Alfred Lord " Tennisanyone?" was a minor figure in the pantheon of Chesley acolytes, his claim to fame being the authorship of a putrid little piece of rhyming verse entitled For Emily Wherever I May Find Her (1). The grocer's assistant from Chutney-under-Lyme proves to be of slightly more interest when certain unusual circumstances of his life are more closely examined.

Lord was a lifelong bachelor who lived with his mother, the domineering Goodie. He apparently received his nickname from his mother's habit of crying loudly during amorous liaisons: "15 Love...30 Love...40 Love" and so on until the culminating "Game, Set, Maaaaaatch!" Since there was never any sign of a gentleman caller, Alfred was thought to be "courtside" as it were.

The sordid little Oedipal saga takes a savage twist in 1904 when Alfred, abroad for perhaps the only time in his life heard Emily speak at the Canadian Congress of Speculationists (2). He was entranced. It does not appear that he ever made personal contact with Chesley but there can be little doubt that he returned to Chutney a changed man. He promptly ended the familial Wimbledon and moved his belongings into the other room. This turn of events left Goodie in a mood even more foul than usual. Determined to "go it alone" she discovered the Flannigan Personal Digital Assistant. It was while putting it to the unintended use that she died (3).

Alfred Lord was inconsolable. He became notorious for throwing himself on his mother's grave in scheduled fits of grief. Unfortunately he met his end at on of these appointments on a grey October in 1911. The groundskeeper had become occupied with a bottle of gin and had left his rake lying on the grave. Alfred might have survived the multiple perforations had he not run wailing into the street where the protruding handle was caught in the spokes of a passing hansom cab. For nearly a block his emaciated body was alternately lifted several feet in the air before being slapped back down on the cobblestones. Finally he was thrown clear only to be rectally impaled on the sword of the statue of Holyfriic, the 12th century friar accredited with driving the moles of Chutney underground (4). Casting a even sadder note to the proceedings was the fact that because of the not insubstantial height of Holyfriic's sword, and the local fire department's ladder wagon being lent to the department at neighbouring Fordsford, poor Lord finally died some eleven hours after landing on the sword with no aid possible and the taunting chants of "15 Love...30 Love...40 Love" from the local schoolchildren (5).

1) Little of the original remains except the first verse included here:

Lady fair and heaven sent
Find me here alone and spent
Your humble servant
Believer fervent
Following your siren call: Get bent!

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2) Lord would have had little or no reason to be at the Congress so historians believe he had probably just snuck in trying to get free drinks. [back]

3)The Chutney physician Neville Minder M.D. who performed the autopsy on Goodie attributed her demise to "Death by misadventure". [back]

4) Minder also performed the autopsy on Alfred Lord and it was his opinion that "peritonitis resulting from a lacerated bowel would have been likely". No mention was made of the pool of blood that formed beneath Holyfriic's statue, said by an observer to be "deep enough for Admiral Nelson". [back]

5) An obscure reference from Ma Batte Est Un Cheminée, the autobiography of surrealist Toulouse Le Grandfig mentions his boyhood trip abroad to England in 1911. Other researchers have speculated that he may in fact have been in Chutney-under-Lyme at the time of Lord's demise. Certainly this Dadaist tone poem suggests that he may have witnessed the entire gory event:

Wheaooow kunklap
Wheaooow kunklap
Wheaooow kunklap
Wheaooow kunklap
Phweeeeeeeeeeee...yeaoow!!
The fart is sliced.

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--"Scholarship" by The Ghost

Goodie Lord (seen here on the right, fondling a ball) was keen on tennis and regaling her confidant, Elly McFrigwattle, on the intimate details of her home life.

 

 

 

 

Statue of Holyfriic, defeater of the Chuney molepeople.