Wednesday Story: The Sexiest Elbows I had ever Seen

When we first met she was Emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Marmalade at the University of Ffestiniog, and she had the sexiest elbows I had ever seen. We met at the Annual Ffestiniog Tapioca-Ignoring Convention, back in the late summer of ’83. At the time neither of us had a Tapioca-Ignoring partner, so naturally – once we found our handicaps were compatible – we teamed up for that autumn’s preliminary Tapioca-Ignoring Cup rounds. Of course, with both of us being amateurs we never expected to get to the finals.

Her name was Plenitude Cleavage and she came from the Welsh valleys, in fact she had quite a Welsh valley herself, never in my experience had I ever seen such a splendid example of nominative determinism in a woman’s body before and I promised myself I would make it my lifetime’s wan… work to study it in all its wondrous depths, especially its deep sonorous echo when I buried my head deep inside that valley and called out her name in wonder and desire.

Although Plenitude had some experience as a teenager of ignoring sago and I had once walked past a rice pudding, both of us were still fairly new to tapioca-ignoring, especially in a competitive setting. But whenever she adopted the traditional tapioca ignoring stance with those oh-so-sexy elbows thrust out in front of her, I knew we were in with a good chance of making the finals, even though every time she did it I had to excuse myself to go and engage in some solitary meditation on my own approach to the game.

Everything went well until the semi-finals when we were drawn against the AntenDec a strange mutant double-foreheaded beast from the wild and untamed Geordie shoreline who had won worldwide fame for the way it blithely stood next to a bread and butter pudding for a whole week without once acknowledging – in any way – the presence of the pudding in the creature’s near vicinity.

The night before the match as we lay in bed together in my Ffestiniog hotel room, Plenitude and I knew the next day would severely test both of us and our ability to disregard a nearby pudding. After I licked the last of that day’s training tapioca from those oh-so-sexy elbows of hers, Plenitude gave me the comfort of her Welsh valley to rest my head as she stroked my worried brow with those still slightly-damp elbows.

The next day’s semi-final was the hardest tapioca-ignoring contest we had ever participated in up until then. The sweat was pouring down the AntenDec’s multiple foreheads as the unnatural creature did its best to exclude the sight of the two bowls of tapioca, on the table in front of it, from its consciousness.

I was staring hard at Plenitude’s elbows as the rested either side of the dish of tapioca she was ignoring, while she concentrated on solving quadratic equations in her head as a way of avoiding any acknowledgement of the existence of the tapioca in front of her.

Twelve hours later, just as the TV station covering the event live went to an advertising break, there was an unearthly scream from the AntenDec beast as it stood on the tapioca-ignoring table, stripped off its clothing and dived heads-first into the now stone-cold tapioca dish on its left before smearing the contents of its other tapioca dish over its genitalia as it got up and strode towards the female celebrity judge, licking its lips and demanding perverse sexual favours, there and then, live on the auditorium stage.

Fortunately, the AntenDec’s keepers were able to throw one of their restraining nets over the rampaging creature before it got too close to the judge. They sedated it and took it away in a wheelbarrow back to its cage ready for the long journey back to the Geordie wilderness where it made its home.

This meant that Plenitude and I were through to the final. That night we celebrated alone together in my hotel room, with Plenitude dipping those sexy elbows of hers in the champagne, they had presented to us for winning the semi-final, for me to lick off as she did that special thing she did with the castanets and the Shrewsbury & Telford A-Z Street Atlas.

The next day was the final. We realised we would be facing the most fearsome tapioca-ignorer in the world. We knew we needed a good night’s sleep. We needed to be rested and ready for what would be the greatest day of our short tapioca-ignoring career. It took some time for us to fall asleep, lying there in each others arms. I kissed her elbows – one after the other – and fell into an uneasy sleep where dreams of huge man-eating elbows rampaged through carnage-strewn city streets awash with tsunami-waves of boiling-hot tapioca.

The next day, when I woke up from my troubled dreams, Plenitude was gone. There was a note on her pillow, signed with the imprint of her left elbow, my favourite and easily the sexier of the two.

It seemed Plenitude had gone back to her summer house in exotic Walsall, leaving Ffestiniog until the new academic year began. Unable to cope with the pressure of the contest she felt that she would be unable to ignore even the smallest bowl of tapioca ever again. Of course, I thought about going after her, but I’d attempted to leave Wales once before and only barely escaped being press-ganged into one of the wild itinerant roaming male-voice choirs that run amok through those wild, lawless valleys.

One day, I knew we’d meet again, especially as she’d left her competition elbow pads on the pillow next to mine.

I packed my things, deciding to leave the hotel too, tears already forming in my eyes, and – this time, for once – it was not because I’d received one of Plenitude’s elbows in a delicate area during our frantic bouts of love-making that had already forced the hotel maintenance staff to re-plaster the ceiling of the room immediately below mine.

As I walked into the hotel lobby, I glanced over at the room where the Tapioca-Ignoring final was about to take place. There was a suitcase there I recognised and standing next to it was Plenitude.

‘I got to the station…’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘…but I just couldn’t leave.’

I nodded; I knew what the rail service to Walsall was like.

‘I came back to you,’ she said. ‘No-one has ever licked my elbows the way you do.’ There was a look in her eyes that suggested that maybe we ought to tell the hotel staff to begin mixing some fresh ceiling plaster.

Just then, the Tapioca-ignoring competition organiser appeared, telling us to prepare ourselves for the final.

I looked at Plenitude; she looked at me… then nodded. ‘Why not?’ she said.

‘Yeah, why not.’ I agreed.

Facing us in the Tapioca-Ignoring final, we knew, was the world solo tapioca-ignoring champion, the Dread Prescott, Lord of All Pies, whose ability to ignore any foodstuff without a thick pastry crust was the stuff of legend. Even now, long after he once stalked the land causing fear, dread and total incomprehension in the populace, harassed mothers still warned their children that if they did not behave the Dread Prescott would come and gobble them all up.

The Dread Prescott strode into the tapioca-ignoring pit, flanked by his pie flunkies and his elaborately made-up and coiffured floozies. He stood in the centre of the pit as his floozies removed his bight-red silk ceremonial pie-eating cape with a flourish, while he raised his hands above his head, acknowledging the indifference of the crowd as they busied themselves with their flasks of hot tea and cheese sandwiches.

The room was packed to the rafters with people eager to see this final. I tried courting them all, but had to give up after twelve when I ran out of fingers, toes and other countable appendages.

In the ignoring pit, the Dread Prescott made a short speech in its own language, which – it seemed – no-one there could speak, not even his floozies why exchanged confused looks as they folded up his ceremonial pie-eating cape and exited the pit, ready for the match to begin.

The Dread Prescott, of course, as a solo player would have only the one bowl of tapioca to ignore, while we in the other half of the pitch would have two bowls on our table, which meant that we only had limited room for manoeuvre to avoid having to accidentally notice each other’s bowl of tapioca.

The referee blew his whistle for the first half and we were off, the Dread Prescott’s floozies immediately sat down on the edge of the gaming pit and pulled out their knitting, obviously expecting this to be a long match. The connoisseurs of the game, seated in the high auditorium immediately leant forward to study the close-up monitors mounted above the pit, eager to examine our opening stratagems. There were audible gasps from all around the auditorium when they realised that Plenitude was using the always-tricky semi-erect Garfunkel posture opening, which – as we all know – places a great deal of stress on the left elbow as well as making the eyes unusually bright. I looked across at her, concern on my face, wondering if my favourite sexy elbow could stand the pressure, I wondered what I would do that night were Plenitude to injure that elbow, for I knew it would mean a night without the castanets.

I could feel my attention wandering to the bowl of tapioca, half of me wanting to end it, end it now, before Plenitude could damage that oh-so-sexy elbow beyond repair.

A mere three hours later the Dread Prescott said something to the team of invigilators in his own language, possibly about the use of pickled onions in Northamptonshire brothels, the invigilators looked at each other and shrugged, dismissing the claim by the Dread Prescott… whatever it was. The Dread Prescott turned to his floozies, wanting one of them to – no doubt – translate his utterance, but they were both too engrossed in their knitting to notice him. The Dread Prescott cursed – possibly – and gave up trying to attract their attention.

Meanwhile on the tables in front of us the tapioca sat, waiting for one of us to break and take a look at it as it lay so temptingly in the official competition-size bowls.

Suddenly, a mere 18 hours into the opening moves of this tapioca-ignoring final, the Dread Prescott gave a weird keening ululation as his eyes scanned the rows of spectators, his nostrils twitched and his hands opened and closed convulsively on the tapioca-ignoring table in front of him. Everyone in the auditorium turned to see what had caught the Dread Prescott’s eye. Up high on the balcony, I saw, a member of the audience had just pulled a Cornish pasty from his lunch box.

Down here, on the edge of the tapioca-ignoring pit, the Dread Prescott’s floozies hugged each other in terror as his pie flunkies donned their protective headgear and mastication-proof gloves.

With an unearthly cry, the Dread Prescott launched himself from his seat and rumbled across to one of the balcony supporting pillars. He leapt at the pillar and began to climb. Meanwhile up in the balcony the audience member dropped his pasty and fled in terror. Unfortunately the pillar was only strong enough to support a fully-laden 400 seat balcony, so it was no match for the weight of the Dread Prescott. With an almighty groan the pillar tore away from the balcony, as the balcony crashed down on the now-bewildered Dread Prescott, flinging him from the pillar he was climbing and burying him under its rubble pouring down on him.

Plenitude screamed and I turned to see her clutching a bloodied elbow where a piece of decorative coving from the balcony had struck her. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her behind the protection of the tapioca-ignoring table as another balcony pillar crashed down on the seat she’d been sitting in only seconds before.

Together, we made a run for the auditorium door as dust billowed around us and fragments of shattered balcony ricocheted around our heads.

Outside the auditorium the Dread Prescott’s floozies, wrapped in the dead beast’s cloak were being comforted by his pie flunkies.

Luckily, all of those who had been on the balcony for the competition had fled when they heard the Dread Prescott’s initial frustrated roar when his pie-sensitive nose had first detected the pasty and by the time of his abortive attempt to scale the pillar the balcony was deserted, except for the lone pasty dropped by the fleeing audience member.

A medic came across to check on Plenitude’s bleeding elbow and to check over the various cuts, scratches and bruises I’d suffered under the hail of flying masonry.

Of course, some time later we were presented with the trophy for winning the competition in a rather subdued ceremony, although some argued that - because we’d won by our semi-final and the final through our opposition forfeiting the game by leaving the ignoring pit – our victory was not as clear-cut or as decisive as the competition organisers claimed.

Still, Plenitude and I had the winning cheque for the sum of nearly nine whole pounds to share between us, which we knew could enable us to afford to hire then best suite in the Ffestiniog hotel for a whole fortnight of unbridled passion, sexy elbows and castanet-induced exhaustion, despite Plenitude’s left arm still being in a sling.

Three days later, in a day of national mourning, the Dread Prescott was buried with full military honours by a nation grateful that he was finally out of the way, while the Dread Prescott’s floozies and his pie flunkies immediately flew off to Bangkok together to set home together in exile.

Later that same month, Plenitude and I married in a small ceremony at the Ffestiniog register office and set off for a luxury honeymoon in the bright lights of Walsall, deciding that our days of ignoring tapioca together were now over for ever.