Flying low

Watford v Sheffield United

Tuesday 28^th November

With no Joss again, I wasn’t as motivated to be loud as Boothroyd’s repeated requests (email, programme notes and A2 sheets of card on seats) should have had me but I was still shouting “Yellow Army” loud enough that the lads could hear before they came out. We in the rookery kept it going for a whole six minutes before our first collective silence. Not really, that good, is it? The number of planes and missiles the yellow card was transformed into before they hit the pitch, the stewards and other fans means you can bet that was the last time we’ll see that method of communication.

Our line-up lacked Young, Shittu and Bouazza and I am not sure why. Apart from their absence, the first half was noticeable for the number of United players that went down and stayed down. They even made an early substitution. No steel, this Sheffield lot. We bested the 50-minute first half and had a fair opportunity or two and a few corners but at half time it was 0-0. In the stand, Curly was back after a few game absence and being asked not to stand up again. The requester seemed belligerent but after he’d been shouted down by a few around him, been accused of being “Luton” and finally seen everyone get up to the inevitable “Stand up if you love Watford”, he backed (and stayed sitting) down.

It’s a game of two halves and the Blades were much sharper in the second. They hit the post twice and there was barely anything you’d call a shot in front of me. In the absence of real action, more planes were aimed at Kenny, their goalkeeper, who’s obviously been the subject of infidelity if the Curly-led songs and shouts were a pointer. If he didn’t know what “cuckold” meant before, he does now. In response to “If you’ve shagged Kenny’s missus, clap your hands” though, he did join in.

The clubs met nine and a half months ago at Brammal Lane (I was watching from the pub quiz I was going to on a Monday in Camden) but only our team was similar. Neil Warnock has chopped and changed and bought and bought. Midway through the half they brought on Danny Webber, an ex-Hornet goal-grabber and later we brought on centre-half Shittu up front. He made a powerful run forward, one of our better moves of the second half, and we serenaded him with “Super, super Dan, super, super Dan, Super, super Dan, Super Danny Shittu” but two minutes from the end the law of the ex-player asserted itself again as an offside Webber pounced on a save that came off the bar to head in. The opposing fans sang him the same song we used to and after Chris Powell got sent off another home “6-pointer” ended with me disappointed and fearful of our chances.

Before tonight we’d only lost to Man Utd at the Vic and it was feasible to believe that since our last home game saw us beat Middlesbrough, another three points were realistic. However, tonight saw us fail to pass the ball at all for long periods and ultimately, the result was a fair one. Charlton are bottom with 9 points, we have the same but better goal-difference. Above us Sheffield & Newcastle are united on 13 points with Blackburn on the same but with a game in hand on us and two on the Blades. You could be optimistic and say that there are only 13 points between us and sixth placed Arsenal (as many as from them to the top) but with more than a third of the season gone, we’ve got fewer than a quarter of the points we need for safety. After Sheffield United at home, it ain’t getting any easier.

Fiduciary duty

Wednesday 22^nd November

I am aware of the irony involved in the watching of the five “movies” about companies that have come out in the last few years: The Corporation, Supersize Me, Enron: smartest men in the room, Wal-Mart: the high cost of low-price, and McLibel. With one of them bought, two rented, someone else’s bought copy borrowed and one pirated for me as a gift, there are still profits for a variety of corporations involved in the distribution of elements of counterculture as consumer choice. Still, it’s easier than reading a book, innit? Tonight I saw the story of the two North London Greenpeace activists who, after the longest ever trial in UK history, produced a propaganda victory of enormous proportions against a company whose decision to use Britain’s outdated libel laws to try to curb free speech may ultimately have resulted in the decline of said Mc-company. This was the most inspiring of the films. In 1986, Helen Steel and Dave Morris circulated leaflets that accused the company of, amongst other things, exploiting children, cruelty to animals, paying badly and promoting unhealthy products diet that increased the risk of heart disease. They refused to say sorry and then refused to compromise and did it all in the name of the people.

The issues raised in the film McLibel made a larger point about the power of corporations that was lacking in the Supersize Me and Enron films. Morgan Spurlock’s puking and impotence were entertaining images to further tarnish a product range, but Eric Schlosser has more comprehensively chewed over the production process and raised Steel and Morris’s points and more in the pages of Fast Food Nation. While Enron detailed the complicity of Arthur Andersen and other companies in unheard of levels of corruption, it implied culpability at the individual level and never suggested the nature of corporations was the problem. In contrast, The Corporation (the book is better) made the importance of fiduciary duty in law a specific point of reference. This requirement to maximise shareholder profits is, ultimately, the brake on ethical behaviour in corporations and a reason for the dominance of the multinational McService industry. The scope of the film and the examples of people power it portrays make it a must-see.

By the way, I haven’t made any significant change in my Tesco visits, so I am holier-than-thou-ing nobody. I worked for the Watford branch too, back after the development of the whole Lower High Street had begun and before MFI (who I’d worked for before that) had moved onto the retail park, Waterfields, which later had its own M1 link road. Of the films, Wal-Mart was most Schlosseresque at portraying the effect of big business on local businesses and even touched on the role of the car, which is surely an anti-corporate movie waiting to be made (think about his job in Fight Club for easy early points). The film detailed the subsidies big business gets even from local councils in order to help it kill local independents. In Watford, it was allotments, where earlier in the century there’d been a lake, which were cleared so that the superstore could change the shape of the town.

I also worked at Burger King (which had taken over the site of Wimpy’s, which had taken over from Wendy’s), where I was able to do my unskilled labour with a cheerfulness that was based in knowing it was temporary, even after I transferred the “unskills” to the Manchester Piccadilly Gardens branch. While I was there, one of the sub-management supervisors (not quite a white shirt) had a crafty theft-thing going. All the tills would be tens of pounds down every day and each of the workers needing to watch their till at all times, even if they were in the kitchen. It turned out that this supervisor was taking money out of the coin bags in the safe which nobody had time to check when they swapped notes for bags of coins into busy tills. The point was made in McLibel that about two-thirds of robberies at fast-food restaurants involved an insider. The love these companies get from their workers.

Dave Morris put forward the alternative: communities deciding for themselves the practices and priorities they governed themselves by. Democracy, no less. No wonder the people at McDonalds were offering them “a big bag of money” to settle the case that the bigwigs later claimed they’d won. You could almost feel sorry for McDonalds: the company has been a favourite target ever since the catastrophic decision to sue. After all, José Bosé, a French farmer who bulldozed a branch and now milks not cows but his “counterculture celebrity” status at social forums and the like, was really aggrieved with the WTO. The McLibel story finishes at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in early 2005, 19 years after it began. With the activists’ determination, European human rights law won out over antiquated English law and two “normal” British people, who it was all a bit of a diversion for, are now global heroes quietly living “normal” lives.

No rush

Portsmouth v Watford

Saturday 18^th November

“What have you done?”

“I’ve just killed myself.”

This exchange between my instructor and me was surpassed only by a later comment by a second instructor on Saturday afternoon that I had “killed everyone”. Who’d have thought skydiving could be so lethal?

Jun and I stayed with Kung in her house in March, east of Peterborough, on Friday night and then Kung got up at 7.15 in the morning to drive us down to what is called the “North London Parachute Centre”. The name is missing an “of” (by about 80 miles, no?). I registered and was in the classroom, replete with white board and decades old TV, by 9. Phil, a fireman for his day job, was the instructor for the group of 11 white men (aged 27-37), of whom I was the only one doing the jump for charity. That was a hell of a lot of potential good-will cash squandered.

The drills consisted of remembering things, in threes at first. The canopy should be “big”, “rectangular”, [structurally] “sound”. The ‘nuisances’ were: “twisted ropes”, “high slider”, “non-fully inflated end-cells”. The malfunctions could be a broken rope, an overlay, or a load of other things. How to respond to a malfunction? “Look”, “locate” [the handles] “cut”, “away”, “reserve” and “arch”. OK, I am boring myself. It was my inability to get this last lot correct once that proved fatal. Later, it was my decision to use it at a supremely inappropriate time that created multi-fatalities.

Still, I didn’t do too bad. A guy called Jonathan was hauled off a simulator for a one-to-one refresh. Looks were exchanged between us “students” but he got through it in the end. Training finished about 4.30 and John, an ex-hunt sab living in Luton, went out of his way to give Jonathan, who was heading back for his place off Baker Street, and I a lift to March. Kung was heading to London too but had made Jun and I some Thai food for dinner that we ate after she left. I looked up the football on the net and read that Boothroyd had some comments about the referee as Watford went down 2-1 to a last minute dodgy penalty, after having a shout of our own ignored. It’s all about survival.

Sunday 19^th November

Jun and I got a taxi to the centre and I handed in my card at about 8.45. There were already loads of people there and most of my classmates, who’d stayed at the centre, had been waiting since 8. Some were doing their retraining. I cursed my decision not to get up earlier, though I hadn’t slept very well. The wait began. It was a clear, cold day. The wind over the fens was not as strong as yesterday, when a guy I’d met who was waiting to do a tandem jump for Children in Need told me that his group had to return on Dec 3^rd because it was over 15 knots. The first flight took off just after nine and they managed thirteen in the day.

John turned up about 9.30 with his wife Sandra and their boy and girl as a support team but neither of us heard anything until after midday, when we were called in for our retraining. An instructor called Ian, who’d been doing half the jumps I’d seen, normally with a camera on his head, began to take us back over what we’d learnt when Jonathan turned up. I knew there was a bus replacement for the train between Peterborough and March but knew it couldn’t account for this lateness. I just assumed he’d decided not to come back. In fact, there’d been another bus from Kings Cross to Stevenage and he’d had a five and a half hour journey. I thanked Kung again in my mind.

Retraining, interrupted when Ian was called to do another jump, was no problem, though Jonathan was still a touch stressed. Then it was waiting time again. You don’t ask about the weather: not because of some Macbeth superstition but because it’s just annoying to be asked hundreds of times, apparently. The other guys from yesterday all did their jumps and three of them were considering another. Grrrr. The call came before three and six of us lined up to get our parachutes, mine was purple and I was number 6 out. Jonathan, whose face was a slightly paler shade of green than our fluorescent plastic helmets, was second and John was fifth, in the same flyover as me. I challenged him to get closer to the arrow showing landing direction than I could.

With the door open as we took off and rose, and Jonathan sitting facing the hole (I was closer to the front, facing backward) my pulled faces were better for the cameraman than his expression. On his turn, though, he got to the door and (fell more than pushed himself) out, bumping the parachute on the way. Two more, then John, then me. The few seconds that you are in the wind are slowed by the canopy opening on the static line hooked inside the plane and then I was in control of a bloody big, rectangular and sound piece of material. I banked and turned against the wind, which meant that I didn’t go so fast but that I stayed up longer. It wasn’t really a thought-out decision. In the training, this bit had been described as the “enjoy yourself” section before preparing for landing. Nobody had told me how to have big fun: looking around was interesting, but with hindsight I should have tried to see if I could do big swooping 360 degree turns (or something).

I landed about 10 metres from the arrow, slightly beating John, who was two fields away. He owes me a beer but his enthusiastic declarations for the experience may imply I missed out. Perhaps it is an adrenaline thing. I was never scared of doing it and my body never got worked up. Perhaps for Jonathan, who landed in the right field but just missed a ditch, the experience was much closer to exhilarating. After all, he made it clear that defeating his fear was part of the reason for jumping out of a plane three and a half thousand feet up. Who is braver, the man who has no fear or the man who consciously seeks to overcome the fear he has? Jonathan, I take my red hat off to you.

Would I do it again? I’d like to freefall from twelve or thirteen thousand feet and if I can eventually do so through a route I have begun, I’ll try to ensure I do another static-line jump within 3 months in order to (a) avoid redoing the whole training course and (b) be allowed to jump at £35 a time. I have resolved to find out because the options were not made clear though there is a different and very expensive course available to go straight into it. John has expressed an interest in the same ultimate goal and Jonathan seems up for more static-line jumps at least. My mum, who insisted I let her know as soon as/if I survived the jump, might have to feel a bit sick again.

Any kind of balls...

Tuesday 14^th November

Those who put money on the new Charlton manager to be the first Premiership one to go cashed in today. Iain Dowie, at Palace for the previous three seasons, the last of which saw them soundly beaten 3-0 at home in the first leg of the play-off semis. So he took them up, came back down and stayed back down. Charlton, propping up Watford and everyone else again, have a squad that should do better.

Mike Newell, our “rivals’” manager, opened his mouth on Saturday after Luton lost 3-2 at home to QPR (whom my dad, on the way to Loftus Road in 1981, said he thought were our real rivals, the logic being that we were the geographically closest club to Luton but QPR were closer to us). Luton’s manager went on a rant taking the “political correctness gone mad” line because the assistant referee who made a decision on a corner that he didn’t agree with and from which QPR scored, was female. Paraphrasing, he said that women were worse than incapable (?).

Even with Charlton’s terrible start, it seems harsh if unsurprising that Dowie has gone. Plenty of other managers have already gone in other divisions. There is too much money involved in the Premiership, especially with next season’s increased TV receipts, for changes not to be made. The managers are sufficiently recompensed for the pressure. A short while out and he’ll be back, mediocre-to-good again, at another Championship club. Glenn Hoddle, meanwhile, who failed to get Wolves into the play-offs in a season and a half, is favourite to take over? These guys on the merry-go-round have got balls. None of them is worse than incapable.

It is probably the fact that he also criticised his chairman in stark terms that means Mike Newell will lose his job this week, but it should be for his idiotically discriminatory remarks. He rightly couldn’t get away with saying it about any other group, not since Tony Blair stuck the boot in on Hoddle’s unfalsifiable “disability and karma” hypothesis when he was managing England. Football does not exist exempt from the rules of society. There are many, like Newell, who believe and encourage the belief that it should.

...odd shaped balls...

Saracens v Leicester

Sunday 12^th November

My mum and her husband Brian, who live in Bulkington, a village in Warwickshire near where Brian was born, came down to Kerry’s (where Trevor is temporarily staying) and Jun and I took the bikes up to Watford to join the gathering. Not quite a day all together, Brian, Joss and I went up to the Vic and sat in the back row of the Upper Rous (my second time in a week) to watch a Premiership rugby match. It was the first ever live match for two of us but Brian was as generous with his knowledge as ever. All I could do whenever a response was required was to try to paraphrase what had just been said and add something non-committal or, more embarrassingly, contrast it with football.

Back in Durrants in the third year, I was proposed as house (Saxon) rugby captain by 13-year-old classmates, many of whom had no intention of offering their services against the Normans, who comprised some of the hardest boys in the year. I picked those who’d play and we won a bad-tempered match. In the final we thrashed the Danes who’d also overcome the size differential to defeat the Celts. I picked up the second and final certificate of my sporting life on behalf of the team and still have it in an envelope with my chess and crime prevention certificates.

The Saracens were fielding Andy Farrell, who (for style reasons, I won’t keep writing “Brian told me”) this season jumped the divide between Rugby League and Rugby Union (don’t ask). Apparently the National squad need him, though he seemed no more than solid in this game at inside centre. Saracens never lost the lead, but with only a 6 point advantage going into the last few minutes, Leicester were driving hard for the try. Meanwhile, I was thinking about how much more interesting it was that there were more ways to score points (and, significantly, a combination of seven of them) than in football. Saracens stopped their drive at the posts and won 22-16.

Bionic

Chelsea v Watford

Saturday 11^th November

I’d got tickets and thought that maybe silver membership wasn’t going to be too bad. Who’d wanted to see us lose 3-0 at Arsenal anyway? Still, at £48 and £20 for a 12-year-old, maybe there wasn’t such great demand for a seat in the Upper Shed at Stamford Bridge, my first visit to the stadium. I met Joss at Euston and we headed for Fulham Broadway. Joss couldn’t see us winning, adding that just scoring would be alright. Agreement was my inclination. We walked from the station up past the built-in bars and hotel and knew we were seeing how the other half lives. This was all built pre-Chelski, too.

Our fans were in good voice, not too bothered that the MC couldn’t pronounce the names of Bouazza or Demerit, and mocking those below us to our right with their quietness. It seemed vaguely reminiscent of something. It also brought back a memory of the first time I saw us play Chelsea at home (Feb 9^th 1980 in the old Division 2), when away fans stood in the old Rookery and Chelsea brought enough to make it our highest attendance of the season. Those fans were loud. I remember them belting out “we shall not be moved” at some point through their 3-2 win over us. It was intimidating (to a 10 year old).

Today, there was a whiff of inevitability from the kick-off. The Golden Boys resisted well for twenty-five minutes or so but Drogba got two in ten minutes spanning the half-hour and Chelsea, flowing while we fitted and started, went in 2-0 up at half-time with Cech in their goal hardly troubled. I poured hot chocolate from the flask I bought this morning and Joss and I took it in turns to use the cup, not too cold and enjoying the atmosphere. The second half was more of the same and the full-time 4-0 was deserved. We weren’t awful but they are a bigger, faster, more skilful side. There are even ways in which you could argue that they are still an English football club.

In the summer of 1982 I represented my school at the Watford and District Schools’ Athletics Association Games. It is the pinnacle of my individual sporting career, though my best moments in a competitive team sport were in house rugby, of which more tomorrow. The point about the day I came 2^nd in the pole-vault (I still have the pink certificate) is that I recognised Steve Sims and Nigel Callaghan sitting on the grassy banks that were terraces and went over to speak to the Watford stars. I asked how well we could do in our first season in the top flight and was disappointed by their failure to match my fantasises of success. We’ll be happy to stay up, was the message. I was right, too. Anyway, the point is it was a local club for local people. You know the line.

It is almost pointless to repeat that Abramovitch’s money bought Chelsea successive Premiership titles. It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves where that money comes from. To suggest the redistribution of so many of the people’s oilfields into the hands of a single man must have involved something most of us would recognise as immoral seems obvious. Russia’s transition to capitalism meant a massive transferral of wealth to those with connections or willing to be criminally ruthless. The club exists in the image of its funder. Russia’s poor meanwhile, especially the old, think of the days of the secret police as idyllic.

There was a ridiculous wait for the station so we jumped onto a no. 14 bus crawling towards the centre and sat across from a guy swearing above his breath about the pace we were moving. I’m sure he held it against us for playing Chelsea when he had a time limit to sort something out with Playstations. We abandoned the bus at South Kensington by the Science, V&A and Natural History museums and got on the Piccadilly Line, changed at Green Park and got the light blue line to Euston, where we had a sandwich before Joss got on a fast train to be picked up his mum and Phil and Trevor.

Sad

Watford v Newcastle (Carling Cup 3^rd Round)

Tuesday 7^th November

Just reached the 5.04 after being robotically denied bebicycled entry by an inspector with a personality problem and at Harrow & Wealdstone, Kerry rang with the news that Joss’ asthma was playing up and that he wouldn’t be able to come tonight. I bought birthday cards for Trevor (9^th) and Kerry (17^th) and then walked down the High Street past the One Bell, the site of Watford’s oldest pub, round the church and the almshouses and back round to the Harlequin Centre, Watford’s early-90s response to the Brent Cross shopping centre. It’s not as ugly as Manchester’s Arndale Centre before the IRA did the city centre a favour, but it ain’t Birmingham’s Selfridges either. From the train in poor light and with a can of imagination, its sheer size could almost evoke an ancient city wall. No treasure inside, though.

I was wandering half aimlessly but decided to approach the stadium from the southwest for a change, down past Watford Fields, where I delivered free papers once or twice, and back up Wiggenhall Lane for a bit of nostalgia before buying a ticket in the Upper Rous Stand for another change and deciding to top it off with a £3.10 pint of Guinness in the club-owned pub, the Red Lion, which I don’t think I’ve been in since I was 16, with Kerry and Luke’s father, Bob. I didn’t stick out as much today as I did then, not going too near the bar and wearing a white crinkly top that told everyone I’d just begun to buy my own clothes. The price of a pint seemed to be the only thing that had changed: the screen was showing a Jennifer Rush video and a bit later Sonia then Kajagoogoo. Jun has said I have to leave the glory-days behind but on this evidence I am not alone.

I am in the back row (Z) of the Upper Rous at about the halfway line amongst a little community of older male fans and I remember what the lockkeeper said about those who’d go to a game alone. The first half the Toon Army hardly stops and the Rookery is quieter than usual but the Upper Rous is virtually silent. It’s more chatting than chanting. I miss both, in the form of Joss and the Rookery. On the field, Newcastle were all over us and could have had a couple more than the one they got. Following a particularly poor minute or two in defence, half-time was greeted with boos from the end I’m normally in. Both fans and players performed better in the second half and I started shouting and found I was not alone, especially after Francis got a goal. We looked like we might get another but had to wait for the second half of extra time to do so, when I was sure Shittu’s rocket of a headed goal would be the one that won it. It wasn’t. Ten minutes later, Newcastle’s Parker ran through to flick it coolly over Richard Lee and the game went to penalties. I bid my neighbours farewell and went down and left to be nearer to where the penalties were taken from.

I didn’t talk to anyone in the pub, just stood around pre-sad and alone but words passed between me and the guys around me in the Upper Rous. The guy on my right asked, after half-time, what I’d do and later if I was going to Chelsea. The man on my left said “nothing personal, but I’m glad you don’t sit here every game, the girl who sits here is very quiet” and I replied “I’ve got a season ticket in the rookery, this stand needs to be louder”. Unable properly to engage, this fair-weather-fan had taken refuge in shouting and then had the cheek to judge these guys who’ve probably been going since before I was born. Maybe I thought my loud voice gave me justification but it is really about my big mouth. Anyway: fans talked to: 2, (better, sort of).

The penalties were in front of the Vicarage Road end and the Geordie Fans who’d sung their hearts out for the best part of 45 minutes and in doing so “won” the whole night, despite only managing a brief minute-reprise every ten or so after half-time. I went down to the aisle and watched from just about level with the penalty spot. Newcastle scored, we scored, they scored, we missed, they missed, we scored, they scored, we scored, they scored, we scored, they scored, we missed. 5-4 to them. How did that proverbial parrot feel?

Three points to the Golden Boys

Watford v Middlesbrough

Saturday 4^th November

Joss asked if we could cycle up Ebury Way to the ground, and I assumed it must be one of the newer roads constructed at the outer limits of Watford like his own is. Instead, he led me down to a cycle path which, on the stretch we rode, marks out the boundary with Three Rivers. On our right is a view out to the golf course at Moor Park, preceded by the cows and fields of Brightwells Farm, about which Joss tells me “a policeman said if we go in there, they can shoot us”. I tell him that is not the case but not to trespass either: who knows how many potential Tony Martins there are. Ebury Way finishes and we are soon at the dead end of Cardiff Road, further along which my dad worked as a plastic-bottle manufacturing factory supervisor for several years, and locking up outside the ground within 15 almost-traffickless minutes of leaving Kerry’s. This route, part of which I realise now must be the one away fans used to take from the closed Watford Stadium station, doesn’t necessitate circumnavigating three sides of the ground when it’s crowded outside.

Joss predicted a 1-0 win; I was confident too and swiftly proved rightly so as the Hornets pressured effectively from the first minute and scored in the sixth. What looked like a straightforward shot from Bouazza (Boozer) was later credited a Woodgate own-goal, which would have capped his nightmare game. After the miserable nature of the 3-3 draw with Fulham, I was willing us to put away another of the many chances we had before half-time, fearing that Middlesbrough would come out a better side in the second forty-five. We didn’t and they did, but they could hardly have been worse and we soaked up about 10 minutes of pressure (haven’t conceded in the last 3 premiership games) and then Young (who I’d declared my favourite player along with Shittu – Joss’ are Foster and King) latched on to a pathetic headed back-pass and swept it into the corner of the net nearest us in the sixtieth minute. After the celebrations, the Rookery resounded with another chorus of “Southgate’s not qualified” and this 2-0 result must have shortened the odds on him becoming the first top-division manager to go this season.

The odds on us staying up haven’t changed though and at 1/5, we are still favourites for the drop. With West Ham winning twice this week and Sheffield United and Charlton both getting wins today too, the win doesn’t do anything so grand as “take us out of the danger zone”. They do move us above Newcastle, who we play in the cup on Tuesday though. Joss and I cycled back the way we’d come and arrived home just as Trevor (my brother), his girlfriend Sarah and her kids Ethan and Beth arrived. They are accompanying Kerry, Joss and Phil to Cassiobury Park for the fireworks tonight. I, on the other hand, am in a bit of a rush to get back to London and get out for 8 in order to celebrate my birthday with friends at Salvador and Amanda’s on Great Newport Street. Sangria, beer and an enormous red cocktail (“Surprise me”, I told Julie (the Hammer)) are downed in celebration of three points and thirty-seven years a Watford Boy.

Is anger an energy?

Friday 3^rd November

Cycling to work, I got held up by an accident where Edgware Road meets Marylebone Road. A car had gone through the top two windows of a double-decker. (This is a true teaser, more details on request.) I got on to the pavement and round the bus and could see the disbelieving but unhurt face of a woman on the top deck. Five minutes closer to work I realised I should have taken a photo. Three hours later, going to meet Hanna for a game of squash, a woman pushed her pushchair into the kerb at my feet rather than tipping it, and her son bounced out of his unbelted position and onto the pavement in front of me. 2 years old? He picked himself up like it was a regular occurrence. When we finished our game, we found ourselves cordoned in by police tape. A robbery had taken place right outside while Hanna was beating me. For a second I thought we were stuck in cold weather in sweaty T-shirts but we were directed around the security van and in through the exit door of the Porchester Centre. “You’ve had a funky day”, Hanna commented. A funky four hours it was, and a drunken four hours later I was cycling back home to an argument with Jun. What amazes me is not the diversity of the experiences you can have in such a short time in a fairly small area of London but the tediousness of the married tiff and my constant complicity with it.

Fortunately, I was due out again to see Mark Thomas’ show. Got to the Tricycle on two wheels this week, met Tim and started the evening with football chat. Faisel and his dad turned up and we sat at the back and laughed through the horror described. I was pleasantly amused by the delivery of material I thought I would know. What I’d read didn’t tell the whole story, thankfully. The two Farooqs were unimpressed at the interval by the lack of “facts”, but in a way that only highlighted the validity of Mark’s (may I call him that?) doubts about the role he has now (comedian, investigative journalist, protester, activist, grass). I was glad not to hear a spoken version of the book but was able to reassure them that there were facts-a-plenty in black and white. Tim and I crossed the road to the pub afterwards and ended up talking about activism and fear, focussing on how we’d felt when confronted by a large BNP member when we went leafleting in the area of the Laindon Centre, Basildon, Essex on Wednesday 3^rd May, the evening before the local elections.

The leaflets were fairly innocuous, I thought. Yellow signpost on the front: exclamation mark in a triangle. DANGER underneath. Below that STOP THE FASCIST BNP USE YOUR VOTE ON 4 MAY. Produced by Unite Against Fascism, it gives reasons why people should do what it says on the cover. I don’t know his name, but when he called me as I came out of a house on the opposite side of the road and a little further up from his Merry Lane address (just near Gaywood), then if I didn’t mishear, he had addressed me as “sir”. So I shall return the courtesy and call him Sir. And Sir did say to me “I am a member of the BNP. This leaflet calls me a fascist, and if you call me a fascist I’ll hit you. You’re as big as me.” About 7 stone out, I’d say. Although, as with much of the dialogue that went on in my head after the event, I didn’t say so at the time.

It’s not that I was scared. I was just amused. After he threatened to go nose-to-nose with me (I know) I had to smile and even though he warned me of the consequences of doing so, I couldn’t help it. Anyway, I think a nice smile helps in these situations. So, Sir, after threatening us with his brother and mates told us that Merry Lane was his and that we should go somewhere else. Then he walked away. Compared to the two people who picked us up from the station, we were front-line tourists, who’d paid our £7.50 return from Fenchurch Street Station and went back to our laugh-out-loud-at-such-things communities, where the fascists don’t threaten you in the street, however comically, in daylight.

Chewing all this over exactly six months later, Tim and I agreed that recruiting others was the best groundwork before next May. We left the pub about midnight and I cycled back to a reprisal of the domestic dispute. It is depressing how such things colour your day. The “funky” incidents worth a raised eyebrow are whittled down to a hazy memory in the face of a repetitive row about who is being selfish and about what. Worse, and unlike when dealing with someone who was threatening my free speech, I feel my own desire to rage urging me to take it all so seriously.