So. One of the things about following any on-line community for long enough is the joy of finding out that you appreciate the in-jokes. Or if not in-jokes specifically, the little turns of phrase or signifiers of inside-the-ring-ness, the things that people outside the group might understand. Then, of course, comes the temptation to use those bits of phrase elsewhere, mostly of course because they are ever so amusing, but as it happens they are badges of acceptance in the Ring and, you know, one doesn’t wish to brag, but…
I mention this because I found the following quite funny:
“My breakfasts for the past three Saturdays: fry up; cold pizza which I stupidly reheated and ate soggy; leftover spaghetti bolognaise,” says Dan Lucas. "So good." An orderly one, ladies, an orderly one.
This is, of course, from the OBO or over-by-over coverage of the epic Test Match series in which England is thrashing India and making themselves Head Boy in the Test Cricket world. It’s from day three of the Second Test, in fact, and the man at the controls is Rob Smyth. The email he is reprinting is in response to a conversation begun when Mr. Smyth observed that breakfast may be in a general way the most important proverbial of the whatnot, sometimes the second Test can be the highlight of the etc etc. Much breakfast talk that day, I can tell you.
The orderly one, if it isn’t obvious, and honestly I rather hope it isn’t, is the orderly line that the ladies are forming for their opportunities at romance with the ill-breakfasted such-a-catch Mr. Lucas. An expression of affectionate contempt, if you will. Or contemptuous affection. Very manly. It’s the regular phrase used amongst OBOers to tag on to the end of some poor sap’s half-bragging admission of slovenliness, poor eating habits or taste in music. It’s a thing that the British are particularly good at, of course, the implication by opposites, or heavy irony—although Woody Allen, in his younger, funnier days was good at exactly that joke, bragging about his obviously mythical romantic conquests which were comic because of his comically inept and unsexy persona, which persona he did not reference in the words at all. Well, maybe sometimes, but mostly it was in the tone.
Anyway, my point (and sometimes, Gentle Reader, I do have a point) is that it’s such good shorthand for guy-ness. You’re not dragging me to some chick-flick, I’m gonna see the Transformers again. No shoving, ladies, keep in line. I don’t like needy, clingy women. Everyone will have a turn, ladies, if everyone is polite.Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. Let’s have an orderly one, ladies, an orderly one.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.