who removed Engelbrecht, little the worse for wear. There was a good deal of controversy in surrealist piscatorial circles, but it was finally decided that the Catch should stand. And you can see the pike stuffed, with the Bishop of Ely’s mitre underneath, in the Fisherman’s Eternal Rest.
ENGELBRECHT AND THE DEMON BOWLER
The news that I, A.N. Other, had been selected, as twelfth man, to support the eleven which was to play the MCC’s Touring Side at the Nightmare Abbey Cricket Week was brought to me, late, as I lay in the great, grey, brain-shaped Dream-Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club. I had just time to pack my vampire-bat and catch the Town Drain.
When I alighted from my fly, Platform 666 at the Ultimate Terminus, that night, was a sight to make sore eyes sorer. Over its limitless expanses swarmed cricketers of all shapes and sizes, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. The atmosphere was vibrant with keenness. Giants, Dwarfs, Fragments, Freaks of all kinds, played forward strokes from improvised wickets—lampposts, newspaper-kiosks, porters’ legs. Presently, amid the throng, I discerned my old friend Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, in the act of late cutting a neon bulb that swung in from the off, delivered right round the station clock by the cunning hand of Chippy de Zoete. Lizard Bayliss, my diminutive friend’s pessimistic manager, was keeping wicket behind a Stonehenge-like structure of luggage and station architecture. He was muttering to himself and sucking his fingers which had been damaged by some of the improvised “leathers” with which he was being pelted and which ranged from grape-fruit and Witch Balls to Tommy Prenderghast’s pet hedgehog, Chattox, and the Globe at Swanage.
The Terminus Bell tolled and we all surged forward as one flannelled fool, singing the Long Stop’s Chorus from Sir Henry Newbolt’s Opera Middle and Leg, towards Platform N, where the Town Drain was gaping at the seams to receive us. I bought the latest best-seller, How to Win Over Fiends and Influence Paranoiacs, from a strolling stall and settled down in my padded corner.
When I recovered the priceless gift of consciousness which distinguishes us from the brutes, I was lying on my back in a clearing surrounded by clumps of Old Man’s Beard. Amnesia, that all too frequent occupational complaint of the surrealist sportsman, had me in its grip. “Where am I?” I asked.
“In the deep,” said Lizard Bayliss, who was bending over me, fanning me with a dock leaf. “You’ve stopped one on the conk from W. G. Grace. We was sent out here, you and me and the dwarf and some more, at the beginning of the last over, as part of Prenderghast’s leg-trap. ‘Send all those ruddy duffers right out into the deep,’ Prendy roars. So we marches off here and here we’ve been ever since. We’ve beaten off several attacks from Fuzzy Wuzzy. The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead and we’re still waiting for the voice of a schoolboy to rally the ranks. The Dwarf caught the leather and he’s trying to break through with it to Square Leg. You better lie still. You been acting queer for days.”
Just then a message came through on the Bush Telegraph to say it was Over. We struck Camp and began the long trek to the other end of the field.
The appearance of our sadly depleted party in the neighbourhood of the Pitch was the signal for a burst of clapping. Engelbrecht, it seemed, had got through without dropping the catch. The Men in White were now in the act of overpowering Dr. Grace. They disarmed him of his bat and hauled him, still struggling, from the wicket.
But the scoreboard, at 903 for 1, gave us little encouragement, and the black flag on the abbey tower drooped at half-mast. At the Pavilion End, our skipper, the Id, was deep in conference with his lieutenants. As we hacked our way through the palisades of cow parsley and cronesbane that flanked the outfield, we looked back for
ENGELBRECHT AND THE DEMON BOWLER
The news that I, A.N. Other, had been selected, as twelfth man, to support the eleven which was to play the MCC’s Touring Side at the Nightmare Abbey Cricket Week was brought to me, late, as I lay in the great, grey, brain-shaped Dream-Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club. I had just time to pack my vampire-bat and catch the Town Drain.
When I alighted from my fly, Platform 666 at the Ultimate Terminus, that night, was a sight to make sore eyes sorer. Over its limitless expanses swarmed cricketers of all shapes and sizes, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. The atmosphere was vibrant with keenness. Giants, Dwarfs, Fragments, Freaks of all kinds, played forward strokes from improvised wickets—lampposts, newspaper-kiosks, porters’ legs. Presently, amid the throng, I discerned my old friend Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, in the act of late cutting a neon bulb that swung in from the off, delivered right round the station clock by the cunning hand of Chippy de Zoete. Lizard Bayliss, my diminutive friend’s pessimistic manager, was keeping wicket behind a Stonehenge-like structure of luggage and station architecture. He was muttering to himself and sucking his fingers which had been damaged by some of the improvised “leathers” with which he was being pelted and which ranged from grape-fruit and Witch Balls to Tommy Prenderghast’s pet hedgehog, Chattox, and the Globe at Swanage.
The Terminus Bell tolled and we all surged forward as one flannelled fool, singing the Long Stop’s Chorus from Sir Henry Newbolt’s Opera Middle and Leg, towards Platform N, where the Town Drain was gaping at the seams to receive us. I bought the latest best-seller, How to Win Over Fiends and Influence Paranoiacs, from a strolling stall and settled down in my padded corner.
When I recovered the priceless gift of consciousness which distinguishes us from the brutes, I was lying on my back in a clearing surrounded by clumps of Old Man’s Beard. Amnesia, that all too frequent occupational complaint of the surrealist sportsman, had me in its grip. “Where am I?” I asked.
“In the deep,” said Lizard Bayliss, who was bending over me, fanning me with a dock leaf. “You’ve stopped one on the conk from W. G. Grace. We was sent out here, you and me and the dwarf and some more, at the beginning of the last over, as part of Prenderghast’s leg-trap. ‘Send all those ruddy duffers right out into the deep,’ Prendy roars. So we marches off here and here we’ve been ever since. We’ve beaten off several attacks from Fuzzy Wuzzy. The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead and we’re still waiting for the voice of a schoolboy to rally the ranks. The Dwarf caught the leather and he’s trying to break through with it to Square Leg. You better lie still. You been acting queer for days.”
Just then a message came through on the Bush Telegraph to say it was Over. We struck Camp and began the long trek to the other end of the field.
The appearance of our sadly depleted party in the neighbourhood of the Pitch was the signal for a burst of clapping. Engelbrecht, it seemed, had got through without dropping the catch. The Men in White were now in the act of overpowering Dr. Grace. They disarmed him of his bat and hauled him, still struggling, from the wicket.
But the scoreboard, at 903 for 1, gave us little encouragement, and the black flag on the abbey tower drooped at half-mast. At the Pavilion End, our skipper, the Id, was deep in conference with his lieutenants. As we hacked our way through the palisades of cow parsley and cronesbane that flanked the outfield, we looked back for
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