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“Assholes!” Bobby shouts after the two half-naked young men as they fly around and past us like a speeding bus on Monday morning.
And after one last, long look at the bare disappearing backs of the boy bandits, he resumes our interrupted conversation in his normal voice.
“Which is also what I call the people who came up with this stupid eleven.”
It was still just after 5am and we had begun our fo’daymorning walk discussing the CHATGPT Best Of All Time XI.
“My understanding of the B.O.A.T XI is this,” I told Bobby. “You’re supposed to pick the Best XI players of all time, one in each position. You have to identify all the players who’ve left their indelible mark on the game and decide which one tops the list in each position.”
“But that is a stupid approach!” Bobby retorted. “Sterile, completely sterile! I mean, what is the point of that?”
EB: “I dunno. Does it have to have a point? You choose the best of the best and put them somewhere where posterity can venerate them. I consider it a kind of footballing museum, like a Hall of Fame, a sort of Madame Tussard’s in words rather than wax.”
Bobby: “Exactly! That’s why I find it sterile. They’re football players, not sculptures or pieces of art. I’m interested in their talent, not their looks or their reputations.
“That’s why I take a completely different approach. I wouldn’t try to pick the 11 best, I’d pick the best XI. I’m picking a side to win matches!”
EB: “Against whom? A Rest of the World XI? Like in cricket?”
Bobby: “I imagine myself picking a side to represent world football against Invaders. Not the panside from Tragarete Road, obviously, invaders from outer space. If we win, they leave and go back to Venus or Mars or wherever they come from. If we lose, crapaud smoke we pipe.”
We’d left Casselton behind and we were already almost exiting Beaulieu And just as we were nearing the Cane Farm Road junction beside the popular Lotto booth, the two young men came speeding around the corner. Topless, bare-footed and in short pants.
“What the m….!”
Alert to the possibility of an early morning attack, we’ve discussed this scenario a dozen times. Out of an abundance of caution.
Against today’s bandits with their sophisticated weaponry and complete lack of empathy, we know, two albeit able-bodied sexagenarians, unarmed and empty-handed, can count only on prayers. And preparedness.
Instinctively, wordlessly, we both brace for contact.
No need.
Whatever was on their minds, it wasn’t robbery. Or violence. Without cutting their pace, they veered skillfully away from us and, still at full tilt, went haring eastwards down the middle of the lane.
Rounding the corner, we scan upper Cane Farm Road. No screeching siren in the distance. But surely there’s a pursuing policeman, an irate resident or an aggrieved homeowner wielding a gleaming 3-canal or a piece of 2×4…
A parked garbage truck awaiting its workers. The Bus Route traffic lights surveying the scene in the distance. But nary a human. Puzzlingly, no sign of pursuit.
No way, however, I can simply close the banditry folder and re-open the football file. No more than I could simply go right back to sleep if the burglar alarm went off in the middle of the night.
Out of nowhere, an image, not even remotely related to Messi, Maradona, David Beckham’s Inter Miami, the World Cup or, frankly, even football, assails me. We are walking up the hill early one morning as per usual.
As we round the last curve before El Dorado, we see a strapping young man striding down the path towards us. Slung over his left shoulder is a large bag and over his right a leather sheath. It houses a stout, black-handled cutlass.
“You know what is really stupid?” I respond, directing my anger unfairly at Bobby. “You know who are the real assholes?”
Taken completely by surprise, he merely shrugs.
“Me and you!” More than surprised, he is shocked, à la Caesar realising that Brutus too had stabbed him.
“Suppose they had a gun or a knife and had some kind of thuggery on their mind? How would you rate our chances of escaping injury?”
His instantly heavily furrowed brow suggests that he has got my drift.
“Or worse!” he confirms. “These bandits will pass you out because you don’t have money! Nutten fuh dem to tief.”
“Darm right!”
“An interesting thought crossed my mind the other day,” he continues, “but I didn’t want to entertain it.”
“What thought?” I ask.
“Well, the regularity of our pattern. Day after day, week after week, we do the same thing. (Long pause, perhaps to let the info sink in) I don’t know if you have any enemies or if I have any but that can’t be good. Not fuh me, not fuh you, not fuh de people we leaving home.
“And is not only enemies, is also people who up to no good. Patterns not good at the best of times and, with crime rampant in the country, nowadays hardly qualifies as the best of times.”
“Makes sense!” I tell him. “But there is something else.”
“Which is?”
“Going up in the bush empty-handed 5 ‘o’ clock in de morning. Remember de morning we meet de fellah by El Dorado with de cutlass over he shoulder? Suppose he wasn a hunter and was a bandit hidin out in de hills? You tink we woulda come outta dat alive?”
In his heyday, Tiger Woods was said to train with fifty pounds of weights on his back. I think each of us carried twice that for the rest of the morning.
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