The Scout or Welcome to South Bermondsey - стр. 4

"Johnny, do me a favour and don't give me a bunch of bollocks," I said, picking up on his joking tone, "even if you'd inherited the palace at Eltham, you'd still have been pounding the doors of our base and begging to be allowed into the locker room with our incompetent players."

"I guess you’re probably right." he answered with a strange look on his mug, a mixture of pride mixed with resignation.

"There's a great pub around the corner. It’s cheap and the food is tasty and they have a serious selection of ales, whiskeys and everything that you love to pour down your gullet. There's one problem though, on Fridays and Saturdays there's always a bunch of wankers from the Royal Blackheath Club who hang out there, you know, with golf clubs and caps, all of whom think they're at minimum Tiger Woods, but they drink whiskey like Vinnie Jones."

"Good company," Johnny laughed, "Definitely better than our gym students."

"Then let's go before my wife catches me or we’ll have to sit and have tea and biscuits instead of whiskey."

Since it was Saturday night the pub was full of people. Some students were downing drinks at the bar and there were a few local pensioners sipping ale with great decorum at tables near the windows. I therefore had to say hello a couple of times.

Johnny and I took an empty table in the corner and he ordered four pints straight off.

"Well, down the hatch!" he downed half a pint like a vacuum cleaner sucking air.

"So, what happened?" I stared at him in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

I put my glass down on the table and said, "I know you pretty well. If you start out like that, it's for a reason."

"Hmmm… this is boring…" he said and finished his ale.

"Come on, what's up? For once we won and were already five points clear of the relegation zone. But you don't seem yourself."

"Five points!" Johnny said and started to down the second pint.

It wouldn't last long at this rate, I thought.

"Look, Alex," he said, suddenly looking at me very seriously and as if with regret, "do you remember when we played the Cup match last year against Fulham?"

"Well yeah, I remember. How could I not remember? We left the Cup playoffs like a champagne cork, with a whoosh, and so what?"

"Do you remember the conversation we had after that?"

"With the Big Boss? Yeah I remember."

"Do you know what happened after that?"

"Well, apparently the old man was hanging by a thread…"

"Exactly, by a thread! And our wankers found out and then they all got together and gave away the series."

"And so what?" I watched Johnny pick up a mug again. "Hey, that's my ale!"