I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CRICKET
Whereas your average football fan looks like a baby (big, fat and round, a sprinkling of hair on top, unintelligible noises - grunts, shouts and belches masquerading as language - violent mood swings, tantrums - 'Referee!' - and waterfalls of tears) your average cricket fan looks like an uncle. Maybe I am living in the past, but the wicket gazers of yore appeared unable to shed themselves of their almost surrealistically shapeless pudding basin hats; worn-to-the-point of extinction T-shirts; and knee length shorts that, although rendered colourless by the years, still managed to make their legs look anemically washed out. Anyways, as I said, I know nothing about cricket…but I've danced on W.G.'s grave.

The year was 1990, the place was Beckenham: a place where the concrete slab, greasy bookies and Kebab stained pavements of South-London give out to the leafy sweep of Kent. There were three of us: Me, Spunky and Ed-up. Ed-up was just visiting, something he did most weekends. He always bought some goodies along - a swag bag bulging with pills, tabs, powders and rasta baccy - and I don't mean aspirins, cigarettes, sherbet and herbal smoking mixture.
8pm, Saturday Night, May. Ed-up arrives. He says, "let me introduce you to Stacey". He pulls out a finger sized bag and finishes, "Ex-Stacey".
9.15pm, The George, High Street. Spunky gets his round in: two lemonades and a grapefruit juice. One by one we sneak into the toilets and, skipping the big-blokes-at-the-urinals conversation about Beckenham Cricket Club's 19th successive defeat, ("54 all out, I ask you! My old mother could do better…and she's only got one working limb".) we take to the age-old illicit substances dropping zone: the toilet cubicle.
10.05pm, Still in the pub, pupils like bowling balls. I say,
"You do realise that there is only one nightclub in Beckenham".
Ed-up, an out-of-towner, shoots me a look of mildly suppressed horror.
"And…? What's it like? You can dance there can't you?"
"It's called the Tropicana".
"Oh God, no".
11.20pm, The Tropicana, I'll cut to the chase. You don't need the details, the coming ups and going downs. The club was desperate and desperately underage (apart from the grab-a-granny set, pinching bottoms outside the fog of the men's loos). Spunky peaked first, the touchy-feely fingers, the complete shamelessness as he danced like a wild baboon across the postage stamp dance floor.
"Is he really dancing to Wet Wet Wet?"
"'Fraid so, Ed-up".
"Jesus H., this drug could be the end of us all".
MIDNIGHT. We joined him. With wildly inappropriate spins, flailing arms and leaps of pure euphoria we scared the dancefloor empty. It was only when Spunky, by now irretrievably blissed out, started telling the scarfaced head of Security how much he loved him (along with the rest of humanity) that we left…quickly and airborne. It was at this point that a fateful turn was made. Ed-up said,
"I'm still rushing, I need to go somewhere…and dance my nadgers off".
Our destination wasn't clear until we reached Beckenham Crematorium. It took ten minutes to go home, fetch the beatbox, return and scale the iron railings. The crematorium is one of those huge, sprawling garden of remembrance/ponds of eternal memory estates with signposts to the plots of the once worthy: Wolsey the Carmaker, the inventor of the scouring cloth…
2.30am,deep in the Necropolis. The stereo was clicked on. Repetitive beats boomed out. Spunky and Ed-up began dancing around the graves, stopping occasionally to embark on tombstone hurdle races. I skipped about, finding a nice footing on a spread of those green stones you see sprinkled about in graveyards. I looked down to read an inscription. The moon shone down, my eyes strained, I read the words 'England's finest cricketer…2786 wickets…William Gilbert…'
"Hey lads! I've found W.G. Grace!"
Now, let's get this straight. We didn't start dancing on the great bearded one's remains as some kind of freaky necrophilic kick. No. We didn't start dancing because we hadn't stopped since we'd left the Tropicana. Those party pills were still surging through our hips, we were out of control, we were Saturday Night Feverish, Flashdancing all over the shop. I tried to stop, I swear I did…we all did. But we were boogie-bound until dawn, and dawn was nowhere around. We all wanted to check out the resting place of Billy-boy Grace. And then Spunky leapt unto the tombstone, started waving his hands in the air, Ed-up tried out backflips, and me…? Well, I was too busy listening to old W.G. turning in his grave.

William Gilbert Grace (1848-1915), English cricketer who scored 54,896 runs, including 126 centuries, and took 2876 wickets. Scored 1000 runs in May 1895; and three times made over 300 runs in an innings. May he rest in peace.