On a blustery afternoon among the green pastures of the Holloway Road, a duel was fought between the publisher of Untold Arsenal, Tony Attwood, and the website’s special spoof correspondent, Sir Hardly Anyone.
The origins of the dispute are thought to be the slowness of the publisher in putting up a report submitted by the correspondent, a slowness said to be due to the publisher’s propensity on a saturday night for the popular dancing style known as “jive”.
The hearty crowd of some fifteen souls who battled across the north Thames marshes and up the hill towards the Arch Way, were surprised to see the difference in the say the two protagonists dressed. Sir Hardly in full mediaeval armour, Mr A in a t-shirt with a picture of a hammer proclaiming the phrase, “This is not a drill”.
A passing Aberdeen foxhound gave Sir Hardly an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic
“I invite my publisher to apologise” shouted Sir Hardly.
“It is a good rule in life never to apologize,” replied the publisher. “The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them,” thus managing to equal his antagonist by quoting Untold Arsenal’s official favourite author.
“I invite the correspondent to acknowledge that he is facing an old man with grey hair, and one should have respect for the elderly, even if they still like to dance to rock n roll music on a saturday night,” he continued. (The publisher, not the Scottish dog).
“There is only one cure for grey hair,” retorted Sir Hardly. “It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.”
“But I am an ebullient eccentric, and everyone loves me,” said the publisher.
“And what is Ben Ben,” said Sir Hardly, “but a pocket watch that saw its chance on the big stage?” and he strode forwards revealing, to the alarm of Mr Attwood’s supporters that while the publisher was armed bu8t with a sword the correspondent pushed in front of him a large canon, which he claimed befitted his support of the “gunners”.
The referee, a Mr Duckoutof Theway, waved a handkerchief about a bit, and Sir Hardly strode forth, lit the touch paper of his canon, and stepped to one side.
Fortunately for the publisher, the cannonball outlet was pointing the wrong way and the shot sailed harmlessly away to the north, landing on some dilapidated old buildings around 748 High Road, Tottenham causing much damage which no one minded.
Gallantly the publisher then followed suit and rather than lunge at Sir Hardly threw his sword up in the air, at which point, after taking due note of gravity, it sailed back to earth, sinking the pointy end into the boot of the referee.
Mr Attwood then approached the crowd and quoted the official quotey book to the effect that “The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun” before pointing out that the Daily Telegraph was now running these headlines…
United told to speed up Schneiderlin signing – but Van Gaal holding out for Schweinsteiger
Arsenal beat United to Juve midfielder Vidal’
‘Arsenal consider £13m Garay move’
Oh how we laughed.
On several occasions in the report of the duel, mention is made of the presence of a canon.
In the interest of ecclesiastical accuracy, could we be informed if they were Roman Catholic or Church of England. 😉
What ? No gore nor spilling of guts ? A right proper damp squib if I say so myself .
Surely someone in the crowd would have died of the sheer boredom ?
@ nicky -June 28, 2015 at 5:26 pm – I think that most of our younglings would have thought that it would have meant Nick Cannon – Mariah’s ex !
I wonder what kind of hammer was pictured on Tony’s shirt. Nearly all of the examples I see on the Internet, showed a standard carpenter’s “claw” hammer. I seen a single exception, that being a framing hammer. No ball peen hammers, no geologist’s sampling hammer, no mallets, no sledge hammers.
Someone has written a book about the oil patch, with a title of This is not a Drill, but it is showing a picture of an ocean drilling platform.
—
One less pundit. Phil Neville is partners with a bunch of ManUs and one othre guy in Salford (?). The other guy, is the owner of Valencia. Well, Phil is off to Valencia to become the new assistant manager. There is no mention of him teaching the Valencians how to two foot tackle.
One important question is if the ref was appointed by the PGMO? If so having him injured will not have pleased Mike Riley and so we can expect another year full of referee decisions going against us.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj%C3%B6lnir
Ancient Gooner
Blacksheep gave me one of these for Xmas, and I regularly wear it to Arsenal games.