The Mowdog On The Road...: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BODGING: the badger on the road...

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BODGING: the badger on the road...

Where the Badger Comes From…

Meeting Patrick Suffo, Cameroon legend, who is wearing JJ Okocha's Nigerian tracksuit...

My son had enquired if ever,

Whilst jogging I’d ever been harassed

By pedestrians, motorists, maybe a dog,

When they’d noticed me labouring past.

I admitted that once, a mad dog approached,

Then ran barking across a street

Towards my weathered, sweating legs,

Snarling at the sight of fresh meat.

What to do? Let it bite a chunk?

Hurriedly I made a decision:

A left-foot volley struck under its chin,

With rather magnificent precision.

Stunned, it twisted on contact

And flew three feet into the air,

Landed on tarmac, scrabbled about

And retreated in utter despair.

A chap in a garden suddenly applauded:

“It’s always biting people…” he declared;

It was me or it and I got in first,

No compassion at all was spared.

I jogged on, shaking from the ordeal,

Checking for reprisals over my shoulder,

But I reached home without further incident

In shock and feeling considerably older…

I told my son the tale and he was intrigued,

We laughed about my kick-boxing jaunt,

Yet weeks later, in an unforgettable dream,

The horror of it returned to haunt…

A colleague and I had strolled out of work,

He found his car, I couldn’t find mine;

I roamed streets and a multi-storey car-park,

With my son who was beginning to whine.

It was a damp, dank afternoon in December,

He dripped mud from a school rugby game,

His bag hung limp on a shoulder,

For his discomfort I was taking the blame.

“You must remember where you parked your car, dad…”

With his impeccable frown, he complained,

As my eyes danced about but to no avail,

So he moaned and I groaned and it rained.

The pavement was separated from a road

By the width of a green, grass verge,

Edged on the kerb by a stubby harsh hedge,

From which something was about to emerge…

Through a break in the hedge, the creature sprang

At my son’s wet and exposed left thigh:

The badger with awesome power attacked,

Jaws wide as its haunches flew by…

I recall my fear, my panic, my voice,

As I sat bolt upright in bed;

I yelled at my son with such venom:

“KICK IT IN THE HEAD…”

I awoke as the words filled the bedroom,

The nightmare had arrived with the dawn;

And so from that dream, that nasty assault,

The legend of the badger was born…

Pete Ray

January 2016

This is a true story.

Waking in the night, the dream was fresh and I recalled the above clearly.

The telling of the story led me to purchase ‘The Bodging’, my name for a badger hand-puppet and I began to watch non-league football. I checked if any teams were nicknamed ‘The Badgers’ and visited Eastwood Town and Retford United in that first season, 2008-09. Retford would win their league, managed by Peter Duffield and were spearheaded by the legendary Mick Godber in attack. Oddly, Jamie Vardy was on the Stockbridge Park Steels’ roster that season too.

The Bodging began to accompany me to matches and it became a custom to photograph him somewhere at each game I attended.

He was even photographed on a treatment table at the Nou Camp, Barcelona, to the bewilderment of other visitors…

He IS The Bodging…