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DD's Christmas Carol

Monday, December 22 2003

The bits you might have missed so far (aren't I good to you?):

Introduction
Stave 1 - The Ghost of English Cricket

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Now read on.

When Ebenezer Ducky awoke, it was so dark that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the bag of the transpaarent Fox's Glacier Mints from his by now familiar opaque humbugs (note, dear reader, that the word 'transpaarent' is not a typing error but describes perfectly something which once was there, everyone knew this for a fact, might well still be so but no-one can ever find it - derived from hours of trying to locate the Transvaal Cricket Board website).

The chimes from the neighbouring church/mosque/synagogue/temple/generic place of worship or contemplation (note : politically correct version of story) struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve. Almost as many chimes as there were punctuation errors in the previous sentence, but as they were the same ones as Dickens had made in the original, that's fine by me. Twelve. It was past two when he went to bed. The clock must be slow. Inzamam ul-Haq must have got into the works. Either that or an icicle. No, the former. Twelve!

"Why, it isn't possible," said Ducky, "that I can have slept for a whole day and far into another night. Is it possible that something has happened to the sun, and that this is noon?" He leaped out of bed, scraped the frost off the window and peed into the dim street. Then he peered into the dim street. Scarcely a soul to be seen. No ragamuffins played with bat and ball. In the distance, he spotted a forlorn figure in white attire surveying the fog, shaking his head, surveying it again. Dickie Bird walked on.

Ebenezer Ducky went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, again and again and again, and could make nothing of it. "Anthony McGrath? Bah! Humbug." The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. Bannerman's ghost bothered him exceedingly. "Was it all a dream or not?".

It was certainly dark - you could hardly see your humbug in front of your face. Ducky resolved to lie awake until the hour was past, and considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Derby Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution of his power.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Ducky, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half past!" said Ducky.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Ducky.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Ducky, triumphantly, "and nothing else."

"Look, you feathered wazzock. I've been hammering on the door and ringing the bell for what seems like years, and I'm sick to death of being ignored by you and everybody else. Who do you think I am, Michael Di Venuto?" said the visitor.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Ebenezer Ducky.

"No, I've just come to read the gas meter." came the reply. "Yes, of course I am."

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"Speak up." said Ducky.

"How's that?" replied the apparition.

"Not out!" replied Asoka De Silva. "The ball clearly pitched outside leg stump."

At this point, Ducky knew he was dreaming, but he woke with a start and went through the whole clock thing again, this time without the cheap shot about Asoka De Silva. All right, including the cheap shot about Asoka De Silva. Why change the habits of a lifetime? (like Asoka De Silva).

"Who, and what are you?" enquired the quaking Ducky (Editor's note : surely 'quacking Ducky'?)

"I am the ghost of Christmas past."

"Christmas post? I'll have you know that I sent all my greetings cards off in plenty of time to arrive before Christmas Day. Mind you, I'll grant that you just can't get the staff nowadays" replied Ducky.

"Christmas PAST" repeated the ghost, rapidly losing patience.

"Long past?" asked Ebenezer Ducky, observant of its dwarfish nature and almost total absence of a discernable neck.

"No, your past." replied Gladstone Small.

Ducky then made bold to enquire what business brought him here.

"Your welfare."

"So what the Dickens, if you'll pardon the expression, are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night? I can't just go to sleep at the drop of a catch, er I mean, a hat. Who do you think I am? Phil Tufnell?"

"All right, your reclamation, then. Take heed."

It reached out a strong hand, firm but fair, grasping Ducky by the arm. Ebenezer felt somewhat reassured, as if the very impressive Simon Taufel, the world's greatest umpire, had taken charge of proceedings.

"Rise, and walk with me."

"I'll walk the day any Australian batsman does." replied Ducky, but the grasp, so gentle and yet as firm as a woman's hand on your credit card, was not to be resisted.

"I am mortal," Ducky remonstrated, "and liable to fall."

"No, you are mental and liable to fail." replied the ghost, but went on as if in reassurance "Touch my hand lightly, as if you were fielding in the slips and measuring your distance to your fellow. Beware, though. I mean a proper slip fielder, like Ian Botham, perhaps, or even Phil Sharpe, not that fool Bob VVS-Catchit."

"Ah, Philip. What's he doing nowadays?"

"Getting ready to penalise Derbyshire again." replied the apparition.

"Some things never change." said Ebenezer.

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. They had crossed the portal as easily as Brad Cheaty-Hodge or Neil Unfairbrother taking a catch in the deep - and just as far over the boundary to boot.

The darkness and mist vanished, for it was a clear, bright winter's day, with snow upon the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, Ducky saw a figure in a long coat. Dickie Bird shuffled uneasily from one foot to another, kicking small puffs of snow into the air before shouting "Play to start in thirty minutes."

"Ah, Buxton." said Ducky. "A few years since first-class cricket was played there. But why are they getting ready for cricket in winter?"

"It's July." replied the apparition. "And quite a good one, this being Derbyshire."

"Derbyshire hereby penalised one hundred points for failing to prepare decent weather." said Phil Sharpe.

"Good heaven!" said Ducky, clasping his wings together as he looked about him. "I was bred here. I was a boy here."

"Don't you mean 'duckling'?" replied the spirit.

"Who's writing this story?" replied Ebenezer.

"Your lip is trembling. You look like Brad Hogg after a net with Andrew Symonds. (obscure). Why, what is that on your cheek - a tear?" said the ghost.

"No, a pimple." replied Ebenezer. "I am related to Rikki Clarke."

The scene faded, only to be replaced by another.

They walked along. Ducky was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one a reminder of his past. Worms, breadcrumbs, Merv Hughes's socks. They came upon a stadium, not quite deserted. The year was 1979. In the pavilion at the far side sat a ragbag collection of boys in baggy green caps, all seemingly intent on studying the ground. Meanwhile, Mike Brearley held aloft an urn - THE URN - as if to rub it in.

"Yaaaa, 5-1 you miserable convicts." cried Ducky, but no-one heard. Even if they did, they ignored him. Some things never change.

The spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to the younger Ducky in the corner of the schoolroom, earnestly scribbling a school cricket match report. Here was a good student, eloquent, erudite, witty, eager to tell the truth with light humour without resorting to blind jingoism and frivolous tomfoolery. In short, a prat.

Yes, they flew back to England again. And I am aware that in the previous scene Mike Brearley wouldn't be holding the REAL urn, just a copy. The Aussies cracked the original one years ago in a bar-room brawl. I just mentioned it because it is symbolic of the ghost of Christmas, I mean cricket, past

Now where was I?

Oh yes. Take it as read that the spirit touched Ducky on the arm. Just the once. It's not that kind of story (although the frequent mention of knockers yesterday might have given you that impression).

Suddenly, a man in foreign garments, wonderfully real and distinct to look at, stood outside the window with an axe in his belt, leading an ass by the nose.

"What are you doing?" asked Ducky.

"Taking Steve Harmison for a net." said Duncan Fletcher.

The ghost looked anxious.

"What's the matter?" asked Ducky.

"I think a few pages got turned over at the same time." replied the spirit. "The whole thing is somewhat bizarre."

"Can we see another Christmas?" enquired Ducky.

"Might as well. This one's making no sense whatsoever." said the spirit.

They looked through the window at Lord's. The ECB selection committee sat there, heads in hands. It was all too terrible to contemplate. Two-nil down with just two to play. They looked again - Melbourne. The year was 1982. Ian Chappell was asked how he thought the game would go, but he couldn't get a word in edgeways for in the Australians' ranks stood none other than David Hookes. The spirit gestured, and Ducky strained to hear.

"I think we'll win inside three days, you Pommie dastards people" Hookes shouted, politely. When pressed further, he added "No, three sessions. A day, that's right. No, before lunch."

A young reporter stood patiently, waiting for the tirade to end. "Do you honestly think that this Australian side is so far ahead of England that victory inside a day is indeed possible?" enquired the naive apparition that was Ebenezer Scrooge Ducky of bygone days.

"Look, you stupid Pom duck. There's more chance of Bangladesh becoming a test nation before (hurriedly checks Cricinfo), say, November 2000 than there is of the Poms surviving beyond lunch." said the eloquent Hookes.

"But this English team had a true leader of men in none other than Bob Willis - and in Ian Botham, the finest cricketer this country has produced in a century or more." protested the modern-day Ducky (all right, the one in the story, the one visited by .... that's right) to the spirit.

"How did the game end?" enquired the ghost of Christmas I mean cricket past.

"England won by three runs." replied Ebenezer.

"So it was a happy time."

"No, we lost the Ashes."

"So it was a sad time?"

"I don't know. I'm confused."

"You're confused? How do you think the people who are reading this feel? You've thrown that many red herrings in to the plot that no-one knows what the Dic... I mean, the whole thing's pretty pointless if you ask me. I had a really hot date lined up for tonight too, then this guy Bannerman who I'd never seen before in my death told me to get the old Time Machine out..." said the ghost.

"Ssshhh, don't say anything about The Time Machine. The lawyers of the estate of HG Wells will have my guts for garters. Anyway, why are we here?" asked Ducky.

"Well, speaking philosophically, why are any of us here? Life without purpose is devoid of meaning. To decide whether there is even an answer to that question is to ask whether there is a divinity, a creator even..."

"Er, why are we back outside my house?" asked Ducky. "Is that it for the night?"

"Have you not yet learned anything?" asked the spirit.

"Well, I do regret one thing." replied Ducky. "I wish Bob VVS-Catchit were here. I'd like to give him..."

"A florin? A Christmas turkey?"

"No, a sound thrashing. I had a fiver on India to beat Australia in the TVS Cup Final. FOUR DROPPED SLIP CATCHES."

"Look!" said the spirit, and the world went all wibbly again. When the mists cleared, Ducky could see that it was the Cricket Writers Guild Annual Dinner and Dance - only he hadn't been invited.

"Why am I not present?" he asked.

"It's for proper journalists." replied the ghost. "Ones who report on Surrey and Middlesex."

"Remove me!" Ducky exclaimed. "I can bear it no longer."

He looked upon the ghost and it changed, becoming like every character Ducky had ever lampooned and yet, like none of them. A gestalt entity, the whole being far greater than the sum of the parts, perhaps? A phoney West Country accent filled the air as the ghost spoke: "Ar, oi be the eternally damned spirit of Marrrcus Trescothick, sentenced to drink zoider throughout the ages, to taaaalk loik this an' to be caught in the gulley."

The ghost shimmered once more, this time taking on the appearance of a foul, hideous creature with great, fearsome fangs. "Rikki. What are you doing here?" demanded Ducky.

The by now quite apoplectic spirit of Christmas past chased after Ebenezer screaming, threatening to tear him limb from limb. Slowly, slowly, the duck pulled ahead of the grasping hands. When he thought he was far enough ahead to risk glancing behind, he turned and froze in his tracks. The ghost, doubled up, could run no more. Thirty yards was all he could manage. Ebenezer smiled. Fancy taking on Inzy's body for a sprint? And with Merv Hughes's rump too!

Once more, the spectre shimmered, transforming again. It reached down and picked up a handful of rocks, then one by one threw them at Ducky. Again, fortune appeared to have favoured the duck since the apparition had chosen the likeness of Steve Harmison. However, the ghost had learned quickly. Aimed ten yards wide of Ducky, the next rock caught him a painful blow just above the beak.

"No more, no more, I beg you." cried Ducky. "Take me back. Haunt me no longer."

The bell struck twelve (but narrowly missed a few more). Ducky opened his eyes. "I really must stop eating those cheese-flavoured humbugs. That's the third time this week I've had that nightmare."

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Slide cautiously on to Stave 3, the Second of the Three Spirits
Sally forth fearlessly to Stave Four - the Third of the Three Spirits
Boldly go where no infinitive has been split before - to Stave Five, The End of It



Posted by Eddie