Don't mess with Chris

Paul and I slipped in for last orders at the Lion, and decided one wasn’t enough. After 11, on the way to Fuel, we ran into YI Chris, idling his Cavalier by Subway. Paul and I played football with him about once a week for the best part of a year. My accursed knee injury is a result of a challenge I put in on Chris about three months ago, and – with me not playing – I haven’t seen much of him since. Like Rich Reason, he texts me once a week about an event, and I don’t end up going to it. We went over.

Chris was wearing a wrist support of some kind. We shoot the breeze –

“So what are you waiting here for mate?”
“Ee, well I fancied a Subway for breakfast so I thought I’d park up and wait for it to open, like.”

– and so on. He’s a funny lad. I like him. Talk of my injury, and of how I’d lost a fight to a damp towel in my own home last week, soon led to asking Chris about his arm. He said that he’d filled someone in. Was he joking?

No. He found out that his girlfriend had been cheating on him with Pires from football. On the pitch Chris wears a Middlesbrough shirt, Pires wears Arsenal, and their styles of play reflect their chosen team. Chris: hard-working powerhouse, box-to-box, all-action. Pires: a step-over here, a flick there, a stunning volley, a pass not made. Guardi thinks that Pires hogs the ball, which he does. I don’t know the dynamic of the Thursday football lads. In the car there we’d talk about football, Glastonbury or something inconsequential. Most of them know each other through University, I think, but I don’t know who likes whom and vice versa. Pires played every week, as did Chris, so I assumed that they were pretty good friends. I was stunned.

Things Chris has done since his girlfriend left him for Pires:

1 – Thrown her stuff out of his flat and changed all the locks.
2 – ‘Filled in’ Pires with a mate, injuring his wrist in the process.
3 – Discovered that what he thought was a joint credit card is actually in her name, with him as an additional cardholder, and that all liability for that card rests with her. And then he has subtly withdrawn £200 cash each day from the not-shared-after-all-actually account, up to the tune of about £2,500, and put it into his own account.
4 – Arranged a date with Pires’ (now ex-)girlfriend Danielle.

Afterwards, in Fuel, Paul asked if there was a lesson to be learned from all this. I think so. Don’t mess with Chris.