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Authors: Maurice Richardson
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away the Dwarf Engelbrecht chasing a cabbage white.
THE DAY WE PLAYED MARS
This is the story of how Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, wins his Global Football Cap. It’s a story the oldest members still whisper in the Ghost Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club, a story of indomitable courage, and no little cunning, winning through against overwhelming odds.
Engelbrecht has never played surrealist football before and his delight at finding his name, just above Engels, F., in the list—a sizeable work in many volumes—of the team to play Mars in the Final of the Interplanetary Challenge Cup, leads to a celebration in which we all take part.
The Final of the Interplanetaries is played off on the Moon, and months before the kick-off all sorts of vehicles—everything from ordinary space-ships to beams, dreams, mediums, and telepathic wave-patterns—start arriving with the players. There’s a pause for rest and reorientation; then they begin trooping into the vast Metamorphosis or Changing Room. Engelbrecht and I blow in in a rocket with the usual party of our Skipper’s intimates. We’ve been training strictly on hashish and mescaline, and by the time we arrive on the Ground it’s a job to sort us out from our hallucinations.
The Lunar Twickenham is a boundless plain of glassy black lava pitted with craters. The Larger Ball is considered de rigueur. It has to be something pretty sizeable to keep in play at all, though, as Charlie Wapentake says, it’s a bit nightmarish trying to dribble with a thing like a Roc’s egg.
Dreamy Dan, our old-time surrealist umpire, is thought to be too biased, as well as a trifle slow for such a commando-type operation. The new referee is Cecil B. de Mille, picked for his crowd work. Presently he sends a message to ask the Id to scrabble along and meet the Martian Skipper in a neutral crater for final briefing. So off the Old Master trots, accompanied by Chippy de Zoete, his Vice. When they come back they’re shaking all over and Chippy de Zoete’s chest-wig, which he had made at Clarkson’s to strike terror into the opposing forwards, has turned white as fleece. From which we deduce that this year’s Martian team includes some pretty formidable Entities. So tough, indeed, does the opposition appear that it’s decided to try a very unorthodox ploy and put the full side, the entire human race, into the field straight away.
The opening ceremony is held as usual. There’s a silent tribute to the honour of William Webb Ellis, that Glorious Precursor of Surrealist Sport, the Rugby Schoolboy who first ran with the Ball. Then the Band strikes up the Supersonic Symphony— a rather unfortunate choice for it brings half the Grandstand down with a crash. After which we take the Field.
Even I, old hand as I am, haven’t quite bargained for the procession of Giant Monstrosities that come filing out of the Visitors Entrance. When Lizard Bayliss, Engelbrecht’s pessimistic manager, catches sight of them he tries to beat it back to the Changing Room, but the crush of characters is too thick.
It’s our kick-off. It takes a bit of doing to sort us all out, but by the next full moon de Mille has us well in hand. I’ve been given a cosy little assignment, narking to the Central Captain’s Committee on the Wing Forwards, so I take Engelbrecht under my wing and pilot him.
The whistle blows and Melchisedek takes the kick. Nebuchadnezzar follows up and gathers it. He passes to Nero, Nero to Attila, Attila to the Venerable Bede, the Venerable Bede to Ethelred the Unready, who knocks on into a crater. De Mille screams for a scrum. Engelbrecht tries to climb down into the thick of it. “You keep out of that,” I tell him. “The idea! A dwarf trying to scrum down between Henry VIII and Cetewayo. You’d get pulped.”
De Mille rolls the ball down an inclined plane right into the centre of the great heaving mass. Anak and Harold Hardrada, our hookers, get their toes
THE DAY WE PLAYED MARS
This is the story of how Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, wins his Global Football Cap. It’s a story the oldest members still whisper in the Ghost Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club, a story of indomitable courage, and no little cunning, winning through against overwhelming odds.
Engelbrecht has never played surrealist football before and his delight at finding his name, just above Engels, F., in the list—a sizeable work in many volumes—of the team to play Mars in the Final of the Interplanetary Challenge Cup, leads to a celebration in which we all take part.
The Final of the Interplanetaries is played off on the Moon, and months before the kick-off all sorts of vehicles—everything from ordinary space-ships to beams, dreams, mediums, and telepathic wave-patterns—start arriving with the players. There’s a pause for rest and reorientation; then they begin trooping into the vast Metamorphosis or Changing Room. Engelbrecht and I blow in in a rocket with the usual party of our Skipper’s intimates. We’ve been training strictly on hashish and mescaline, and by the time we arrive on the Ground it’s a job to sort us out from our hallucinations.
The Lunar Twickenham is a boundless plain of glassy black lava pitted with craters. The Larger Ball is considered de rigueur. It has to be something pretty sizeable to keep in play at all, though, as Charlie Wapentake says, it’s a bit nightmarish trying to dribble with a thing like a Roc’s egg.
Dreamy Dan, our old-time surrealist umpire, is thought to be too biased, as well as a trifle slow for such a commando-type operation. The new referee is Cecil B. de Mille, picked for his crowd work. Presently he sends a message to ask the Id to scrabble along and meet the Martian Skipper in a neutral crater for final briefing. So off the Old Master trots, accompanied by Chippy de Zoete, his Vice. When they come back they’re shaking all over and Chippy de Zoete’s chest-wig, which he had made at Clarkson’s to strike terror into the opposing forwards, has turned white as fleece. From which we deduce that this year’s Martian team includes some pretty formidable Entities. So tough, indeed, does the opposition appear that it’s decided to try a very unorthodox ploy and put the full side, the entire human race, into the field straight away.
The opening ceremony is held as usual. There’s a silent tribute to the honour of William Webb Ellis, that Glorious Precursor of Surrealist Sport, the Rugby Schoolboy who first ran with the Ball. Then the Band strikes up the Supersonic Symphony— a rather unfortunate choice for it brings half the Grandstand down with a crash. After which we take the Field.
Even I, old hand as I am, haven’t quite bargained for the procession of Giant Monstrosities that come filing out of the Visitors Entrance. When Lizard Bayliss, Engelbrecht’s pessimistic manager, catches sight of them he tries to beat it back to the Changing Room, but the crush of characters is too thick.
It’s our kick-off. It takes a bit of doing to sort us all out, but by the next full moon de Mille has us well in hand. I’ve been given a cosy little assignment, narking to the Central Captain’s Committee on the Wing Forwards, so I take Engelbrecht under my wing and pilot him.
The whistle blows and Melchisedek takes the kick. Nebuchadnezzar follows up and gathers it. He passes to Nero, Nero to Attila, Attila to the Venerable Bede, the Venerable Bede to Ethelred the Unready, who knocks on into a crater. De Mille screams for a scrum. Engelbrecht tries to climb down into the thick of it. “You keep out of that,” I tell him. “The idea! A dwarf trying to scrum down between Henry VIII and Cetewayo. You’d get pulped.”
De Mille rolls the ball down an inclined plane right into the centre of the great heaving mass. Anak and Harold Hardrada, our hookers, get their toes
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