The Team Comes Together - The Feminine Touch

It had long been a tradition in the Wainwright family to have a slightly more sophisticated and adventurous naming system than was traditional in the more hilly parts of Far West Yorkshire.

It had started fairly well in the early 1950's when Marlene was born. Marlene was followed, almost two years later by Maureen. 1956 was Darleen's emergence into the world, followed by  Stergene roughly two years later. The joke was that the next one would be called "Windowlene" which was felt to be appropriate as The Dad of the family was  Alf  the local window cleaner. Alf's seen a lot of life from the top of his ladder, has Alf.  No, it wasn't that Alf Wainwright, it was another one.... although this one did smoke a pipe and had a rather laid-back way of speaking, so much so that  people in  a hurry often used to finish his sentences for him.

Maureen was the only one to produce progeny and, after a specially merry 1976 Christmas Eve, rumoured to have been a fairly rough and fumbled affair in the back yard of the Tackler's Ferret - which, incidentally , caused some disarray amongst the empty kegs and frightened Mrs Jones's cat Tigger, Maureen fell pregnant and, in the late summer of 1977, gave birth to a bouncing baby girl, Lenor, thus modernising the naming system, yet bringing the whole thing more up-to-date in line with the white heat of modern technology and the the form of the  introduction of colour TV with adverts. (although this, in itself wasn't really all that new.)

It is often said that lightening never strikes twice. This may be true, except in the case of Christmas Eve 1994 in the back yard of the Tackler's Ferret and, on that night, whilst shepherd's watched a repeat of a Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, and as the final chord of "Here it is Merry Christmas" by Slade rang out of the Tackler's juke box, the empty kegs were roughly disarrayed once more and Maureen's second daughter Febreze was conceived.

Oddy enough, Lenore and Febreze shared the same birthday and often claimed to be  unidentical twins, although Febreze couldn't quite get her head around the grammar and told people they were "unidentified" twins. Febreze entered the world in September 1995 and, despite only being just over 17 at the moment, has just enjoyed her third eighteenth birthday party in a row down at the Tacker's Ferret.

Febreze, just like her mum, has continued the tradition of disturbing the kegs, but on a more regular basis than her mum and a wider spread of festive occasions, including Easter, Spring Bank, Wimbledon, The Boat race and Friday evenings.

It's not gone unnoticed that should Febreze join the team, she would be T'Go challenge's youngest challenger. It was also felt that Febreze's claim to have Alf Wainwright as her grandad might be helpful in the application. The only problem seems to be that we would have five team members - Me, Beefburger,  Sedge, Febreze and Lenor - since Febreze goes almost evrywhere with her unidentified twin. One will have to go....... maybe we'll just have to wait for a bit of wastage.... and since both Lenor and Febreze are key members of the "security" arm of  ladies darts team,  I for one am not going to try to actively discourage either one.