St Mary's March 2018 Magazine

In My Day
the ramblings of Hubert Jamet
In my day it was about this time of
year that the football fixtures would
start to pile up. You could guarantee
games would get called off in January
and February because either the pitch
was so frozen you could do a decent
triple axle on the penalty spot or once
the thaw set in you had to shoo
hippopotamuses out of the mud bath
that was the centre circle.
So once the clocks sprung forward
we’d find ourselves playing on week
nights and to catch up. You’d get
home from work at five or six and had
to be up the Rec by half six for a cup
quarter final or a top of the table
clash.
You’ll gather that we had a pretty
good team in my day.
That’s how I remember it. We’d all
grown up together and had played
with one another since we could walk.
Back then every kid in the town was
out playing football in great endless
matches of twenty-a-side. Course,
they did end eventually but only when
you couldn’t see the ball in the dark.
To be fair football was popular
because there wasn’t much else to
do. Nowadays, kids can be fully
entertained and amused at home.
They go into their bedrooms as cute
six year olds and stay there until their
spots have cleared up and they are
ready to leave home. Course, they
quickly go back in again when they
discover that they can’t afford to leave
home.
Anyway; fixture pile up. Inevitably, this
tended to lead to injuries and we’d be
scratching around for players. The
season we won everything we’d had
to cast our net far and wide to make
up the numbers. Somebody told us
about the Weasley twins from Burton.
Fred and George had fallen out with
their team manager; Murray Neeno,
and were looking to move on. The
boys were identical except one played
on the left wing and the other on the
right. And they were… well… there’s
no other word for it, they were ginger.
Actually, we called them the Carrot
Twins. It seemed the right thing to do.
And they were fast. Greased lightning
had nothing on them and slippery too,
nobody could catch them.
It sticks in your throat a bit to admit
that we won silverware with ringers
from Burton but the boys became
much loved legends. They even
spawned that famous football cliché;
Slick as a Carrot.
Lot’s Wife
A father was reading Bible stories to
his young son. He read,
"The man named Lot was warned to
take his wife and flee out of the city,
but his wife looked back and was
turned into a pillar of salt."
His son asked,
"What happened to the flea?"
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