May 13th: Turtles 5(3) vs Miramar 5(1)
Match Report by GT

Rakesh uttered an oath under his breath. He had just seen that “Coppersmith, G” was one of the names that were booked in for tonight. “Table for 10”, it read. It seemed innocuous enough, but he’d been in the game long enough to know better . . .

. . . he knew that “Coppersmith, G” was the manager of that infamous football team, the Fabulous Turtles. He knew that the Hurricanes were playing the ‘Tahs later that night in Sydney so they’d be getting themselves worked up for it. He knew that it was FA Cup night, and that the Turtles always had a traditional team dinner on this night. And he knew that if they weren’t loud, aggressive, demanding, obnoxious and drunk before they arrived, that they would be making damn sure they’d be heading in that direction by the end of the evening.

How did Rakesh know this? Because he’d read about them on the “ten most un-wanted” list in www.blogspot.worstdiners.co.nz, the blog bible that restauranters used to tell each other about their worst patrons.

He remembered reading that they’d been practically banned 10 years ago from Uncle Changs for throwing even more food around than most people and that half of them had rudely asked for forks, that last year they had returned the “offal special” dish back to the kitchen mostly un-eaten at the Green Parrot and that Silvio had been so offended he’d nearly come out with his cleaver to “discuss the issues” with the ungrateful and uncultured swine, and that they’d been heard to complain that the special menu they’d received at Molly Malones was a bit limited, which made the fact that they’d been twice most strange. The only positive entry about them was from Logan Brown, with Alistair thanking his lucky stars that they knew the Turtles could never afford a big nosh up a their place!

“I’ll have to re-arrange the table allocations so that Shabina, Joyti and Karuna don’t have to serve them, otherwise there’ll be pinched bottoms, unwanted offers to replay how they’d many they’d recently scored and whether they’d like to be added to the tally and other such sexual innuendo complaints that I’ll have to deal with”, he thought to himself.

“Although, of course, now that they play in the Masters grade and in fact most of them are near 45+ now, I know the girls will actually be quite safe because most of them have kids and are more likely to be tucked up in bed by 10:30pm with their memsahibs rather than any of my girls. But by the sword of my ancestors, if any one of them so much as nods his head from side to side, tries to toss a naan in the air like a pizza base or complains that the mild chicken korma is still too spicy . . . !”

The Turtles duly arrived, a truly motley crew of badly dressed mad dogs out by the light of the moon. They were re-living their misery and glory from earlier that afternoon, and within 5 minutes of their having arrived, Rakesh knew that someone they called the Gordy the Tarten Tadger had been so late that he’d parked his green monster ute on the next door field. It was apparently a tempting target, and was so far away that surely not even someone as artful as Dodger could slice one that wide and still pretend he was aiming at the goal.

But he didn’t quite understand what they meant when they said that Gordy had put the “w” back in banker, even though he no longer worked there but instead had moved to the other side of the fence. Was Gordy married? Or was he more likely seen in the company of some of his 12-year old nephews in Mumbai?

For Mohommed, who was on menus and ordering tonight, things were starting to get busy. After dropping them off and forgetting to tell them about all the specials, he came back to the waiters’ station with the news that they had been talking about Don. Don had gone to the wrong park so was an immediate contender for something they called “wit of the day”, which must have been the reason why they had then all burst into loud laughter.

Vinu, meanwhile, was glad that the girls had been taken off this table and that he was now standing there taking their orders. He also had read the recent entries in the restaurant blog. He had read that the Turtles were all men . . . real men . . . men who made sheep scared and who posed in leather pouches.

While waiting for them to make up their minds, they were all talking about Grunter being “Mom for the day”? “But how could that be, Vinu thought to himself, “he was clearly a man and not a woman. And a large man at that!” Vinu continued to day-dream while the Turtles tried to decipher the menu, not realising that the only difference the kitchen made for different dishes was whether it was one spoon or two of the Curry Tonight paste. He thought to himself, “mmm, that Grunter, with the big hands and fleshy sausage fingers, I’m sure he could knead more than a roti if he was asked nicely . . . .”. He got even more exicited after they’d ordered him a double-hot vindaloo to warm him up, which would definitely get his man-juices going!

Vinu finally came back to the waiters station, holding his order pad at waist height as he walked with difficulty.

“What have they ordered now”, Rakesh asked, wanting to be sure that they hadn’t yet started on tequila or vodka shooters. For if there’s one thing he knew, it was that shooters of any sort with a vindaloo is not a good mix. He couldn’t count how many times he’d heard the Billy Connelly joke about vindaloo’s, that if it was hot on the way in that “it’ll be twice as hot on the way out!!” He just hoped that the Boss-man Grunter had enough intestinal fortitude to wait till after he’d left the restaurant before testing this theory.

When she next got back to the waiters station, Karuna, who had walked slowly past the table to see what all the fuss was about, told the others that someone named Neil had scored on debut, “and was a keeper”. But how could that be? According to the blog, someone named Snouter was the keeper. Maybe the Turtles had a new formation and played with 2 in goal? Were they allowed to, did they need two, wasn’t Snouter enough?

By now, the beers were being ordered and re-ordered - table lots at a time. No dobut partly to fuel the night ahead and partly to wash down the curries which had just been delivered to the table. News was coming back to the waiters station fast and furious now:

Rakesh came back with the news that although the other team had scored first, that Gordy and Neil between them had scored 3 times in quick succession so that the Turtles were leading 3-1 at halftime.

• That the Turtles were looking forward to something called “SNO” at half time. Was this some new name for the stuff that Wendall had been using over in Sydney, some little “pick-me-up” that was new to the market?
• Vinu returned with no new telephone numbers, but news that at half-time Dodger had found “a new position he’d never been in before this year”, which was surely an indication that maybe he, Vinu, could show Dodger a few new positions of his own?!
• After delivering the extra garlic naan that Phildo had asked for, Mohommed reported that the game had changed dramatically after half time and that Miramar had pulled ahead to be 4-3 up.
• Vinu, still trying to get phone numbers, came back with a ball by ball play of Glenn scoring the equaliser.
• They found out that Mace, reffing for the day as he thought he’d “be more effective”, was being true to his word and a true Miramar-raised banjo-playing hill-billy of a home-ground 12th man of questionable parentage when awarding an incredibly dubious penalty for an accidental handball. This had taken the score to 4-5 to Miramar with about 5 minutes to go.
• That towards the end PK had wanted to be left right out, but with all the subs having gone down with an injury already, that he’d had to be left back instead.
• Sunil reported that Tel-boy had used his right foot to curl a glorious far post goal around the leaden-footed keeper, which had tied the game at 5-apiece.
• That after the game Don had wandered off looking for his shoes and Grunter had walked right past him with a pair of unclaimed shoes in his bag looking for their owner.
• And that the girls blouse Big Si had not played because someone named “young ‘arry” was coming home that today.

Vinu was still very keen, especially when he heard someone saying that “drawing’s not as good as winning but better than losing, and that we’ve missed a golden opportunity to stuff someone they called “Theo’ld Foe” once again”. He wanted to shout that he was available for a stuffing any time, but Dodger and Grunter weren’t looking his way unfortunately.

Joyti, on the other hand, had never read any of the blog site. But she was interested to find out more about this team. She’d heard, as she walked past their table at a discrete and safe distance, that a possible new stat they were thinking about was, “instead of how many hangovers from the night before each game cos we’re all slowing down, how about how many bonks there’ve had been in the previous week?” She’d only just started working in this field having come from a different kind of client-service industry, and was interested to know more. But Rakesh hurried her along and she lost the opportunity for market research.

The night wore on. The Turtles seemed certain that they’d played better that afternoon with each beer that was downed. Some of the food actually got eaten. Not much ended up on the floor, no-one got any down the front of their shirts, and luckily one of the outlets of the commercial-grade air con units was directly above this table of corpulent, flatulent and burp-ulent Turtles.

As Rakesh scraped the last of the nights korma into the plastic containers to be reheated in tomorrows freshly made sauces, he thought to himself, “so much add to the Turtles blog file, including that although they’d offered more than one to Shabina, Karuna and Joyti, the bast*ards hadn’t even left a tip, as usual”.

Knowing that the vindaloo’s magic would take about 2½ hours to work it’s magic, which would take them past the Sports Café where they were going to watch the Hurricanes and on to the Ballroom for their annual bad-pool tournament, Rakesh thought about calling Sharkey to warn him of the Turtles’ impending arrival.

But no, he was interested to see what Sharkey would write on the blog after the double-hot vindaloo had progressed far enough through Grunter’s system to suddenly require lots of toilet paper à la Billy Connelly . . . maybe he should call Sharkey and tell him to remove all the bog rolls, just for fun, to see what Grunter would do . . .?!

And Vinu also couldn’t wait to post his entry to the blog, about how he had used his left hand to serve their rice for extra flavour to see who liked it and that with all the excitement he had indeed given their raita dip a special man-juice ingredient . . . !

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