Too Cold For Snow

intercept a pass and started a slightly loping run with the crowd baying him on. He had caught the Irish napping. To the delight of the Welsh fans Keiron had enough time to do a little twirl and allow his behind to offer a hint of a waggle before putting Wales’ first points on the board. And then, in an expression of excitement lifted from the manual of football hysteria, the Welsh players queued up to kiss him and both the irony and unity of the gesture wasn’t lost on the crowd. Fifteen men. Fifteen men.
    By half way through Wales were a scarlet flow of jerseys queuing up to penetrate the Irish defensive line, which held solid until Keiron chipped a ball over their heads, to be picked up with the dexterity of a basketball star by his best friend Martin. He landed on the touchline and threw Keiron a theatrical kiss, which was the moment above all others that showed how totally the team accepted him. They couldn’t treat him as a woman yet, but they could show their team mate a good time, even as they took on the reigning world champs. It was like a first date.
    The Irish came within a centimetre of replying with a try but had it disallowed by the fourth official. This might have been the thing that stoked up the spleen, this might have been what caused the Irish wing, Andy Shankleton, to stop a charging run by Keiron by bringing his knee up into his groin, which not only crumpled him but caused a rivulet of red to run down one thigh. The crowd was in uproar and the doctors couldn’t sprint on fast enough for them, especially as the BBC had by now mixed both of the dedicated cameras, which intrusively showed a man in agony on a stretcher dripping blood. Such was the fury of the crowd that when Shankelton was peremptorily sent off one of the crowd threw a thermos flask at him, which hit him on the head and nobody was that shocked.
    On television half time had precious little analysis of the game itself. Everyone wanted to know how Keiron was and the pitch-side commentator went to stand outside the medical room. A minute before the second half resumed the Welsh team came out of the tunnel with Keiron leading in front, where the captain should have been. The play-side reporter tossed a question at him, asking him how he was and he quipped, ‘Guess I won’t be having children now, Sharon,’ which was relayed to a delightedly relieved crowd in the stadium and to millions of viewers who took a huge collective sigh of relief. It was also revealed that Hemmings the captain had voluntarily given Keiron the captain’s shirt as he thought that would rack up the pressure on the green shirts even further.
    Down to fourteen men the Ireland team struggled to keep the ball and deal with the fact that they were booed at every turn. The gap between them opened to over fifty points and the crowd wanted to pile on the humiliation which was now being doled out because of the heinous act against Keiron. Keiron who, three minutes before the final whistle, ran almost the whole length of the pitch and made a point of making sure that every Irish player was in the tally of those who wanted to catch him, but he ran rings around them all. He ran with joy and humour and when he finally touched the ball down as if it were an egg, and took a careful curtsey just before an Irish player came in late towards him, it was the best moment in the whole history of rugby union. Everyone agreed, apart from the sullen Irish.
    That night, when an Aral sea’s worth of ale was downed in the city, surgeons were working to contain Keiron’s blood-loss. There had been a news blackout on how serious things were. By three in the morning, they had managed to staunch the flow but not enough to stop Keiron announcing his retirement from his bedside to a friendly reporter who needed the money such an exclusive could generate.
    ‘I want to quit while I’m ahead,’ said Keiron before he fell back into an opiate determined dream, in which he danced a funny sexy jig in a gold lamé dress on a big glass stage, and the crowd of seventy eight thousand rugby fans roared at him as he started his slinky, sensual dance to the accompaniment of a Donna Summer clubmix, which blasted out of the stadium P.A., a resounding celebration of his proper gender.

Picture Perfect
     
     
    Each day, as the bills came tumbling through the letter box, Louis Morris wondered whether he could keep the wolf from the door. Or rather the slavering, mad-eyed , yellow-toothed pack of wolves