Malcolmses back with a bong...

Season’s greetings youngsters. This Saturday FC United of Manchester play Moston. They are bringing a firm from the M.I.P. market and will be tooled up with two-butter-cream-cakes-for-a-pound-hold-it-the-sell-by-date-has-been-rubbed-off. They’ll also be brandishing big, white, comedy over sized underpants with something mildly sexual written on the front of them. They’re renowned for dust sheeting you with the enormous grubbies and then clocking you over your top end with their stale fare. Rattish behaviour indeed.

Anyway, outside of the football Course You Can Malcolm returns for its sixty ninth consecutive year. We shall be celebrating this anniversary with the following mixed jute bag of delights:

The music for 22 minutes will be provided by Vinyl Youth. I am as yet to be convinced that youth know about vinyl but we shall see. Although it’d be funny if they had someone called Matt in the band. They’ve been doing the rounds around Manchester playing the Ruby Lounge, Night and Day, Academy etsetch. They have close associations with the High Peak branch but don’t let their ’oh, that Japanese flag bit on your flag always reminds me of a back door in bits’ put you off.

Andy Walsh, wearing contact lenses for the day due to the stringent door policy of the Droylsden Anti-Specky Squad, will be doing a ’How great are we?’ talk around half one’ish. Come and inspire yourself for the season. Come be amazed at the dexterity in which he manages to instil confidence in ourselves and at what we are doing
and where we are going and yet avoids the oafishness of blue/Geordie self-back-patterology. Precious club, precious fan-owned venue, precious human being, precious start to the off-pitch season. However, we have to dash the rumour that Andy and our ever-ginger-General Secretary, Lindsey, will be having a game of ’knucklesies’ and ’split the kipper’ as a fundraiser as Andy might be brave but he’s not that brave as to take on a Harpurhey girl in open, inner city combat.

If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake. We did. And we have. In July there is but a brief two week opportunity for wimberry picking and to freeze them for a later date. Several hardy Reds went out on the train to the hills. We sampled fine beers including one called ’Marjy’s tiddleywinks’ and then went aroamin in the quest for a good gobble. We reckon we picked enough to make Wimberry muffins for four Malcolmses. The prudish nature of the baker has restricted us in the shapes in which we wanted to bake them but - all together now - that’s master bakers for you. We’ve decided to make them big, big bite sized for 25p this time so as many people as possible get to know wimberry. If our club had a taste then it’d stand a fair chance of tasting like this most elegant of fruits.

We’re going to put something in one. That sounds a lot worse than it is. We’re not putting an ’e’ in it or anything because obviously as a club we just say no. We mean something along the lines of a coin in a Christmas pudding sort of a thing. The winning recipient receiving a free beer and the chance to read the teams out to the CYCM audience after we get the team sheets. Oh, and we could do a little note at the bottom of the cake with something written on it say like ’majora’ or ’minora’ and it could be introduced as the day’s Malcolmses’ word of choice. You know the dance. Anything to raise the till.

Continuing last year’s ’guest real ale from the nearest brewery to the team we are playing’ sees us having a guest real ale from the nearest brewery to the team we are playing. A backbone of consistency on the pitch matched by a backbone of consistency in your pub. I’d tell you what the beer is but Blaine has just started shift working and its murders getting hold of him. It could very well be Bateman’s Combined Harvest Ale as he did tell me at the Colwyn game but I was playing the letter ’S’. However, Blaine assures us that it ’tastes like yellow belly custard, green snot pie, all mixed together with a dead dog’s eye, slap it on a butty nice and thick and then wash it down with a cup of cold sick’. I’m sure it’ll be a seller.

The usual rules of ’members only’ with members being able to sign one guest in applies. We’ll have forms if you want to apply for your membership. For any new unsussed or just foolishly impolite guests - please keep your beers within the confines of Course You Can Malcolm. Our beers are specialised and are easily traced back to us. If they’re found on the terraces we’ll get shut down. You wouldn’t look so ’wahey, beer mad me’ then would you? More like a pariah. With reduced genitalia.

The usual quality real ales, tater hash, Tea Earn, Cupyours cakes and the vol-au-vent of volunteers will be in attendance. All that’s needed is you and your abundance of goodness. So come along Saturday. There is no other bar doing what we are doing. No one. It’s your hostelry to use as a hostel pre-match. The pleasure of every single one pence you pay going to our club is a contentment that never tires. With the possibility of only nine Saturday home games your decadent nature is needed more than ever. Come gird up thy loins and fat your calf. We’re on a faith quest and no one is going to stop us. We’re a little part of Red Manchester saying ’Life is beautiful and made for giggling and caring and looking after those we love. And do you know what? We know it. We just knew it. We just, just knew it’. Together as always, always, always to the next three points.

Fraternally yours

The Odd, Odder, Oddest of carriers