floral patterns on tea sets. My dad can spend hours in there, just blindly gazing at Wolf tools he'll never use or new vinyl washing up bowls. I found a tray though. And a set of six tumblers, reduced from £20 to a fiver because they had the sort of pattern blown into them which made one think of acid flashbacks.
I was disappointed on exiting not to find myself confronted by Ford Poplars and men in macs wearing trilbies and smoking pipes and the Town pissing the First Division with Ted Phillips and Ray Crawford gurning from the EADT billboard outside the newsagents. Nope, back in 2019. I nearly went back in, convinced I'd be shot swiftly back to a comfortingly spartan '62. But then I'd be just like my dad. I'd probably wander til five, eyeing rotivator spares and antimacassars.
Tel goes back to his youth a lot, but 1970's London somehow lacks the rural idyll of sixties Suffolk, and most of his tales are taller (and hairier) than Chewbacca. He spent last Friday night in a haze of nostalgia, having bought Mrs Tel a new eternity ring (which she's unwittingly 'chosen' from a jeweller in Colchester) and having remembered buying her an engagement ring in Hatton Gardens in 1979. "Londern wuz a diff'rent place in them days" he growled appreciatively. "Nah compooters, none'o' yer foreign muck, soopermarkits what sold propper grub, none'o'this zookini rubbish". He paused to sip his Kingfisher lager and pull another poppadom from the pile and tugged the mango chutney server towards him.
Unlike most Londoners of a certain vintage, he didn't remember the Krays. He did once serve the boxer John Conteh in his dad's shop ("Twenty Dunhill, a copy of Playboy and a packet of Juicy Fruit. 'E paid wiv a twenny as well, an' told me ter keep the change, 'e woz a right gent. Scouse, but yer can't 'ave it all"). He met Mrs Tel at a Christmas party at his mate Keith's in Bow. "She woz wiv 'er mate Cathy, 'oo woz a cousin of my mate Graham. Never fancied Caffy. She was a bit slutty for me. Used ter go with anyfing. 'Ad a live gecko in 'er spare room. Weird. Sort'ar kinky, if yer knaa what ah mean?". I sat back, enthralled by this unheard account of him meeting Mrs Tel. He sipped more lager and then drained it and ordered another. "Them starters'r'takin' their time" he muttered, eyeing the waiting staff with a vexed look.
I prompted him. "So how did you meet Mrs Tel?". He looked at me like I was daft. "Ah jus' told'yer! Yer don' bleedin' lissen arf the time, thass your problem". The starters arrived and he calmed down again. We'd been at them a few minutes when he said, through a mouthful of Shami Kebab, "We met at the party. She woz wearin' a black leavver skirt and a tight t-shirt. Lovely Bristols. Remember finking that. Like big drops'o'water. Anyway, we got talkin' in the kitchin, an' turns out she knoo me mum. So ah'm finkin' 'Bleedin' ell we're related or summink'. So I din't ask 'er out that night. December 22nd that was, a Saturday night. But we weren't so then I arsked 'er an' she said yes and four years later we was married".
Here, the restaurant started playing festive pop, discreetly but loud enough to be heard. It was "Jingle Bell rock". Tel sang along, gobbing little flecks of chicken tikka on the tablecloth as he crooned like a cockney Dean Martin. Had Dean Martin been paralytic, which, to be fair, he usually was. "Love that'un" he said as it faded and Doris Day started. He tapped his foot to Doris Day, but didn't attempt song, which was a relief as they'd just bought his King Prawn Madras.
We retired to the local for a nightcap, ignoring the gathered throngs of strangers sat in regulars spots sipping the pub's attempts at cocktails. It was Brandy Time. And a cheeky coffee, an Americano each, as Tel hates the coffee they serve in the Indian. It was quiet enough to have a conversation and we did, him telling me how Christmas always reminded him of the missus, and becoming quite teary-eyed and emotional as he told me how Mrs Tel had looked after him, always supported him, "an' when we noo she could never 'ave kids, we didn't menshun it to each ovver again, and we nevver 'ave". We became drunker and the nostalgia flowed and so did the respect."Never'ad'a mate lark yoo before" he said, affectionately, punching me on the shoulder with a jab that made me secretly rub my shoulder for the rest of the evening.
And we got a cab, and we tipped the driver, and we dropped Tel at home and he stumbled out and then had a jimmy up against his conifers, the urine dribbling back down the path like a rivulet. And then the cab driver tooted and I went back and we left for mine. Tel asked me round for a Chinese tomorrow night, so we can exchange pressies. He goes to Braintree on Tuesday afternoon. They're taking his nephew to see the new Star Wars at Freeport. He sounded like a little kid, such was his OTT enthusiasm. And it infected me with a bit of the spirit as well.
And then we lost 1-0 at Pompey and I thought of my ex-in-laws and the looks of self-indulgent satisfaction on their faces, and the spirits drooped worse than my dick used to with their daughter. But still. It was a big ask. Gillingham'll be easier.
Merry Christmas to you all
Warky
December 2019 |  |
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| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 21:04 - Dec 22 with 1076 views | Swansea_Blue |
Marvellous stuff! Merry Christmas to you too Warky.
Oh, and what is or are antimacassars? |  |
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| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 22:12 - Dec 22 with 990 views | allezlesbleus |
Blimey, you learn something new everyday! My gran used to have them too...….never once thought about what they were called!
Happy Xmas Warky. |  | | |
| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 08:49 - Dec 23 with 846 views | Guthrum |
| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 22:12 - Dec 22 by allezlesbleus |
Blimey, you learn something new everyday! My gran used to have them too...….never once thought about what they were called!
Happy Xmas Warky. |
Named for the Macassar oil men used to slick their hair back with - and which was likely to leave marks on the fabric of high-backed chairs and settees. The little cloths were there for protection and could be easily removed to wash. |  |
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| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 10:02 - Dec 23 with 817 views | r2d2 |
| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 08:49 - Dec 23 by Guthrum |
Named for the Macassar oil men used to slick their hair back with - and which was likely to leave marks on the fabric of high-backed chairs and settees. The little cloths were there for protection and could be easily removed to wash. |
My gran had them too. Never knew what they were called. Enjoy your weekly report. Have done for a long time. |  | | |
| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 10:06 - Dec 23 with 814 views | factual_blue |
| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 21:04 - Dec 22 by Swansea_Blue |
Marvellous stuff! Merry Christmas to you too Warky.
Oh, and what is or are antimacassars? |
Antimacassars - TWTD.
Not something Phil (or I) have much need for. |  |
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| The Warky League One Xmas Report: Pompey (a) on 13:45 - Dec 23 with 754 views | Westover |
Great as always keep them coming 👠All the best for Christmas and the new year. |  | | |
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