Ah. Mavis, A favourite of mine. I enjoyed team games at school, but I wasn’t particularly good at any of them. What I lacked in skill, I made up with enthusiasm. Sadly, enthusiasm doesn’t get the hockey ball in the back of the goal or the rounders ball past first base. Enthusiasm also fails to get one picked for a team. I was invariably the last girl standing and therefore joined a team by default. I would pick Mavis regardless of her impressive sporting skill. I would pick Mavis because I love her courage, determination and sense of hope.

There is always hope.

 

 

 

The Female Football Player.

Our Mavis wasn’t pretty, but she’d one thing in her favour,

Men forgot about her two buck teeth and the way she used a shaver.

 

 They didn’t mind her two crossed eyes, or her broad rimmed N.H. specs,

They could tolerate her dandruff and the falling, flaking flecks.

 

For our Mavis wasn’t pretty, no one noticed on the whole,

For that something in her favour was the way she scored a goal.

Her rolls of fat were quite grotesque and no one dared to weigh her,

She moved like an ox in the penalty box, our Mave, the football player.

 

Playing soccer was somewhat tricky with one eye made of glass

But she never stopped if out it popped and landed in the grass.

 

The opposition split a rib, they thought our Mave defenceless,

But their luck ran out with Mave about and she knocked them downright senseless.

 

She charged towards the other side and they had to run like Hell.

Her dribbling was by far unique and she could slobber just as well.

 

 She proudly wore her colours; they were stripy pink and black,

And on her chest was her address, with her number on the back.

 Although no one fancied Mavis, what thrilled them most of all,

Was not the way that she could slay, but how she handled balls.

 

There was no one quite like Mavis, to show you ball control,

For she’d tease and trick, and then she’d kick and our Mave would score a goal.

Oh! How the men, they loved our Mavis wearing shorts and not a skirt,

But they’d leave like a shot, if Mavis forgot she was not to swap her shirt.

 

Poor Mavis wasn’t pretty; she had an awful rear,

Miss World was not what Mavis got, but ‘Player of the Year.’

 

Written: 16 – 17 August 1987. Midnightish.