The Bedouin Cricket Club

Awaken at midday racked by memories of last night, assailed by a swing hunnee, taken to some god forsaken den in Camberwell or Dollis Hill or Surrey Quays I can’t begin to think; and beaten bodily by her without resort to fleshy pleasure of any kind – before more wandering around the dawny horizons of London! How, oh how and how am I going to get back to south West London to administer to the Bedouins cricketing swinefold in … where is it today? Barnes. Barnes??

In the spirit of Corinthian brotherhood I do indeed drag my busted carcass to the arena and stand alongside my nomadic brothers. It is one of these folk who first notice my state, when undressing to get in to my flannels Ponniah fair screeches as he announces the nail-swipes across my back. The gentlemen present are men of experience… the gloveman Petter, wretched Harrison … and they guffaw and spit out the usual dire gutterfuls. Speculation is rife, but I’m damned if I remember.

The leader wins the toss and elects to have us field, cretinous beyond compare, and together we will boil as godless bastards all this damnable afternoon. And who is he entrusting the orb to but Vijendran and Sudell? I will die, I will die. Well, I will not die and I will live long enough and paw out my eyes until all is black and I can only imagine again and again what I saw from the man Childe Sudell from the far end, immense and unstoppable like the siege of Corinth. Five victims for his novice hands, sliced from tired southern folk. A pilgrimage for him back to Highgate to kiss the horne with ball aloft.

Benton is here. Irascible but magnificent. Unplayable. And Maby brings the stench of the Covent Garden orange sellers - arrived as he has from the chorus, unchanged from a performance of Don Giovanni last eve. Indeed the clowns Dekeller and Sherrington are Giovanni and Leporello like in the field! Somehow we are allowed back indoors with only one hundred and fifty nine ahead for victory.

I take again to the field! Will the management not accept I must, must rest?! But at the crease I am clear and straight and V is for vixen and virgine and V is where I hit. Suddenly I am back clutching the instrument between my LEGS and twanging and pinching out the notes and lines UNTIL hardly even in to my stride …. Ere we part like love’s last Adieu. And surely I must leave it to Barrass … a worthy artist it must be said, scurrying urchin Lawton and Adonis Vijendran to finish this thing.

Soon I can again tread a weary path northward. Some fresh elixir carries me back to my digs and I can feel the truth of the words…

“’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore
And coming events cast their shadows before”.