A Fine Day For Amnesia

It was while rubbing E45 into my shins and contemplating logical positivism that it came to me. Well, what actually came to me was that I didn’t understand logical positivism. Mind you, I was still scratching my shins too. Still, being cricket scorer gives you ample time for philosophy - and scratching.

Geordie Duncan, professional gardener and amateur psychotic, was the fast bowler for Wallsend Amnesia FC against Billingham Sinfonia FC in the local football league’s annual summer cricket and sandwich and cake-making tournament. And he didn’t like symphonies - 'however they are spelt!' - or toffs, or cucumber sandwiches.

“Well played, sir!” said the Sinfonia captain from the boundary, waving a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.

“Me pease pudding and ham sarnies are going well.” said Granny Smith proudly from the Amnesia table in the food tent.

Herbert Mangle, Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, was philosophically debating internally if he, as a hypothetical vegetarian, was really eating his third pease pudding and ham sandwich, or whether this was a sensory deception brought on by a hypothetical protein deficiency, but he was definitely sure (as he had been in love fourteen and a half times before), that he was now in love with Vera Arbuthnot, daughter of Sinfonia 's benefactor, Sir Horatio Arbuthnot, as she demurely handed out smoked salmon canapés at the Sinfonia table. And anyway, as he opined to Chas Hunkers, family butcher and declamatory pessimist: “As Shaw remarked,‘Virtue is insufficient temptation’ “.

Out on the green, Geordie Duncan was striding stiffly back to his mark, eyes bulging and knuckles cracking, as the ball was retrieved, post-six, from the long grass, while the stripey-capped Sinfonia batsmen met in the middle with a toothy laugh and a ‘yahhh!’.

“I’ve always said...” said Chas Hunkers (and he always had) “...that England will perish overnight if Brussels ever bans the British banger...”

“Has anyone seen me hearing aid?” Asked Granny Smith.
“Eh?” She added, somewhat superfluously.

Herbert Mangle had written an ode to the fragrant Vera Arbuthnot on a serviette, and slipped it to her while pretending to admire her Battenburgs:

O gorgeous Vera, my heart is slain 

Run off with me - the world we’ll scorn 

We’ll catch the ten past midnight train 

And be in Whitley Bay by morn... 

Geordie Duncan thundered in and unleashed a beamer that was but a blur. The Sinfonia batsman did manage to raise his bat enough to get two previously quite intact fingers to change the missile’s direction, in this case towards the elbow of a half-turned PC Jack Townsend, the insecure policeman, who was umpiring at square leg in his blue serge policeman’s trousers, as he felt these might lend him extra authority in his umpiring capacity. 

“Yaaah, partner!” shouted the non-striking Sinfonian, setting off for a run.

 “Arrrgh! Ohhh! Oooo!” shouted the struck Sinfonian, not running at all.

 “Ow, yer b****r, ow, yer b****r...!” shouted PC Jack Townsend, running at least 13 in various directions.

“It’ll all end in tears” observed Chas Hunkers. “Mark my words. It always does.” 

“Shaw observed” said Herbert Mangle, “that Hegel had observed that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.”

“It’s the Worcester sauce in the pease pudding that makes the difference”, said Granny Smith, winking.

 Vera Arbuthnot clearly felt that the 'sauce' in Herbert Mangle’s serviette made no difference at all to her and made no response to his poetic overture. Herbert Mangle, after a few moment’s philosophical reflection, reacted both positively and logically, and soon another serviette found its way, this time to the palm of Vera Arbuthot’s shapely helper, Juanita St.John Fortinbras. 

PC Jack Townsend felt it was his painful duty to exact swift justice, so changed into his blue policeman’s tunic, (but had to swap the blue serge trousers for his cricket whites as the material was making his leg itch badly). He then confiscated the cricket ball, deeming it a ‘dangerous weapon’, thereby terminating the match. Under the modified Duckworth-Lewis-Townsend formula, Wallsend Amnesia were thus awarded the game based on runs scored divided by the number of stripes on their caps. 

Granny Smith’s pease pudding and ham sandwiches also took the prize for Amnesia in the cake and sandwich contest - being fulsomely praised by Sir Hugo Arbuthnot as ‘nonpareil’. 

“Eh?” said Granny Smith. 

Not only did Sir Hugo behave as a good sport - even Juanita St.John Fortinbras seemed to take Granny Smith’s triumph in good heart, as she was smiling shyly and quite rosy-cheeked as she left, folding away a serviette into her purse. 

Geordie Duncan finished off the remaining pork pies, raising a half-eaten one in one massive paw and waving it cheerfully at the back of the departing ambulance. 

“Well” said Herbert Mangle, commendably stoic in his swift recovery from Vera Arbuthnot’s rebuff, and carefully folding up a railway timetable and slipping it into his pocket as he also got up to leave. “All in all, I think it was rather a fine day for Amnesia.”

(Inspired by, and a few bits nicked from, the stories of Leonard Barras)