2012 Gravesend CC After Dinner Speech
The three fund raising stalwarts S K , A R and Q asked me on Wednesday if I would do this. How could I refuse despite those infamous words from B J still ringing in my ears of 'No offence Mike but you would think a club like Gravesend would be able to afford a decent speaker.' No offence taken B. What a pity JB isn't here, one of my bowling counterparts and former club secretary as he would have put you straight with a 'Yyyyou won't hear a better Fffffff Kings Speech if Colin fffffking FFFirth was rrrreading it.'
S did ask me at what stage of proceedings would I like to speak.' When people are pissed' was my reply. I can see by the red faces that most of you are at this stage, or is it that you have just been slapped across the face because it was the wrong pair of thighs that you groped underneath the crisp table cloths?
My apologies to the Colts present as there are some words I am about to utter that would not normally pass my lips in front of you. For clarification for them and for some others who a few years back confused a Paediatrician with the term 'Paedophile', and threw a brick through his window, when I come to use the word 'arsonist' I am not referring to somebody who likes it up the backside.
Much of this speech will be based on stories from My book 'French and Spanish Cricket' , a signed copy of which is in the raffle. Feel free to auction it on if you win it as the cheapest new copy you can get from Amazon would set you back £28.02. Don't despair if you don't win however, as you can download the E-Book' French and Spanish Cricket for Beginners' for a fiver. If you can't afford that, then you are not the sort of person Gravesend Cricket Club wants at their future functions and you'll have to go to my blog which is free.
I can see by some even redder faces that a few of you haven't downloaded the e-book yet, unless of course it's because you're the sort of person who enjoys a good slap and have regroped the same pair of thighs .
There is a theme to the stories and it seems to be one of those words I am apologising for. The theme like my bowling these days is 'Shit', so it's just as well that we have eaten.
As you may know from some of the people not here tonight, dogs are not allowed on the Bat & Ball. That's a good thing as like me, you may be bowling shit but that doesn't mean you want to step in it. Unpleasant as it is, Dog shit does get a bad press. When you think of Northfleet Cricket Club, you don't think of Wombwell Park you think of Dog Shit Park. See what I mean?
In contrast I have seen Naturalists orgasm as they pulled badger crap apart.(No not David Attenborough, Please, I don't want to think that). I've been on field trips where the guides have tried to persuade me of the significance of cow pats to the Universe. TV gardeners wax lyrical about the powers of horse manure. Some say it's lucky for a seagull to crap on you from a great height. Yet the very same people go bonkers if they step on a dog turd even though they are guano white with bird shit.
Because of present day Health and Safety Regulations the Scientists who study natural history are no longer allowed to handle Badger pooh. To avoid just going through the motions to investigate the feeding habits of the badger they now study the stomach contents. What they do is play tapes of Des O' Connor songs by the badgers' sets at night time and return in the morning to pick through what the badgers have thrown up.
As we've seen on TV, many Test Cricket grounds and some of the grounds we've all been to, have a problem with seagulls. However, if you play or watch a game in Cornwall you'll never see a single gull on the ground, even at St Ives and Falmouth Cricket Clubs which are close to the coastline. This can be confirmed by those who went on the Gravesend Cricket Club Cornwall Tour in, was it 1999? Q will know.
As a kid I played with the bloke who was credited with getting rid of the seagulls. Like me now, he was in his sixties . He was a retired tin miner. He was called Tony Clearwater. The seagulls used to drive the miners crazy when they came up to the surface at dinner time to eat their pasties. That's Lunch time to the David Camerons of this world who easily get confused when Cornish pasties are mentioned.
Tony used to chuck up bits of pasty to the most annoying seagull followed by a piece of Carbide. Carbide is what was used to fuel the miners' lamps. You drip water on to it and it gives off the inflammable gas Acetylene (of Oxy-Acetylene welding torch fame). You could imagine if water does that, what a gull's stomach contents would do. According to Tony, the annoying gull got about 20 yards away before it exploded. The rest of the gulls got the message and went off to annoy the holiday makers eating their cream teas. I've heard that these days the seagulls plague the Coronary Heart Disease Unit at Treliske Hospital near Truro.
The lovely Lady wife over there knows her shit. Floaters or sinkers, there's no dingle berries on her. We were in Spain coming out of yet another church, or was it a castle? It was on the village High Street. You had to watch your step as there was loads of pooh on the pavement. Being me I made some comment about it being from the pedigree dog whose owner she had been chatting up earlier in the day. She said 'They're sheep droppings.'
Me being me again, I poured out the scorn- 'How do you know they are sheep droppings? Why shouldn't they be from goats? We haven't seen a sheep since leaving Ramsgate. It's part of your Welsh heritage - That sort of thing. Before I had a chance to out-rant Victor Meldrew a whole bloody flock of them came around the corner. I was struck dumb as they passed by. I couldn't even say (Altogether now 'I DON'T BELIEVE IT.) The Shepherd didn't look at me but he gave her a knowing smile acknowledging a fellow sheep shite aficionado.
Just after that we met her chum with the Pedigree dog. She asked him if he was going to breed from him. 'No' said the bloke, 'He's been a bit snappy and bad tempered lately, and we're going to have him castrated.' I can remember to this day the glance that she threw me. Very similar to the one she's giving me now. I made a mental note to wear a cricket box if ever we visited that part of Spain again.
It wasn't the first time I'd been in trouble with sheep when we went abroad. 'Abroad' I said, not Wales. We'd parked our caravan overnight in one of those Aires-You know The French Motorway Service Stations. I was knackered after a long drive and went to bed soon after we got the kids off to sleep. The lovely lady tucked in to an apple saying it was the best way of cleaning your teeth before you go to bed. It wasn't long before our daughter wandered over and reversing the trend said that she couldn't get to sleep as she could hear sheep. She must have been about 8 at the time. There was no waking Snow White over there so I had to deal with it. I told her not to be so daft. Stop telling stories. We were in the middle of a motorway not in the countryside. That sort of thing. 'But I can hear sheep, Daddy ' she insisted.
In true Homer Simpson Style I told her that if she didn't get off to sleep she would be the cause of the deaths of the whole family by making me too tired to drive and having her mother tow the caravan. She stormed off back to her bed. I relayed the tale to my wife in the morning. She looked as stunned as those people in the Peter Kay TV advert where he frightened the life out of his daughter over the telephone while he was eating at the Indian Restaurant. She opened the caravan door with a righteous Lisa Simpson by her side pointing to one of those animal transporters that had parked right next to us.It was full of sheep, though they weren't in mint condition. Like those sheep I suffered big time. It taught me a lesson. I beeped my horn in support of the Animal Rights Campaigners outside Dover Docks when we got back. No more Lamb Bhoonas for me.
I did apologise to the Colts at the beginning. Now I'm near the end (Hurray!) there is a story I think they can learn from. What that is exactly, I don't know but here it is.
In my day I could bowl the odd quick delivery. I was 17, so we are in Cornwall again. The Police were looking for an arsonist. (Remember!) who was wreaking havoc in my home town of Camborne. Apparently someone was seen riding away from one of the crime scenes on a rusty bike. You've guessed it, just like mine. I used to leave it propped up outside the house. It wasn't locked. No need to. This was Cornwall and it was 46 ( ok 46 and a half) years ago, and besides, it wasn't combustible.
My Dad was the first to mention it. One of the people he knew at Mass on a Sunday was a policeman and he'd brought their suspicions to my dad's attention after the service. Despite a good reference from my dad, a detective came round the next day to look at the bike and interview me. My lasting impression of him was his shoes. Big brown brogues. He must have thought I was a red hot suspect. All those years of practice, lighting candles as an altar boy.( I was one of the few lucky ones not to have been abused). Who was I to pour cold water on his watertight case?
I co-operated but not in the way he wanted. I didn't admit to the crimes. I thought it best not too as it wasn't me who had committed them. Eventually the detective moved on to the theory of someone nicking my bike and returning it . 'What an honest arsonist' I said. He didn't like that at all but I think he saw the flaw in his argument. He disagreed with my 'I would have noticed if it wasn't there', until we were eyeball to eyeball and I said 'I can't see your shoes but I would know if they weren't there'.He ended up by saying 'You don't know how lucky you are that you don't fit the description.' Thank goodness Rupert Murdoch didn't own the News of The World at the time. They may have paid for the plastic surgeon to overcome that little problem.
He didn't know how lucky he was that he got out in the first over when he opened the batting for The Camborne Police side that was playing against our Milk Marketing Board team. (Sorry boys, you could get holiday jobs in those days). I didn't actually recognise him but I did recognise those big brown shoes. There was a time (And this could be the message for the colts) I would have toed the line as well as bowled only line and length, but I'd done a bit of growing up in that interview.
I wanted to launch a rocket propelled missile that would make his shoes become even browner. I wasn't too disappointed when he was out as I'd heard of the Good Cop / Bad Cop technique so I was quite happy to let the same delivery go to the number 3 batsman which reared up and hit him in the eye. After all it was Saturday and he could put some holy water on it the following day.
The moral? Don't put up with bullshit.
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