Brian's tale

Not all the funnies come from what happens on the road.  A couple of years ago, I bought a book about non-league football.  It spent the usual spell on the bookshelf ignoring me, and earlier this year it jumped into my hands and said, 'read me' ... well, it happened something like that, anyway.  I discovered that it had a section on one of the teams local to me, where Brian, the chap who works in our office, is on the committee.  I mentioned this to him, and when I'd finished reading it, I lent the book to him.

It had thereafter dropped below my radar, until this morning when he returned it to me.  I asked him if he'd enjoyed it.  "Excellent!" he replied, "I've made it into print at last."  I then went out on a job.  Soon after my return, Brian and I met in the kitchen, and he returned to the matter of the book.  I said that so far as I could remember, there was no mention of his name in the feature.  He told me that, although he didn't appear by name, he was tickled to read that the writer had bought a winning ticket in the half-time raffle, and had won a box of jelly babies.  Brian explained that when the raffle had started many years ago, he'd been asked to provide the jelly babies as one of the prizes, and they caused such amusement that they had not been allowed to disappear from the weekly ritual.

This anecdote seemed to release more pent up thoughts of the social side of football.  Brian recalled when the writer of the book had made his visit, and he said, "It's a pity I didn't meet him.  There are some strange grounds about, and I'd have given him another story or two to put in it."  He then told me of a visit to a distant ground some while ago for a cup match.

"There was an old chap in the top corner of the stand, sitting there with his back turned to the field.  I thought he was a tramp, and I wondered what he was doing there.  I asked one of the locals, who showed no surprise at all.  'Oh, that'll be old Jim,' he told me, 'I reckon he's doing a couple of pigeons.'  I looked a bit closer, and sure enough there he was - with the match in full flow behind him, happily dealing with a couple of birds.  He'd got one cooking on a fire beside him, and was happily plucking the other on his knee."

We agreed that it was a good job that it hadn't been taking place in a wooden stand!