carnage but it would also mean the moment of my doom was closer. I was in no mood to encourage my players for the second half but I did my best.
“I considered various methods of cheating. I wondered if I might hide myself in the ball and control its movements from within, a trick I had learned from a dwarf surrealist boxer named Engelbrecht5, but I was too bulky, plus there wasn’t a ball in play, just a severed head, and I didn’t fancy hiding inside that even if I fitted. I wondered if I might cause a diversion of some kind, maybe give the gods the idea that Ragnarok had started, and that they needed to be off to fight Surtr and the fire giants, while the universe collapsed around them. This way the match would have to be abandoned. It seemed a good plan and I briefly considered what I needed to do to create the right impression.
“It has been told that certain events will signify the imminence of Ragnarok. If I could duplicate these convincingly everything would be fine. One of these events was the death of the god Baldr by the trickery of the villainous Loki, who slew him with a spear made of mistletoe. Another was the onset of the Fimbulwinter, three successive winters without a summer between them, a time of chaos and fratricide. Yet another was the eating of sun and moon by the wolf brothers, Skoll and Hati. There would also be a series of earthquakes that would snap every bond and fetter in existence, allowing the monstrous Fenrir to escape and wreak havoc, plus the rainbow would crack and fall.
“After a few moments of careful thought, I decided I couldn’t replicate any of these events except in a most amateurish fashion. So I hastily devised a substitute plan, clutching my groin as if I needed to relieve myself, leaving the stadium and looking left and right as if for a place to answer this call of nature. Nobody noticed my departure. They were too intent on enjoying the scrum and the tearing apart of Wilfred Wooller, who helped Wales defeat the All Blacks in 1935 and was a fine cricketer too. His head was ripped clean off and booted into touch. I believe it was Odin himself who did the deed. I looked back and saw a one-eyed man with a long white beard and wide brimmed hat.
“I never discovered what the final score was. It was 3,765,987 to nil when I left, with twenty minutes still to go, so four million to nothing is a reasonable guess. I found the bus made of fingernails in the car park and climbed into the driver’s seat, then I started the engine and off I went with a squeal of tyres. I put my foot down and got back to Bridgend in record time. I didn’t have to wait long for a connecting bus to Porthcawl. I came straight here to the pub where I was mighty pleased to see my friends, Frothing Harris and Paddy Deluxe, sitting at the same table as always, without a care in the world, and I looked so shaken and pale they bought me a few drinks to calm my fraught nerves.
“I’ll never complain about the Welsh squad ever again, even if they lose to the All Blacks on a regular basis. I’ve seen a Welsh side get hammered for real and it wasn’t pleasant. I don’t go out in thunderstorms anymore, and I avoid all the props of Norse mythology as much as possible – horned helmets, trolls, runes, longships, the board game called hnefatafl, – with the exception of mead. They don’t serve mead in this pub, but I’ll have an ordinary lager if you’re buying. Did I tell you about the time I fell through a hole in the fabric of spacetime and ended up back in the Iron Age? It was called the Iron Age because people there ate a lot of spinach. Yes, that’s right, a lager please.”
5 Consult The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, recently reprinted by Savoy Books.
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