I thought we got to Narnia through the back of a wardrobe?
Under floor gardening
And he was never seen again
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Going Underground
In recent weeks we have removed ivy from the outside of the house and last week pulled it down from the interior wall and ceiling. The missing part of the process was the area between the inside ivy and the outisde ivy and this was beneath the dining room floorboards. It was quite easy to remove the boards since a small area had had been removed some decades earlier to install our largely ineffective central heating system. There was a very brief discussion about which one of us would squeeze into this tiny space. It was me. It wasn't at all roomy down there for someone of over six foot but by lying on my stomach and crawling along I got to the corner of the house and was able to pull up the remaining ivy and its roots and then spray weedkiller where it had been in case any roots were in hiding. Reversing myself out of the hole was surprisingly easy since once i'd entered this rather small space I did wonder how i'd get out. Perhaps that was why i was sweating like a paedophile in a playground when i was back on the right side of the floorboards.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Beasts of Burden
Am I allowed to moan? Is that allowed when you’ve invited into your life the situation you find yourself in? Living in a derelict house has become quite trying. Life only seems to consist of paid work, working on destroying the house, feeling exhausted and sleeping. Apart from the whole children/grandchildren confusion you have to admire Josef Fritzl’s time management and DIY skills to build an entire apartment beneath his house.
On Tuesday the car began making a noise like a rattling bag of marbles. I asked Martin if he knew of a good garage/mechanic and he recommended a cousin of Anne’s. This is a different cousin to the builder they previously recommended. By Friday the sound coming from the car was more like it was dragging a bicycle (and its rider) behind it. I delivered it to the garage on Friday and then walked to Warwick train station and got a taxi home. I spoke to the cousin on the phone a few times during the week and he didn’t ever seem quite sure if it was a gearbox or clutch problem. He replaced both I think because he didn’t ever decide which one it was. Marianna collected it on Thursday and handed over a cheque for £1249. It now drives as if the cyclist is still hanging on to the bumper only making less noise. We could cope with being carless perfectly well if we’d known that we would be but we’d made plans requiring a car so being carless for six days was frustrating. And my lap top is increasingly temperamental. As is my mobile phone. And I never know where anything is in the house. And I wasn’t looking forward to my week away assessing a teenage rapist, a child porn downloader, an animal molester and a stalker and after working all weekend by Sunday night I was as feeling as irrationally irate as the average Daily Mail reader.
We spent the weekend finishing the demolition of the front bathroom, moving our unpacked boxes into it and the front bedroom and combining both mine and Marianna’s work spaces into the front bedroom. That may be tricky in the future since she maintains that it’s impossible to work alongside me, what with my heavy handed typing style, talking and singing to myself and listening to music on headphones at a volume that is amplified through my skull into other rooms. She’s so unreasonable.
We’ve dismantled the shower apart from one tiled wall where the plumbing was. While I was working away this week Marianna heard a sound at 2am which, after a tour of the house for an intruder, she found to be tiles falling off the shower wall. Like a self-cleaning oven ours has become a self-dismantling house. Our house certainly isn’t self-cleaning though. With all the dismantling it gets dirtier and dirtier. It wouldn’t surprise me one day to find Kim and Aggie at the door, ready to burst into action.
We then emptied the dining room, taking out one of Basil’s cabinets and putting it into the garage for storage and destroying the other and putting it into the skip and also putting his MFI 1973 drinks cabinet into the skip. Then we pulled up the carpet and the usual two layers of underlay. The more we remove the colder the house will become. My clothes had been in the dining room but they’re now split between the hallway, our bedroom and the sitting room. There’ll be lots of opportunities for dawdling pedestrians to see me semi-naked rushing around the house putting an outfit together. When the cabinet was removed we had access to the space between the two areas where ivy had come into the house. Of course, behind the wallpaper there was ivy joining those two areas together. It did appear to be dead though.
I prefer to avoid conversations with our neighbours. They’re always the same.
Them: How are you?
Me: Fine (stressed and tired and surrounded by chaos)
Them: How’s the house?
Me: Oh, getting there (but by the time it’s finished Gary Glitter’s last sexual conquest will be eighteen)
We did see Anne on Sunday afternoon and she asked about the house and the car. She was being lovely and friendly as usual and making offers of help. We mentioned that we’d visit them next weekend to show them the plans for the house and while she kept making noises about how it would all be fine a degree of rigor mortis appeared on her face. That’ll be a meeting to look forward to.
On Tuesday the car began making a noise like a rattling bag of marbles. I asked Martin if he knew of a good garage/mechanic and he recommended a cousin of Anne’s. This is a different cousin to the builder they previously recommended. By Friday the sound coming from the car was more like it was dragging a bicycle (and its rider) behind it. I delivered it to the garage on Friday and then walked to Warwick train station and got a taxi home. I spoke to the cousin on the phone a few times during the week and he didn’t ever seem quite sure if it was a gearbox or clutch problem. He replaced both I think because he didn’t ever decide which one it was. Marianna collected it on Thursday and handed over a cheque for £1249. It now drives as if the cyclist is still hanging on to the bumper only making less noise. We could cope with being carless perfectly well if we’d known that we would be but we’d made plans requiring a car so being carless for six days was frustrating. And my lap top is increasingly temperamental. As is my mobile phone. And I never know where anything is in the house. And I wasn’t looking forward to my week away assessing a teenage rapist, a child porn downloader, an animal molester and a stalker and after working all weekend by Sunday night I was as feeling as irrationally irate as the average Daily Mail reader.
We spent the weekend finishing the demolition of the front bathroom, moving our unpacked boxes into it and the front bedroom and combining both mine and Marianna’s work spaces into the front bedroom. That may be tricky in the future since she maintains that it’s impossible to work alongside me, what with my heavy handed typing style, talking and singing to myself and listening to music on headphones at a volume that is amplified through my skull into other rooms. She’s so unreasonable.
We’ve dismantled the shower apart from one tiled wall where the plumbing was. While I was working away this week Marianna heard a sound at 2am which, after a tour of the house for an intruder, she found to be tiles falling off the shower wall. Like a self-cleaning oven ours has become a self-dismantling house. Our house certainly isn’t self-cleaning though. With all the dismantling it gets dirtier and dirtier. It wouldn’t surprise me one day to find Kim and Aggie at the door, ready to burst into action.
We then emptied the dining room, taking out one of Basil’s cabinets and putting it into the garage for storage and destroying the other and putting it into the skip and also putting his MFI 1973 drinks cabinet into the skip. Then we pulled up the carpet and the usual two layers of underlay. The more we remove the colder the house will become. My clothes had been in the dining room but they’re now split between the hallway, our bedroom and the sitting room. There’ll be lots of opportunities for dawdling pedestrians to see me semi-naked rushing around the house putting an outfit together. When the cabinet was removed we had access to the space between the two areas where ivy had come into the house. Of course, behind the wallpaper there was ivy joining those two areas together. It did appear to be dead though.
I prefer to avoid conversations with our neighbours. They’re always the same.
Them: How are you?
Me: Fine (stressed and tired and surrounded by chaos)
Them: How’s the house?
Me: Oh, getting there (but by the time it’s finished Gary Glitter’s last sexual conquest will be eighteen)
We did see Anne on Sunday afternoon and she asked about the house and the car. She was being lovely and friendly as usual and making offers of help. We mentioned that we’d visit them next weekend to show them the plans for the house and while she kept making noises about how it would all be fine a degree of rigor mortis appeared on her face. That’ll be a meeting to look forward to.
Dead interior ivy
Sunday, 30 August 2009
On the beat, Pete.
On Tuesday, realising who is the decision maker and trouser wearer in the partnership Michael, the architect, rang Marianna to say that the planning officer he'd met with had no objections to our plans and we had the all clear to apply for full plannimng permission. It was great news and a genuine suprise to me that it wouldn't be a non-starter or that the plans would have to be altered radically.
On Thursday we received the first invoice for his fees. It was adressed to Peter Badger. It's encouraging that our architect has such an eye for detail.
On Thursday we received the first invoice for his fees. It was adressed to Peter Badger. It's encouraging that our architect has such an eye for detail.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Mirror Man
We’ve now hired a skip which was delivered on Thursday. I rang many Skip hire companies but the one whose Yellow Pages advert claimed that they were the cheapest in town turned out to be the cheapest in town. We’ve hired skips before when we lived in Hull and I found the entire experience to be quite distressing because other people would put things in our skip. I was tempted to sleep in it overnight just to avoid the annoyance of going to it in the morning and finding someone else’s mattress or coffee table filling it. That’s not to say that Marianna and I haven’t walked up the street once or twice carrying some item of furniture we no longer wanted and sheepishly slid into it someone else’s skip. Another curiosity is people taking things from your skip, clearly seeing value in items that we no longer did.
The man who delivered our skip was extremely amiable and cleverly reversed his truck into the drive at a tight angle between our fence and Anne’s car. He dropped the skip and then used the truck’s rear bumper to nudge it tight against the fence. “How will you get it out from there?” I asked. “Hopefully, your neighbour’s car won’t be there” he said. “And if it is?” was a question I kept to myself. We’ll cross that bridge when there’s no avoiding it.
The first thing to fill the skip was what was left of the front (porn) bedroom. We firstly removed the bed base (covered in deep shag carpet) and manoeuvred it out of the house and into the skip. Beneath it there was a gift from Basil, a condom. Since its use by date was December 2001 using it would be too much like playing Russian Roulette. We then rolled up sections of the deep shag carpet and two layers of underlay. Curiously, as it was de-porned the room began to look smaller, not bigger. The final job was to remove the mirrored ceiling. The mirrors weren’t actually on the ceiling but secured to a platform which was fixed to the ceiling. Perhaps Basil’s eyesight wasn’t up to much and he needed the mirrors to be a foot closer to him as he lay on the bed in order to get a good view. It appeared to be impenetrably constructed. With the aid of the crowbar one side was removed and brackets holding the mirrors in place were loosened and the mirrors could be slid out. The problem then was how to remove something the size of a dinner table from the ceiling. Logic suggested that it would be best to take it apart as it hung there but Basil had constructed it too well and the only clear way of removing it from the ceiling was all in one go or with a sledge hammer. I stood beneath it ready to take the weight while Marianna was on the step ladder loosening the screws that held the thing to the ceiling. When the last one was loosened the weight of it was quite a surprise (have you ever held a dinner table above your head?) but Marianna then descended the steps and we lowered it to the ground. Great fun. Then we dismantled it. The room looks strangely, horribly bare, like Samson shorn. With every task we manage to make the house look more dilapidated. It’s like an Airfix kit in reverse. We bought it in one piece and we’re slowly taking it apart.
Next we’ll put all of our unpacked boxes in there so we can gut another room.
Our house is no longer noteworthy for being the ugliest house on the street. It’s now the ugly house with the pink skip containing a bed base covered in deep shag pile carpet on the driveway. I've noticed people double-take as they walk by.
The man who delivered our skip was extremely amiable and cleverly reversed his truck into the drive at a tight angle between our fence and Anne’s car. He dropped the skip and then used the truck’s rear bumper to nudge it tight against the fence. “How will you get it out from there?” I asked. “Hopefully, your neighbour’s car won’t be there” he said. “And if it is?” was a question I kept to myself. We’ll cross that bridge when there’s no avoiding it.
The first thing to fill the skip was what was left of the front (porn) bedroom. We firstly removed the bed base (covered in deep shag carpet) and manoeuvred it out of the house and into the skip. Beneath it there was a gift from Basil, a condom. Since its use by date was December 2001 using it would be too much like playing Russian Roulette. We then rolled up sections of the deep shag carpet and two layers of underlay. Curiously, as it was de-porned the room began to look smaller, not bigger. The final job was to remove the mirrored ceiling. The mirrors weren’t actually on the ceiling but secured to a platform which was fixed to the ceiling. Perhaps Basil’s eyesight wasn’t up to much and he needed the mirrors to be a foot closer to him as he lay on the bed in order to get a good view. It appeared to be impenetrably constructed. With the aid of the crowbar one side was removed and brackets holding the mirrors in place were loosened and the mirrors could be slid out. The problem then was how to remove something the size of a dinner table from the ceiling. Logic suggested that it would be best to take it apart as it hung there but Basil had constructed it too well and the only clear way of removing it from the ceiling was all in one go or with a sledge hammer. I stood beneath it ready to take the weight while Marianna was on the step ladder loosening the screws that held the thing to the ceiling. When the last one was loosened the weight of it was quite a surprise (have you ever held a dinner table above your head?) but Marianna then descended the steps and we lowered it to the ground. Great fun. Then we dismantled it. The room looks strangely, horribly bare, like Samson shorn. With every task we manage to make the house look more dilapidated. It’s like an Airfix kit in reverse. We bought it in one piece and we’re slowly taking it apart.
Next we’ll put all of our unpacked boxes in there so we can gut another room.
Our house is no longer noteworthy for being the ugliest house on the street. It’s now the ugly house with the pink skip containing a bed base covered in deep shag pile carpet on the driveway. I've noticed people double-take as they walk by.
Tragically, this was the only time we had this view.
Russian Roulette
"Just hold it up there while i find the camera", said Marianna. Not the first time that phrase had been uttered in Basil's bedroom.
Friday, 28 August 2009
We All Stand Together
The weather was glorious on Sunday so, while other people were wearing bikinis and Speedos and sunning themselves or generally doing more sensible and relaxing things, Marianna and I emptied our pond in preparation for covering it over. The idea of having a pond is nice enough but ours is impractically positioned. It’s just a foot away from the house’s two floor-to-ceiling windows which we intend to replace with folding glass doors and it may be a little risky to have a pond outside of the doors positioned like a Welcome Mat. We began by pulling the many different plants and the buckets they were in out of the pond and leaving them to dry on the patio. We then became aware of how many frogs were in the pond since they began to panic thinking the bailiffs had been and all of their hiding places had gone. Marianna was very concerned about them but not sufficiently concerned to lift them out of the water. I picked them out and sent them in the direction of the people with the children’s paddling pool three doors along but like little kamikaze frogs they kept heading back to our pond. We then emptied the water into the drains and onto the boarders and lawn until we got to a point where it was more sludge than water and so left the last couple of inches in there. Later in the day we put the dried plants into the green waste bin.
By Thursday there were five frogs in the pond. It must have come as a shock to them that the water was now a foot from the paving rather than the inch it had once been.
It rained heavily on Friday and the level of water in the pond was heading back towards the paving.
By Thursday there were five frogs in the pond. It must have come as a shock to them that the water was now a foot from the paving rather than the inch it had once been.
It rained heavily on Friday and the level of water in the pond was heading back towards the paving.
Not a fish pond, a vegetation pond
How beautiful she was the day I met her. Stick with me i told her and you'll smell like a sewer and be covered in pond gunk
Thursday, 27 August 2009
How to be a Zillionaire
I've had a piece of the most amazing good fortune. Just as i was feeling overwhelmed by the expense of the house renovation and wondering how we would find the money my entire financial future has changed. Yesterday I received this email -
Attn: Patrick Bodger
From: Bakr Azmi (bakr_9@msn.com)
Sent: 26 August 2009 12:53:22
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dear Patrick Bodger,
With due maximum respect,I crave your indulgence knowing that this my proposal will be a surprise to you.My name is Barr.Bakr Azmi a legal practitioner with A.Bakr & Associates in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
I found your contact/profile some where over the Internet and it gave me the greatest joy,that you are the one I have been looking for.Whom I strongly believe could execute this transaction with me.And being more positive that with your capability,that this transaction of transferring the sum of 17,530,000.00 will be successfully accomplished. My purpose of contacting you is for you to help secure the funds left behind by my late client,to avoid it being confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Finance House.Where this fund valued (17,530,000.00) Seventeen Million, Five hundred and Thirty thousand United State Dollars deposited by my client before his death in Dec 2004.
You might be wondering why am I communicating with you,believe it or not it is simply because you and my late client have the same surname.Though this is coincidental,I strongly believe,you could help me in the task which is the distribution of my late clients funds.And the said funds in the Finance House is considered "UNSERVICEABLE"after my client passed away as there were no indication of next of kin whatsoever that the Institution could consider as a beneficiary for the said funds.
Being my late clients legal adviser,the Institution notified my office,that I need to produce and to contact the next of kin of my deceased client,to either "REACTIVATE" the account or to "MAKE CLAIMS" of the said funds which is carrying a monthly surcharge.
Now,my intention is purely to seek your consent to kindly present you as the legal next of kin/beneficiary to my late client's funds.This would mean that the proceeds of the said funds would be released to you.After the release of the funds to you,we shall then share it mutual,which will be 70% to me and 30% to you.
My office would provide documents to back up your claim.The most important thing I need is your honest/sincere cooperation in this task.And I assure you that this transaction will be legally executed according to the dictates of the law,which will protect you from any infraction of the law.
However,if this business proposition offends your moral ethics,do accept my sincere apology.If on the contrary you wish to achieve this goal with me,kindly get back to me with your interest immediately for further details.
Best regards,
Barr.Bakr Azmi (Esq)
Admittedly, I only end up with $5259000 which, when converted into sterling, is about £57.32 but it should be enough to cover my living expenses for a while. Curiously, I wasn't previously aware of any relatives who had this sort of money or that anyone had died in 2004 or why their money would be in Malaysia but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the arse. Anyway, I'll email a response to good ole Bakr Azmi now to let him know that his proposal does not offend my moral ethics, not that I have any.
Attn: Patrick Bodger
From: Bakr Azmi (bakr_9@msn.com)
Sent: 26 August 2009 12:53:22
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dear Patrick Bodger,
With due maximum respect,I crave your indulgence knowing that this my proposal will be a surprise to you.My name is Barr.Bakr Azmi a legal practitioner with A.Bakr & Associates in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
I found your contact/profile some where over the Internet and it gave me the greatest joy,that you are the one I have been looking for.Whom I strongly believe could execute this transaction with me.And being more positive that with your capability,that this transaction of transferring the sum of 17,530,000.00 will be successfully accomplished. My purpose of contacting you is for you to help secure the funds left behind by my late client,to avoid it being confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Finance House.Where this fund valued (17,530,000.00) Seventeen Million, Five hundred and Thirty thousand United State Dollars deposited by my client before his death in Dec 2004.
You might be wondering why am I communicating with you,believe it or not it is simply because you and my late client have the same surname.Though this is coincidental,I strongly believe,you could help me in the task which is the distribution of my late clients funds.And the said funds in the Finance House is considered "UNSERVICEABLE"after my client passed away as there were no indication of next of kin whatsoever that the Institution could consider as a beneficiary for the said funds.
Being my late clients legal adviser,the Institution notified my office,that I need to produce and to contact the next of kin of my deceased client,to either "REACTIVATE" the account or to "MAKE CLAIMS" of the said funds which is carrying a monthly surcharge.
Now,my intention is purely to seek your consent to kindly present you as the legal next of kin/beneficiary to my late client's funds.This would mean that the proceeds of the said funds would be released to you.After the release of the funds to you,we shall then share it mutual,which will be 70% to me and 30% to you.
My office would provide documents to back up your claim.The most important thing I need is your honest/sincere cooperation in this task.And I assure you that this transaction will be legally executed according to the dictates of the law,which will protect you from any infraction of the law.
However,if this business proposition offends your moral ethics,do accept my sincere apology.If on the contrary you wish to achieve this goal with me,kindly get back to me with your interest immediately for further details.
Best regards,
Barr.Bakr Azmi (Esq)
Admittedly, I only end up with $5259000 which, when converted into sterling, is about £57.32 but it should be enough to cover my living expenses for a while. Curiously, I wasn't previously aware of any relatives who had this sort of money or that anyone had died in 2004 or why their money would be in Malaysia but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the arse. Anyway, I'll email a response to good ole Bakr Azmi now to let him know that his proposal does not offend my moral ethics, not that I have any.
Monday, 24 August 2009
The Brakes
Here are two sentences that may appear to have very little in common.
I really like football.
and
I spent much of the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s watching Wisbech Town Football Club.
It was probably when I was aged seven or eight that I first accompanied my dad and brothers to Fenland Park to watch The Fenmen, as Wisbech town are nicknamed. It seemed that they fielded the same team for much of the next two decades that I attended. I saw them win the league one season and beat clubs they were expected to lose to in the FA Cup or FA Vase but mostly watching them week in and week out was a festival of disappointment. This is not the beautiful game of Arsenal and Liverpool. Football at this level is a little more basic. It’s not Bach or Mozart it’s Saturday night Karaoke at The Nags Head. I’ve seen many First Division and Premiership matches and know the difference. Perhaps that’s the point. People go to watch lower league football because it’s a group of people just like them doing something they could feasibly do. When you watch Thierry Henry that just isn’t the case. Also, football on the television and live football are completely different things. I realised this the first time I saw Peter Beardsley playing for Liverpool. It’s a commentator’s cliché but he ran for the entire length of the game and covered every inch of the pitch and made a contribution to the team and the game that was never apparent when I’d seen the team play on television. The experience and the players at huge stadiums can all seem a little distant though. I recently saw Marti Pellow sing at a theatre that seated only 250 people. Even if you were leaning against the back wall your view would be as perfect as the sound was. I now want to watch every musician or band play in that venue, even if it’s The Rolling Stones. Perhaps all of those years at Fenland Park taught me to love the intimacy of lower league football. Or mediocrity.
An important part of the live football experience is the crowd, the chants and the interaction between the crowd and the players. At Fenland Park I always stood in the same place, in the same stand, surrounded by the same people making the same jokes and the same criticisms of the players and opposition. The jokes were so bad sometimes you couldn’t help but laugh. You also laughed because of the familiarity of the same jokes being repeated each week. Unfortunately, at Wisbech there was occasionally the nastiness of racism too. Since there was no ethnic diversity in the town there was a fear of difference and this was unpleasantly projected at visiting black players. Les Ferdinand, who played there once, has said it’s the worst place he ever played at. Not good. Wisbech didn’t have a great reputation. This largely wasn’t because of the genuine supporters though. A certain element came out of the woodwork for the bigger games. There was a small riot after an FA Cup game in about 1985. There wasn’t any riot police intervention to put and end to this although there was a police presence. I remember watching the crowd rocking a Police van with all of the officers inside it. The jokes and banter can also be found at the bigger games. Barry Venison may well have been a very successful, and possibly talented, player for Liverpool and Newcastle but I can’t be the only person who thinks of him as a man with a bleached blonde mullet and nothing more. I was among the Arsenal supporters, and supporting Liverpool, at Highbury on one early ‘90’s occasion when Mr Venison was playing for Liverpool. “Venison!”, “Venison!” shouted an Arsenal supporter close to me when Barry came close to us. He ignored the first couple. “Venison!”, “Venison!” and Barry turned around towards the man addressing him. “You’re shit!!” the man then shouted and our small area of the crowd cheered. I wondered why he would fall for that when he’d been playing for so many years and must have been taunted similarly before. Did he think this random man in the crowd was going to pass on a message from his mother? In the second half the shout came from the crowd again; “Venison!”, “Venison!”. Again, he ignored it but after several more he again turned towards the man addressing him. “Your hair’s shit!!” he shouted. He’d fallen for the same trick twice within 90 minutes. The reason why he’d fallen for it was clear. He was an idiot.
While we lived in Hull the football club enjoyed their most successful period ever but I didn’t go and see them. I followed them in the local paper and listened for discussions about the team and manager on the local radio station and was overjoyed when they were promoted to the premiership but still didn’t ever go and watch a game. It was only when we moved to Leamington Spa, with its tiny, minor league football team that I felt it was time to return to watching live games. On Saturday they played their second home game but this was the first I was able to attend.
I knew it would be an interesting experience having already noted from the Leamington FC website that the ground wasn’t actually in Leamington and their head office was in Stratford but I wasn’t prepared for my SatNav to deliver me to a spot surrounded by fields that was actually a mile from the ground. I rang the club to find out where they might be hiding. “No, no, my friend a SatNav won’t get you here. I can tell you exactly where you are right now”, the man answering the phone said as if I were the 48th lost caller that day. I didn’t tell him that I knew where I was it was where he was that I was keen to discover but he swiftly delivered some surprisingly accurate directions that largely involved me looking upwards to see the floodlights on the horizon.
I arrived in time, paid my entrance fee, bought a programme and joined 765 others to watch the match. It was like the Wisbech Town play only with different actors saying the lines since I was in a group of men in their fifties and sixties making jokes and criticisms and shouting abuse at the linesman. The crowd seemed to be largely made up of the cognitively and socially impaired, allowed out without the supervision of their carer or probation officer for a couple of hours so I felt nicely at home. During the match announcements came over the tanoy that a mobile phone had been found and later a pair of spectacles. They were a forgetful bunch. I was a little concerned that so little of the ground (The New Windmill) is under cover which may make for some chilly experiences in a few months time. Leamington scored quite early in the match and then decided to play like a group of men who’d never met before let alone trained and played together and so invited Banbury United to equalise and then take the lead. It was all very familiar. Just like at Wisbech at half time the fans who stood behind the goals changed ends. You don’t get that when Chelsea play Villa. At half-time the results of a raffle were announced. The prize was a scratchcard. So, not actually a prize but the chance to win a prize. In the 65th minute a player I’m fairly confident was called Marcus Jackson was the victim of a pretty innocuous foul and a free-kick was awarded. While the manager was still screaming at the Ref that he should have played an advantage Leamington scored. The manager was now clearly unsure if he should continue to protest or celebrate. Banbury quickly changed to an unorthodox attacking 3-3-4 formation and within two minutes conceded another goal and Leamington (The Brakes) took the lead. What excitement. Since football matches should last for 90 minutes Leamington played for only that length of time and stopped trying during injury time and, tragically, Banbury equalised (3-3) in the 92nd minute.
I’ll go again.
I really like football.
and
I spent much of the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s watching Wisbech Town Football Club.
It was probably when I was aged seven or eight that I first accompanied my dad and brothers to Fenland Park to watch The Fenmen, as Wisbech town are nicknamed. It seemed that they fielded the same team for much of the next two decades that I attended. I saw them win the league one season and beat clubs they were expected to lose to in the FA Cup or FA Vase but mostly watching them week in and week out was a festival of disappointment. This is not the beautiful game of Arsenal and Liverpool. Football at this level is a little more basic. It’s not Bach or Mozart it’s Saturday night Karaoke at The Nags Head. I’ve seen many First Division and Premiership matches and know the difference. Perhaps that’s the point. People go to watch lower league football because it’s a group of people just like them doing something they could feasibly do. When you watch Thierry Henry that just isn’t the case. Also, football on the television and live football are completely different things. I realised this the first time I saw Peter Beardsley playing for Liverpool. It’s a commentator’s cliché but he ran for the entire length of the game and covered every inch of the pitch and made a contribution to the team and the game that was never apparent when I’d seen the team play on television. The experience and the players at huge stadiums can all seem a little distant though. I recently saw Marti Pellow sing at a theatre that seated only 250 people. Even if you were leaning against the back wall your view would be as perfect as the sound was. I now want to watch every musician or band play in that venue, even if it’s The Rolling Stones. Perhaps all of those years at Fenland Park taught me to love the intimacy of lower league football. Or mediocrity.
An important part of the live football experience is the crowd, the chants and the interaction between the crowd and the players. At Fenland Park I always stood in the same place, in the same stand, surrounded by the same people making the same jokes and the same criticisms of the players and opposition. The jokes were so bad sometimes you couldn’t help but laugh. You also laughed because of the familiarity of the same jokes being repeated each week. Unfortunately, at Wisbech there was occasionally the nastiness of racism too. Since there was no ethnic diversity in the town there was a fear of difference and this was unpleasantly projected at visiting black players. Les Ferdinand, who played there once, has said it’s the worst place he ever played at. Not good. Wisbech didn’t have a great reputation. This largely wasn’t because of the genuine supporters though. A certain element came out of the woodwork for the bigger games. There was a small riot after an FA Cup game in about 1985. There wasn’t any riot police intervention to put and end to this although there was a police presence. I remember watching the crowd rocking a Police van with all of the officers inside it. The jokes and banter can also be found at the bigger games. Barry Venison may well have been a very successful, and possibly talented, player for Liverpool and Newcastle but I can’t be the only person who thinks of him as a man with a bleached blonde mullet and nothing more. I was among the Arsenal supporters, and supporting Liverpool, at Highbury on one early ‘90’s occasion when Mr Venison was playing for Liverpool. “Venison!”, “Venison!” shouted an Arsenal supporter close to me when Barry came close to us. He ignored the first couple. “Venison!”, “Venison!” and Barry turned around towards the man addressing him. “You’re shit!!” the man then shouted and our small area of the crowd cheered. I wondered why he would fall for that when he’d been playing for so many years and must have been taunted similarly before. Did he think this random man in the crowd was going to pass on a message from his mother? In the second half the shout came from the crowd again; “Venison!”, “Venison!”. Again, he ignored it but after several more he again turned towards the man addressing him. “Your hair’s shit!!” he shouted. He’d fallen for the same trick twice within 90 minutes. The reason why he’d fallen for it was clear. He was an idiot.
While we lived in Hull the football club enjoyed their most successful period ever but I didn’t go and see them. I followed them in the local paper and listened for discussions about the team and manager on the local radio station and was overjoyed when they were promoted to the premiership but still didn’t ever go and watch a game. It was only when we moved to Leamington Spa, with its tiny, minor league football team that I felt it was time to return to watching live games. On Saturday they played their second home game but this was the first I was able to attend.
I knew it would be an interesting experience having already noted from the Leamington FC website that the ground wasn’t actually in Leamington and their head office was in Stratford but I wasn’t prepared for my SatNav to deliver me to a spot surrounded by fields that was actually a mile from the ground. I rang the club to find out where they might be hiding. “No, no, my friend a SatNav won’t get you here. I can tell you exactly where you are right now”, the man answering the phone said as if I were the 48th lost caller that day. I didn’t tell him that I knew where I was it was where he was that I was keen to discover but he swiftly delivered some surprisingly accurate directions that largely involved me looking upwards to see the floodlights on the horizon.
I arrived in time, paid my entrance fee, bought a programme and joined 765 others to watch the match. It was like the Wisbech Town play only with different actors saying the lines since I was in a group of men in their fifties and sixties making jokes and criticisms and shouting abuse at the linesman. The crowd seemed to be largely made up of the cognitively and socially impaired, allowed out without the supervision of their carer or probation officer for a couple of hours so I felt nicely at home. During the match announcements came over the tanoy that a mobile phone had been found and later a pair of spectacles. They were a forgetful bunch. I was a little concerned that so little of the ground (The New Windmill) is under cover which may make for some chilly experiences in a few months time. Leamington scored quite early in the match and then decided to play like a group of men who’d never met before let alone trained and played together and so invited Banbury United to equalise and then take the lead. It was all very familiar. Just like at Wisbech at half time the fans who stood behind the goals changed ends. You don’t get that when Chelsea play Villa. At half-time the results of a raffle were announced. The prize was a scratchcard. So, not actually a prize but the chance to win a prize. In the 65th minute a player I’m fairly confident was called Marcus Jackson was the victim of a pretty innocuous foul and a free-kick was awarded. While the manager was still screaming at the Ref that he should have played an advantage Leamington scored. The manager was now clearly unsure if he should continue to protest or celebrate. Banbury quickly changed to an unorthodox attacking 3-3-4 formation and within two minutes conceded another goal and Leamington (The Brakes) took the lead. What excitement. Since football matches should last for 90 minutes Leamington played for only that length of time and stopped trying during injury time and, tragically, Banbury equalised (3-3) in the 92nd minute.
I’ll go again.
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