"Is my shoulder meant to be sore? That's weird, that... I've had elbow surgery but my shoulder's aching. Whatever. I'll still bowl fast. F*****g hit 'em in the head."
And with that, Mark Wood - high on anesthetic having had fragments of bone cleaned out of his troublesome elbow - declared his love for Andy Flower (via a lament for his defunct stint at the IPL) before breaking into a rendition of "Lollipop". As you do.
That episode, in March 2022, was one of many viral moments in the course of Wood's irrepressible career, right up there with his "sexy kitten" dance during those cabin-fever months of Covid lockdown, and his solo rendition of "Jerusalem" ahead of England's behind-closed-doors Test against West Indies later that year.
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All these moments, and more, epitomise the character that Wood threw into his captivating international career. But those semi-conscious ramblings on that hospital bed four years ago reveal precisely what compelled him to strain his sinews, literally to snapping point, ball after ball after ball.
Wood's was a rare, and entirely un-teachable, blend of fragility, optimism and self-knowledge. He discovered, in the course of an injury-ravaged career that would have driven most characters to retirement a decade before this final bow at the age of 36, that the triumph was in the adversity. You do not simply rock up to the bowling crease and "bowl f*****g rockets", as per Brendon McCullum's famous exhortation during the 2023 Ashes. But when you know that you alone are capable of doing so, the risk and the reward are the flip sides of the same coin.
Wood, at his best, was extraordinarily and irresistibly quick - quite conceivably the fastest bowler in England's history. Famously, it took the intervention of one of the very greatest, Michael Holding, to unlock his golden years - and with the sort of counterintuitive advice that only a true athlete could have accepted as wisdom. Where previously Wood had burst into a short, sharp run-up like a sprinter, sending waves of fast-twitch strain through his body (including through his ever-problematic left ankle), Holding suggested he should extend that run-up, irrespective of the extra mileage it would entail, and allow momentum through the crease to do the heavy lifting.
What momentum it was, though! Some fast bowlers attain speed seemingly without exertion (among them Jofra Archer, although his own litany of injuries confirms how unfair that characterisation actually is). Wood, however, never left anyone in any doubt as to the forces he was flinging through his limbs.
From his bull-in-a-china-shop gallop - chest jutting, shoulders pumping, feet pattering like the clappers - Wood would surge into a splayed-armed gather, followed by that knee-juddering plant of the front foot and the trebuchet-like release of his entire torso, directly towards the batter in his sights, and as often as not, with a face-plant of a follow-through.
His lack of subtlety was the selling point. Whereas his fellow son of Ashington, Steve Harmison, possessed a gangling release point that could extract gruesome lift seemingly from nowhere - and where others, Archer included, possessed more general seam and swing skills that offered a scalpel to complement the broadsword - Wood was Route One or bust. No matter the upshot, cricket fans of all persuasions adored him for this guarantee of visible endeavour.
He was an Ashes winner in his first year as a Test cricketer, and even claimed the urn-seizing wicket of Nathan Lyon at Trent Bridge in 2015. In his own assessment, however, Wood's pomp began in Johannesburg in January 2020, when his match-winning figures of 9 for 100 came in spite of the sort of pre-match stiffness that had previously rendered him unselectable for back-to-back contests.
Thereafter, his menace was instantaneous and sustained, particularly during the player-led mayhem of the peak Bazball years, in which he personified the sense of a team playing without any recourse to a handbrake.
His fastest spell, by common consent, came some years before that, in St Lucia in 2019, when he exploited a lightning-quick surface to devastate West Indies to the tune of 5 for 41. And later that year he was a World Cup winner too - bombing the middle overs to claim 18 wickets in the campaign, including a priceless three-for in a must-win group match on his home ground at Chester-le-Street, while also bowling through a side strain against the same opponents, New Zealand, in the final.
But Wood's most evocative spell undoubtedly came in his Ashes comeback, at Headingley in 2023. By the time he was unleashed for the third Test (quite literally: Ollie Robinson related that Wood had in fact been on all fours barking like a dog in the dressing room in the build-up) England were 2-0 down but somehow still imbued with an unquenchable belief in their own destiny. As he took over from Stuart Broad at the Kirkstall Lane End, with Australia 27 for 1 after six captivating overs, the expectation in the crowd matched that of Andrew Flintoff's defining introduction at Edgbaston in 2005.
Wood duly launched his onslaught with a 91mph outswinger that Marnus Labuschagne tracked from the hand but left with a wide-eyed flourish, his senses instantly engaged by this heightened sense of danger. By his third delivery, that pace had cranked up to 95mph, and there or thereabouts it remained, amid a full-frontal examination of Australia's ticker as much as their technique. For Wood's first 3.5 overs, Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja did the needful but then, with his final ball of a gut-busting introduction, Wood fired his length a fraction fuller, and Khawaja's leg stump had gone walkabout before his bat could conceive of a response.
Wood's actual rewards would come later in the innings, through a devastating docking of the tail - 4 for 4 in 14 balls for final figures of 5 for 34, including a savage thumping of Alex Carey's helmet that doubtless contributed to his dismissal the very next ball. But it was that initial burst that said everything about Wood's contributions to England's causes, in both victory and defeat.
The raw statistics of a scorecard were never designed to represent effort, and as the man himself lamented on the day of his retirement, Wood's final Test average of 30.79 didn't exactly flatter him. More instructive, maybe, was his overseas average of 28.98 - three and a half points better than his figure on home soil, and from the same number of Tests (19). Then there was the fact that his best Test figures of 6 for 37 came in perhaps the most adverse circumstances of his career: in Hobart, in the fifth and final Test of another losing Ashes tour, with the added strictures of Covid having rendered his unquenchable optimism perhaps the last functioning facet of a soundly thrashed tour party.
That performance could not salvage a consolation win, but it earned Wood the sort of rare and grudgingly relinquished respect from Australia's fans that only a handful of England quicks have earned down the years - Harold Larwood and Darren Gough among them. It meant he finished that sorry campaign as England's leading wicket-taker, with 17 wickets at 26.64. Though his bid for a last hurrah in Australia, four years later, came a cropper with the knee injury in Perth that finally proved too much to overcome, it was a tribute to his impact - and resilience - that England still believed in his rocket-readiness, even though he hadn't at that point played a Test for a full 15 months.
Wood will not be lost to the sport now that he's bowed to the ravages of his profession. There's still the prospect of further outings on the T20 circuit, while TV and radio gigs galore await such a natural entertainer. And, as befits the civic pride he always showed in his storied home town of Ashington, there's no doubting the direct impact he can continue to have on England's next generation of fast bowlers, especially now that his home county, Durham, have been restored to the top flight to which they have long belonged.
But in terms of raw endeavour - that willingness to fling himself towards that final, inevitable and inoperable twang of sinew - Wood's entire career has personified the struggle: for fast bowlers in the first instance, but on those glorious occasions when the wind was truly in his sails, it was the batters who ultimately felt the heat. No lollipops on his watch.