Discordant fragments

When I were a lad I read somewhere that King Henry VI of England died of consumption. I found it hard to believe royal security could be so lax that someone could just wander in and eat the king.

My girlfriend Zosia is due back from her trip home to Poland tomorrow.

She called me last night to give me details of her flight. She wants me to meet her at the airport. During the call she also took the opportunity to announce her primary goal this year, which apparently is to marry me and get me wandering around our local supermarket with her on Saturday afternoons wearing brightly coloured jerseys she’ll have made for me with my own face knitted into them.

The jersey thing might be a possibility, but marriage?

I don't think so.

The problem is, I’m not in love with Zosia. She's fun and great company, but I just see her as a stop-gap, an interesting distraction until I find a more suitable girlfriend. By suitable, I mean someone who isn’t quite so mad.

I often tell her as much.

In response, she just recites the same verse, something she claims is a well-known poem in her home land.

One day in spring
Today in spring
Three day in spring
Yoghurt pot
Yoghurt pot.

It’s true that physically, Zosia does it for me, though I don’t know where she gets her good looks from. Judging by the photo she keeps by her bedside, her dear old mum resembles the leathery back end of a Buffalo; it often makes me stop and think, wow.

Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (Who is this beholder bloke and how come he has so much beauty in his eye?).

I must admit, when it comes to entertainment, she provides plenty. But then, I am but a simple man of very little brain. I get my biggest thrills (with my togs on and sans a female member of the opposite girl sex) listening to music, playing guitar, stimulating my mind with chemicals and watching football.

So how hard can it be to keep me amused?

So this afternoon, my last day of freedom before Zosia returns (and all hell breaks loose), I decided to treat myself having discovered a foil wrap of magic mushrooms my chum Robert brought round in late November, harvested from the fields around his converted hop house in Kent. He lives near a village called Frant. Sounds more like the sound a bare bottom makes getting up from a plastic chair than a place name.

Anyway, I'd forgotten all about the 'shrooms, lodged as they were all alone at the back of the fridge by the jar of moldy paté. I wasn't at all sure they'd still be any good, but opted to try them nevertheless, washed down with several beers and a couple of bongs for good, trippy measure.

I slumped infront of the TV and watched Arsenal versus Burnley in the 3rd round of the FA Cup live on TV with the sound muted, the lonesome pining blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Shotgun Blues weeping gently from my stereo as I twanged along on my acoustic guitar.

The game kicked off roughly about the same time as the 'shrooms kicked in, which made for an intriguing match.

Twas a bit of a stand off at first, ‘cos Burnley built a trench across the entire width of the pitch and hid in the Cacti until about ten minutes into the game when Arsenal’s center midfielder crossed the halfway line, at which point he was brought down in a hail of fierce ankle biting.

Burnley then went into hiding and waited for an Arsenal search party.

At this point, all Burnley weapons were trained on the trench and the minute one of the Arsenal lads heads popped up, it was immediately ridiculed with caustic northern humour.

Paranoid and unable to stand the pressure of such intense ribbing, the Arsenal goalie panicked, thought they were only laughing at him, picked up the ball and ran crying through the Burnley ranks before scoring a fabulous drop goal from point blank range.

The shot was so powerful; the Burnley keeper was treated for shell shock and minor shrapnel injuries.

One nil.

Second half saw much of the same, except all but one of the Burnley players were substituted for exact look-a-likes, who weren’t footballers.

Cesc Fabregas, being the only one of the Arsenal players to spot this, immediately organised a picnic in the centre circle. After filling his belly with ham sandwiches and Fanta, he gently drifted off to sleep, only to be woken by the sound of rushing wind.

He looked up to see Clichy breaking free of his marker down the left wing with the ball. Clichy went on to chip the advancing (and by now bandaged) Burnley keeper from the edge of the box.

Then against all the odds, the Arsenal manager decided to counter the Burnley look-a-like ploy by gradually replace all his outfield players with midgets, starting in attack, so that by the end of the game the only normal sized Arsenal player left was the keeper.

With ten minutes left on the clock, the Arsenal manager changed tactics. All his outfield midgets were replaced by the real players again, but the keeper was instructed to stay on his knees.

After that, things became a bit hazy.

I remember Weird Bob knocking upon my door at some point. I let him in. He informed me he’d just watched a documentary on DVD about life at the bottom of the sea.

“Apparently,” he said. “There are these huge undersea lakes where these weird fish live that feed on dead whales.”

“Undersea lakes?” I asked, my mind reeling with befuddlement.

“Yeah, they’re created by these different currents of water and shit.”

“With fish that eat dead whales?”

“Yeah, when whales die they fall to the bottom of the sea and these weird fish eat their carcasses.”

Fuck. This sounded serious. “What kind of fish?”

Weird Bob shrugged. “Underwater ones.”