photo from 1900 lulworth cove

RIBS TOWN A short Story

Charles Ambrosia Wanklen the third didn’t like guns even though he was the owner of the only gun store in town. When Jack Tewlitt came in Chas said. "Good you came Jack I’ve been talkin to pricks all day about what damn guns they should use to kill what damn animals".


Jack , a veteran of Iwo Jima, sat down and offered Chas a Cigar; they both lit up."Wanna beer Jack" He went to the back of the shop and brought back two 

"I have this specially sent over from the Limeys; this is real beer Jack, not the shit people think beer is here". Jack poured his out into the glass that Chas offered him and then took a long swig.

"Been thinking Chas about Iwo Jima again. When we raised the flag in that famous photo they all go on about, there was hardly any fucking Japs left, know what I’m saying".

"Yeah Jack, what you saying is that this country is founded on myth. Davy fucking Crockett, the bullshit about the brothers of the revolution, the Pearl Harbour crap. All lies. A country founded solely on lies and religous fanatics".He always said stuff like that.

"Those two fucking fat freaks gone missing Jack".

"Do I give a shit, loook at my face".

"Well their fat fucking frump of a Mother came in here asking what they bought to go hunting so I told the Fat fucking cow and I added that I’m a seller of guns not a fucking social assistant like the niggers have".

"Fucked her once when she was half decent; whined like a pig when I stuck it in; strangest fucking sound you ever heard".

"Well that is history , don’t suppose you wanna do anyhing like that now".

"Well thanks for the beer, by the way just came across the street and saw that Moodies been turned into a Frog brasserie as they say".

"Well bout time we had some decent fucking food here ; fuck Hamburgers and fries".

"Too true ".Jack Tewlitt didn’t really like Chas but Jack thought he was the only person in Ribs Town that had at least some idea of reality, the rest of the populace, well most of them, believed what they saw on T.V and in the newspapers; they believed the most corrupt media in the world outside of Italy and Latin america.

Jack Tewlitt didn’t give a shit anyway because he could see a phoney a mile off.

In Iwo Jima he had more or less tried not to get shot and had been only 14 years old when he had been put into the catering corps; Tewlitt hated this because he wanted adventure and thought it might be fun blowing fuck out of those snidey fucks called the "Nips".

He soon changed his tune when he saw the shit going down and was glad he had been put in the caterers; his one lament was why the fuck he had falsified his age to get into the war.

Notwithstanding that he was still a decent figure of a man, tall , straight and unlined. women still fancied him for he was one of the few in Ribs Town that could wear a Ralph Lauren double breasted chalk stripe and look the business; his dark latin skin and luxuriant greying hair gave him the look of a dubious Italian mafioso and as he sat down with Chas in the French joint Mary Parkins a "forty" something looked at him from the table where she sat with her husband schoolteacher Peter Parkins who was younger than Jack but looked knackered out.

Jack had fucked Mary 20 years ago and it hadn’t been one of his better sexual experiences; she fucked like someone brought back to life from the morgue.

Just moments before she had been in the crapper and now sitting at her table was ANOTHER CUSTOMER CALLED Tamiya t.Assab, a cross between an arab and a jap .She was playing with yourself material.

Just Before she had been straining at the leash, struggling with the load and what a load!

Then finally a bomb ejecting from that tight little ass splashing the water now shitted open by shit.

She had wiped herself then entered back into the restuarant. The bomb still floating on the flotsam .

A smile.

She sat down.

The man thinking as she sat please God make her marry me.

Bob Pope was one of the types that even if you’d never ever been to Canada well you’d expect to find his type there.

He was plump and tall and thought of himself as most Canadians do as an outdoors man but the truth was he couldn’t waLK A FLIGHT OF STAIRS without loosing his breath.He was fair as well and had light skin, too light.



Bob had money so at least he was able to procure his fair share of women cos Bob put it around that he liked to fete his females.

His latest chick was this stunner, an Arabian Princess, so she said. I have to tell you that I couldn’t understand why that little sex pot went round with Bob; I mean even the thought of them having kids is disgusting. Big Flabby White Man+SILKILY SEXY Arabian Princess.



They did get married and the children were to put it mildly bizzare. I won’t tell you what they looked like but you can imagine can’t you? They just added to that bizzare fucking nation which is like a mad zoo that breeds Camels with Elephants and Monkeys with Chickens..

Michael Mondois arrived at the table of Jack and Chas and said.

"It is a great pleasure to welcome you to "PEPE LO MOKO". Can I ask you what you’d like to eat".

"Yeah". Said Chas. "We’ll try the Entrecote".

"Bad choice" said the French waiter Michael Mondois. And it was cos just before the kitchen had seen altercation.

"In the freezer is Mr Simms from the Food and Drink agency . I’m going to cook him in the oven a bit later "Said the Dwarf . "He has never been cooked before".

"What did the Asshole want"? Asked the blond waiter called Mondois.

"He found something that according to him was not of animal origin". Replied the Dwarf.

"And what was that"? Asked the waiter.

"What was that? Why is that? How! when! why! I am a cook and you are a waiter so don’t ask me questions!!!!!

"Arse-hool"!!!

"Arse-hoool!!!!! YOU ASS-HOOOL.

Mr Simms had been a very pleasant and well organised man until he had hit upon that French place in the Deep South but now he would turn out to be the greatest thing that Mr Bernard Moonstone , the president of the university of Quantrill had ever tasted. It was just following the maxim of the two French partners; that was drawn up years before in Lyon, that being."Give people the things they deserve to eat or even better give them the food that they merit.

Michael Mondois was the kind of Frenchmen that everyone loved to hate; he was extremely arrogant but in such a subtle way that you needed to be intelligent to even begin to understand that he was that way. Tall and blond, Michael came from the city of Lyon that place of the best French culinary skills.

"Bad Choice"? Asked Chas

"Yes I’m am afraid that the Entrecote needs to hang longer than it has but if you return in a week then it will be superb" Replied Michael.

"Well what do you suggest"? Asked Jack

"I would go for the liver with fresh wild garlic. It is truly superb".

"O.K we’ll go for that" Replied Jack. "If that is fine with you Chas"?

"I’ve never eaten Liver replied Chas but yeah if this fellah says its good then O.K. He’s French".

"I will bring you a very inexpensive wine that comes from the Medoc and this will go superbly with the liver" Replied Michael.

In the kitchen all the walls were painted a bright red and the little dwarf chef sang"Who Made Who" by AC/DC as he cooked up the liver and fresh wild garlic. He was on the warpath once again.

Outside in the road hugely fat John drove past. He had decided he hated niggers now and hated his xxxxxl ac/dc t.shirt.



When John got home Mom was on the couch eating "Choke Me Chocs". These were marshmellows covered in a chocolate substitute; six to the pack .

"Hi Wonderful! I saved you two "Choke Me Chocs"

John didn’t answer but poured himself a cup of coffee; he didn’t put his usual three sugars in it; the incident at the Hamburger joint had put him in a new frame of mind.

"You look worried Hon. What’s the matter Hon"?

John drank the coffee without answering and thought it tasted like piss without the sugar. He then mused on the idea that if the food America ate was not masked then most of it tasted like piss.

"I’m your Mother baby boy why don’t you answer your Mother"?

He looked at her and wondered if he was like her. Am I a fucking moron like you he thought. Maybe I am , yeah maybe I’m just a fat fucking freak like you.

"I’m O.K mom but I gotta go out".

"Where ya goin Baby Boy"?

"I’m goin down to the gun shop and I’m gonna buy a gun cos me and Tommy are goin hunting for the weekend".

"Wanna Choke Me Choc hon"?

He murmured see you later and went out. He lit a ciggie and got in the car.

Charles Ambrosia Wanklen the 3rd took out of the reproduction cabinet an exact copy of the rifle used by the English in the 1700’s .

"Listen fellah if those limey bastards had had more of these we wouldn’t be eating hamburgers right here and now; we’d be eating Fish and Chips. "

John replied. "Would we Chas"?

"We sure would; you know what really happened don’t you"?

John and Tommy asked chas to fill them in and he proceeded to do so.

"Well we talking about a civil war, we ain’t talking about a revolution like them stubblebums in the schools you go to would like you to have it. It was limeys v Limeys; forget all that Star Bangled Banner shit! Well the Limey army simply run out of men and their King couldn’t have given a shit about the war".

"This bring down a deer Chas"? asked John

"Only if you two feet away" Replied Chas

"So what fucking good is it"? Asked Tommy

"It’s no fucking good unless you are a real hunter and not one of those pricks who come in here buying the latest 200 rounds a minute automatic ".

"But those pricks can hit what they like can’t they"? Asked John

"Yeah they sure can but look how those pricks are doing in Iraq, not very fucking good if I may say the truth. Shooting is about being intelligent, being a sneaky little bastard. With no offence, a deer sees you two coming through the fucking woods with automatic weapons and then you two sweating profusely, cos you way over the fat limit and no offence, what’s that deer gonna do? Well he’s gonna say hey two suckers coming through the woods and you lose him. But if you two boys been starving for coupla days then you gonna get sneaky and you gonna use this weapon as it was meant to be used".

"How is that" asked John.

"well when you are near starving you gonna make sure you pin that deer; you get upwind of it and then you get near , and that takes you forever, then you ping the deer!! And then you eat good deer steaks that night on the camp-fire and you ain’t eating that shit called cow that says "EAT ME I GIVE STOMACH CANCER".

"Does it"? Asked John.

"It’s a plague of Bubonic proportions; the doctors won’t tell you but you should never eat cow in it’s American version".

"So what the fuck can we eat"? asked Tommy.

The weekend had become four days and for two of those days they had been lost in the middle of a forest.

"We’re gonna die of starvation " said Tommy.

It was the umteenth time he had said that and John swung round his musket and said.

"If you open that fucking rat-trap of yours one more time I’m gonna fucking shoot you".

Tommy knew that he meant it and stayed silent.

"We won’t die Tommy because we’re bound to shoot something in the end. Why didn’t you bring your fucking mobile you fat freak"?



"Yeah well why didn’t you recharge yours"? replied Tommy.



They walked on and then it started to drizzle with no signs of stopping.



"Now we’re gonna kick the bucket for sure ; can’t shoot fuck with wet powder Dude"!!



John levelled the musket on Tommy and said. "O.K scum-bag you asked for it.









"Don’t kill me dude, please don’t kill me, I’m begging you dude" Cried Tommy



"O.K dude but if you open that motherfucking rat-trap just one more time about how motherfucking hungry you are then you dead fucking meat" said John



The rain never stopped and as night fell they stopped walking and erected the tent. Tommy fell asleep straight away after he had said the words. "Sorry John, I know that I’ve been bad but on the morn I think we’ll see something positive".

John lay in his sleeping bag smoking a cigar, letting the smoke drift out of the tent by pulling the flap open; the truth was he felt good; one time he hadn’t felt like a fucking fat freak in a AC/DC XXXXL T.shirt was now; his titties felt less like teats and he realised that for the first time in his life he was getting fit.

The morning came but the drizzle hadn’t stopped. They walked on and on but never saw anything to eat; they thought about certain plants and fruits but Tommy said that certain things in the forest would kill you stone dead. After hours of walking Tommy finally flaked out on the ground and said.

"Kill me dude, I’m done for, kill me. This is as far as I go".

John looked at him and said. "Well stay there and die then".

He walked on but after some time he heard something coming through the undergrowth. It was Tommy.

"Dude there was something looking at me , something from behind a tree"."Shoot him"?

"Give me the fucking gun, Iìll shoot the fucker".

But as John aimed the Labrador barked and then ran a few paces , stopped and barked again.

"He wants us to follow him ". Said Tommy. He’d seen the films and dogs always brought people to safety.

"O.K, lets do that dude". Said John.

They walked for an entire day, never stopping even though Tommy and john felt that the next tree was their limit but still they went on.

"Don’t worry dude that dog will lead us to safety, big black labs like him always do". Said Tommy.

"But there is something motherfucking strange about that dog, look at his coat, you ever seen a dog in such good condition, that coat is absolutely shining dude".

"Yeah that is fucking strange, should be a bit run down like us but he looks in great fettle dude".

"Yeah that is fucking funny dude".

They walked on and on and the drizzle never let up; the dog was always up ahead barking for them to follow and they did.

Finally just before night fell they came to a clearing where an army tent was pitched.

"Maybe this is the owner and he for sure as shit will have hot drinks and food" Said John.

The dog stopped outside the tent. Tommy pulled open the flap and inside laying on a sleeping bag was someone even fatter than Tommy.

"You the rescue party dude  ?Josiah Thomas was just another fat freak caught up with the manliness of hunting and he too had got lost; he too had been "saved" by the black Labrador.

All three of them lay in the Army tent as night fell; not a word was said; it seemed that they knew that now there was no way out.

Midnight fell and the black dog sat looking at the tent; he drooled long lines of saliva and looked intensely at the tent.

Out of the trees came a figure dressed in white, a dwarf dressed in white. He wore the moustaches in the french manner, waxed at the ends. On his head he wore a chef’s hat nearly as long as his body.

He put his hand on the dog’s head and stroked it.

"Mon Petit you are a wonderful friend".

The dog looked up at him with undying love in its eyes.

The french Chef drew open his chef’s coat and extracted from his belt two nasty looking knives that arrived in fine points at the end.

"I will make you the finest Entrecote known to man , I think my friend that we are going to have a feast".

The dog offered him his pa

Dickens in Naples

vetturino

So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. A funeral is coming up the street, toward us. The body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners, in white gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages.
 Some of these, the common Vetturino vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie half-suffocated with mud and dust.

via chiaja today

Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels; the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers, perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the Great Theater of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for clients.



Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands, when you look at them? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarreling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs—expressive of a donkey's ears—whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the price, and walks away without a word, having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting, one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come.



All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative—the only negative beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a copious language. All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the bright sea-shore, where the waves of the Bay sparkle merrily....



Capri—once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius—Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day; now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world, is spread about us. Whether we turn toward the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheater, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane and away to Baiae, or take the other way, toward Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San Gennaro, with this Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufacturies; to Castellamare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks.

Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighboring mountain, down to the water's edge—among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills—and by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors—and pass delicious summer villas—to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above Castellamare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset; with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain (Vesuvius), with its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the day.

porta capuna

That church by the Porta Capuna—near the old fisher-market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masaniello began—is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of[Pg 22] Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius, which is preserved in two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the great admiration of the people. At the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur.



The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old specters totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there is nothing but dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the rock. At the end of some of these long passages, are unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above. It looks as ghastly and as strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the dark vaults; as if it, too, were dead and buried.



The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, at no great distance from it, tho yet unfinished, has already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might be reasonably objected elsewhere, that some of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful; but the general brightness seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene.



If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii!



Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and everyday pursuits, the chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea.Today when you turn the corner from Tavistock Street into Wellington Street in Covent Garden you find the Charles Dickens Coffee House serving up steaming cappuccinos with literary history as sprinkles. This was once the busy office where Dickens published his periodical All The Year Round from 1859 until his death in 1870.

Raise your eyes to roof level and you will see the attic rooms which he kept as his hideaway. Long since converted into a smart flat with one double bedroom, these are now coming to the market priced at £475,000 through LDG (020 7580 1010). During this later period of his life, when he spent many nights here, Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, began Edwin Drood and set off on strenuous reading tours at home and abroad. This too is where Wilkie Collins must have delivered instalments for The Woman in White andThe Moonstone for inclusion in All The Year Round.

In her biography of Dickens, Claire Tomalin describes him installing gas lighting to the third floor and using the makeshift pied-à-terre to dress and dine before going to the theatre. He referred to it as a sort of summer gipsy tent.

It is particularly interesting that he created the refuge as he became disenchanted with his wife Catherine and began a separate life. He eventually made Gad's Hill in Kent his main home and occasionally rented a house in London. The rooms helped him to conceal his relationship with Nelly Ternan, allowing overnight stays within a web of complicated travel arrangements, dashing to and from France (where she was living for a while) and all over the country on reading tours. He ordered in turtle soup and salmon from Fortnum's, served up ice gin punch to his friends, boiled his kettle on a camp stove and kept his velvet smoking jacket here.

These days, though the kitchen is slick and modern, the flat still has an air of the bohemian eyrie about it, with views across the rooftops of Covent Garden. "This flat is a real piece of literary history," says Ben Everest, partner at LDG who is handling the sale. "It would make a good buy-to-let investment, having previously been let at £400 per week.

Where excited readers once clamoured outside for the next instalment of their favourite novel, now there is a blue plaque commemorating his years here. Notebook in hand, Dickens must have set off on his now famous all-night walks. "I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London – now about city streets: now about the country bye-roads – seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others."

The current owner, Charlie Wood, bought the flat in 2005 and is an avid fan of Dickens. He particularly loves A Tale of Two Cities, some of which must have been written here.

"The fabric and layout of the building are, I think, little changed since his day," he says. "When you walk out of the door or look out of the window and see the roof of Covent Garden market, it is wonderful to imagine what it must have been like 160 years ago.

"You really feel like you're in the beating heart of a great creative city. I shall miss it a lot," he says.

HOMES WITH LITERARY CONNECTIONS FOR SALE

Home to Henry Williamson, author of Tarka the Otter

During the Second World War Williamson bought a farm on the north Norfolk coast and wrote The Story of a Norfolk Farm about his early struggle on the land. He lived at this tiny two-bedroom flint cottage, Meadow Lea Cottage, Church Street, Stiffkey, and wrote in the old washhouse in the garden. After eight years he left to begin his life in Devon. £495,000, Bedfords (01328 730500)

Where Dickens first thought of Little Nell

This Grade I Georgian three-bedroom town house in St James's Square, Bath, was the home of writer Walter Savage Landor, and Dickens always stayed with him when he visited the city. It was while he stayed here in 1840 that Dickens first thought of Little Nell and the first seed of The Old Curiosity Shop was sown. Hamptons International (01225 312244) is selling it at £1.15 million.

Before Winnie the Pooh

A A Milne lived at Broadgate House, Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, while he was working for Punch, before he married and Christopher Robin was born. It is close by The Splash, a ford where the Bumpstead Brook crosses the road and small children still play Poohsticks. Carter Jonas (01223 368771) is asking £1.275 million.

THREE JACKETS FOR £90

In the Burton sale at the moment you could create quite a nice wardrobe with these three jackets. The black one would be very versatile, as seen in the photo or formal. The Short zip up is a new take on a Harrington and it looks the bizz to be honest.

king of cool

Accentuate the Positive lyrics by Johnny Mercer




You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive

E-lim-i-nate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with mister inbetween



You got to spread joy up to the maximum

Bring gloom down to the minimum

And have faith, or pandemonium

Liable to walk upon the scene



To illustrate my last remark

Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark,

What did they do, just when everything looked so dark?

Man, they said, we better



Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive

E-lim-i-nate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with mister inbetween



No don't mess with mister inbetween



You got to spread joy up to the maximum

Bring gloom down to the minimum

And have faith, or pandemonium

Liable to walk upon the scene



You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive

E-lim-i-nate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with mister inbetween



No don't mess with mister inbetween

CLARKS UK DESERT BOOT

THE FIFTH FLOOR OF LEWIS

THE FIFTH FLOOR OF LEWIS

BRITISH CHEESE. THE BEST IN THE WORLD

Stilton

CHINOS

QPR

WWW QPRnet.com

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Frank Sibley's unique Rangers career started in the 60's and went all the way through to the 90's. He has been a player, coach, assistant manager, as well as manager and caretaker boss on countless occasions. He talks to us about his time at QPR.



QPRnet.com: You were just 15 when you made your debut, what do you remember from the day?



FS: It came out of the blue really, Alec Stock told me and then it became a bit of media event. I was the youngest footballer to play at the time so I had the press round my house interviewing me and my Mum didn’t know what hit her! So it was a bit daunting in that respect.



I actually made my debut for the first team as an outside right but I’d come to the club as a centre forward. In my first season I’d got plenty of goals in the south east counties league but the next season I didn’t so well. Jimmy Andrews was the coach at the time and he suggested that I had a look at going in a different direction and playing facing the ball rather than with my back to it so he was instrumental in turning me into a defensive player.



QPRnet.com: So as a young lad how did you take to being asked to change your game?



FS: Well if you’re not doing well at something and someone shows you another way of playing then you should listen. I took to it quite well, I enjoyed it and it worked out well for me in the end.



QPRnet.com: As someone who’s still in the game you must see massive differences between the 15 year old apprentices today and from your time?



FS: When we were apprentices it was a three year commitment, my first wage was about five pounds a week, in the second year it went up to seven and then nine in the third. Then the club had the option of signing you as a pro.



You worked all morning around the ground doing odd jobs like painting the stands and so forth then the coaches would take you for training in the afternoon. By the time you got the kit packed away and got the bus home it was six o’clock and you’d done a full days work.



Kids these days don’t have to do any work as such but I wasn’t adverse to it, it gave all the lads a great sense of camaraderie. We all played together in the south east counties league in the morning and sometimes you had to turn out for the reserves in the afternoon as well and I think that benefited the club when we progressed onto the first team.



QPRnet.com: Do you think making kids work like that gives them more of a respect for the club as a whole?



FS: I think it sorted out the ones who wanted to be players and those who didn’t because you had to do the work to get to the football. Today with the young academy scholars they almost make them into pro’s before they’ve achieved anything.



We had a great trainer called Alec Farmer, Derek Healey was running the youth set up and then there was Jimmy Andrews coaching and of course Alec Stock. They didn’t give you an inch but they taught you the right way to go about things. Alec always used to say to us if you’re going to a game and you have to be there at eight o’clock make sure you get there for seven and I still do that today.



QPRnet.com: Alec must have been an incredible man to grow up around?



FS: Yes he was. He was quite strict but in a positive way, he used to moan at us for buying things like cheese rolls from the shops down the road from the ground. He’d say things like “get a steak inside you”, of course we couldn’t afford steak on our wages!



QPRnet.com: So the diet and nutrition advice was a bit different back then?!



FS: Oh yes, that’s changed massively. Every Friday on pay day we’d treat ourselves and go to a Greek restaurant on the Goldhawk Road and have a big brunch. Our pre match meals would be fillet steak, rice pudding and as much toast as you can eat! Players are so much fitter these days and get much better advice than we did in our day.



QPRnet.com: Going into the 1966-67 season, did we have high hopes of promotion?



FS: As young players we didn’t really think about it, our main concern was getting in the team and playing football. It’s only when you start winning games and going up the leagues that it becomes apparent you can do something.



Jim Gregory coming to the club was very significant and the signings of players like Rodney, Mark Lazarus and Les Allen were very astute. He knew he had a good group of young kids but he needed some experience to go with it.



QPRnet.com: Reaching the League Cup final with such an emphatic victory over Birmingham must have been a great occasion for the players?



FS: I think that was the game that gave us the confidence to go on and win the final. Nobody really gave us a chance against them and we played really, really well. I remember getting an injury, a big cut down my thigh and the physio at the time told Alec I was losing too much blood and would have to come off. Alec turned round to me and said “you’re all right son aren’t you” and I agreed because there was no way I was going to come off. Of course we didn’t just beat them once we had to do twice as well.



QPRnet.com: Going into the final what message did Alec send you out with?



FS: He was very simplistic in many ways, Bill Dodgin’s did most of the tactical stuff. Alec was very strong on certain things, he knew if someone had pulled out of a challenge and he knew if you should have got a shot in. He would have just sent us out to enjoy ourselves because he was very good at taking the pressure off of us.



Obviously we came in two nil down at half time but there was no shouting or aggravation, we just knew we could play better. Alec made the point of saying that our families were here and it sent a message out to everyone to give that little bit more.



QPRnet.com: The feeling at the final whistle must have been amazing?



FS: It was unbelievable, to think we were a third division team playing at Wembley in front of 100,000 people was incredible. It was the first time that final was played at Wembley and if it hadn’t have been such a success it may have been the last. The only sad thing about it all is we never got into Europe because of the league we were in.



I find it sad today that the league cup has been so devalued because it’s a way into Europe and way to Wembley, or Cardiff and whatever you say the fans want to be there. If some clubs aren’t interested in going to the final then I don’t think they should be accepted into the competition.



QPRnet.com: You mentioned earlier about playing two games in a day, what do you think when hear modern day players complaining about playing two games a week?



FS: I think the game is so much quicker now, I’m not saying all the football is as good because in the 60’s and 70’s the football was still excellent and most Division One sides had international players but it was just the way we did things in our era.



QPRnet.com: You were part of a great side with fantastic attacking players like the Morgans, Mark Lazarus and Rodney Marsh. Marsh became the Rangers icon; did the other players ever resent the attention he got?



FS: Not at all because we knew that if Rodney played well we had every chance of wining the game and getting a bonus! He’s a terrific guy as well, we had lots of fun together and us youngsters just looked forward to him getting a goal or winning a penalty.



Me and Ronnie Hunt as the two back players used to try to keep a clean sheet and hope Rodney got the goals, that’s the way we set about it. We knew at home Rodney would win it for us and that away from home the emphasis was more on us to help get something out of the game.



QPRnet.com: Going into our first season in the old division two and we were promoted again, was that an ambition at the start of the season or we were expecting to just consolidate?



FS: That season passed me by a little bit, at the end of the 66-67 season Rodney was due to go away with the England under 23’s, he got an illness and couldn’t go and I was called up instead. When I got back from that I got a call saying I had to go and join the club tour of Spain, I think that was the first time we’d ever had a foreign tour!



Our car broke down and it took about 16 hours to get there but I made the game, played and got injured in the last minute. I was carried off and that’s where my injury troubles started from there. I was flown home and they couldn’t decide for two weeks what was wrong because there was so much swelling on the leg, eventually I had to have a cartilage operation so I didn’t play too many games in Division Two, as it was called then.



I came back into the side then I had to have another cartilage operation so I was on the sidelines again. Today those injuries wouldn’t be too much of a problem but in those days it was career threatening.



QPRnet.com: Being injured as a footballer is frustrating anyway but to miss out on a season like that must have made it doubly worse?



FS: It is, when you’ve been a big part of the side sitting on the sidelines is never the same and you feel a bit of spare part in all the celebrations.



QPRnet.com: Though it must have been great to rise so quickly through the divisions, as a young player was it hard to develop your game when the standard you were facing was constantly improving?



FS: I think it helped in the respect that it gave us confidence because we were winning games but that back fired when we got to the top division because we’d never really experience losing. We lost so many games by the odd goal because we lacked that extra experience to cope in that situation. So it was good while we were getting there but once we made it into the first division it caught up with us.



QPRnet.com: You were forced to retire in 1971 aged 23 it must have knocked you for six but did you always intend to move into coaching once it happened?



FS: I’ve got to be honest and say no I didn’t. All you think about when you’re a young player having that sort of success is that it’s going go on for ever. When I was told by the specialist to pack it in it was a terrible shock, I’d just got married and taken on a mortgage and all I could think was “what am I going to do”. Academically, like many footballers today I wasn’t the greatest and once you take the football away you’re lost. The club was very good to me though, Gordon Jago and Jim Gregory set me up at the club and I took my badges, passed them and they let me start coaching.



QPRnet.com: You were still a young man at the time, how did you find coaching players who were older than you?



FS: It wasn’t a problem because to start with I worked with the youth team players. That wasn’t too bad because they were looking up to me really as they could still remember me as a player. It developed from there and I took the reserve players then worked my up to coaching the senior players so I earned the respect along the way.



QPRnet.com: You were appointed QPR manager in 1977, was following Dave Sexton an impossible job?



FS: It was very difficult. I was assistant manager to Dave and it was a wonderful team. He produced the second best footballing team I’ve seen at QPR, second only to our side in the sixties but when I took over one or two players were getting a bit older and Jim Gregory wanted to bring in some younger blood.



I was given a chance to take on the managers role and possibly I wasn’t ready for it, but you’re only given a few chances in life and unless you put your finger in the water you’ll never know if it’s too hot so I thought I had to have a go.



In retrospect I went about one or two things the wrong way, I was only 29 and I had no experience of managing, being an assistant is no comparison, you can do it all your life and it is not comparable in any way. I found it quite difficult to be truthful and I was very hard on myself, I thought everything I was doing was wrong. It was a tough time for me.



QPRnet.com: You left as manager in 1978 and rejoined the Rangers coaching staff in the late 80’s, what prompted your return?



FS: Terry Venables was in charge and he was looking for someone to take the reserves side. I was working at Hounslow at the time but I jumped at the chance. Then at the end of that season Terry left and went to Barcelona which was a shame because I thought there was a lot of things I could learn from him but he went off to Spain and then Alan arrived.



QPRnet.com: You were often in caretaker charge after the departure of many mangers at Loftus Road did you never fancy another crack at the job full time?



FS: I think I would have been better at it, I’ve worked with a lot of talented managers and you pick up bits and pieces from each but it wasn’t to be. I’m just grateful for the time I spent at QPR, it’s always been my club and my family all still support them.



QPRnet.com: You were assistant manager to Gerry Francis when we had the great side in the 90’s. Having been involved with each of great sides over time how do you think they all compare?



FS: I think they all had different elements really. The team I played in during the 60’s had a lot of young players sprinkled with experienced pro’s that gelled together perfectly and came up the leagues.



Dave Sexton’s team in the 70’s was mostly made up of experienced players like Don Masson, Dave Webb, Frank McLintock and Johnny Hollins but also lads like Gerry Francis, Don Givens and Stan Bowles. They played some incredibly exciting football, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in England for a long time. Dave nurtured the players really well and that was probably the best team out of the three.



Gerry’s team in the 90’s was a good side as well though. He had his own way with players, he was a great coach and he got the best out of players that were looked upon elsewhere as not being brilliant. I also think he made a very brave decision when he let Roy Wegerle go because in doing that he gave Les his opportunity to come to the front. I think that was a significant move at the time because Les turned out to be a terrific player for us.



QPRnet.com: Obviously Gerry went and Ray came in, you mentioned how valuable Les was and losing Ferdinand was a massive blow that ultimately sent us down.



FS: People often blame Ray Wilkins for us going down but I don’t see it that way. Les wanted to leave and that was the big factor, if you look back over the previous seasons his goals kept QPR in the Premiership. He had an opportunity to move on and make a lot of money for himself somewhere else and QPR couldn’t match it so we had to let him go. We thought that Kevin Gallen and Danny Dichio would then step up.



QPRnet.com: Players from the time were pretty stunned that Ray left so early into first division campaign, especially as we started so well in the few games he was in charge for.



FS: Yes I think that was disappointing. I’d rather not get into what went on but it was shame because I think we’d have come close to going back up again. I was offered the chance to stay but I made it clear at the time that I wasn’t going to because I felt what was done to Ray was wrong.



QPRnet.com: Having been part of a promotion winning side, what advice would you give Rangers players of today as they start life in a higher division?



FS: I think the most important thing is to keep a good spirit around the club. If you can keep that camaraderie there and keep everyone playing for each other then you’ll do well. You might get a few bad results or have a bad run but you’ll win more than you’ll lose. Spirit pulls you together and steers you through adversity, that’s all I’d say to them.



QPRnet.com: When you look back on your long association with Rangers it must make you immensely proud to have been involved in so many successes as a player and a coach but if you had to pick one moment to re-live over again what would it be?



FS: I’ll tell you one moment I wouldn’t want to relive again and that’s the League Cup final, the other one in 1986. That was the worst day of my life, I felt so low after that game.



It was only a couple of weeks earlier we’d taken Oxford to the cleaners in the league game and if anything I think we thought we only had to turn up to win it. Everyone’s got their own ideas about what happened but for whatever reason we didn’t perform and it was the most demoralising day for the players and staff but most of all for the fans because we went out with a whimper, we didn’t even lose gracefully.



I strongly believe if we hadn’t got the amount of points we already had in the league that we would have got relegated that season because it took a hell of a long time to get back on track, it just hit everyone so hard.



That was the worst though but the best would have to be the other League Cup final in 1967. The first third division side ever to get there, in the first Wembley final, playing a first division side who’d won it before and coming back from 2-0 down to win 3-2. It was storybook stuff!



QPRnet.com: Since leaving Rangers you’ve stayed in football, you’re now the chief scout at Watford, how are you enjoying things there?



FS: I’m enjoying it greatly; this is my second season now. They’re a nice club, similar to QPR in many ways. They’ve come out of the Premiership, had a phase of losing money and now they’re fighting they’re way back, hopefully before I die both clubs will be in the Premiership again.

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