Thursday 16th October 2008
Even my final(ish) game (home against Preston two Saturdays ago) couldn’t inspire me. Watford had already lost two away matches in a row (2-1 at Sheffield United and 3-2 at Burnley) and I was hoping that I’d shout my part in a thriller. Although Joss and I had missed the first two goals this time - three already in the short bit-season we have together - I was unable, despite the assurances of the guy behind me that there were more goals to come in a game where the defences were apparently asleep, to do my job as a supporter.
Ennui/dread? Past/present? Either way I was tense. The past has been perfect, the future not simple (thank you Carrie from one of the few episodes I’ve watched). Six minutes after we’d sat, Tommy Smith added to John Harley’s equaliser and promise seemed to be fulfilled but the rest was imperfect and goalless. At the end, the faint resolve I’d had to say “goodbye” to those around me I’d never said “hello” to dissolved in Englishness.
Since then and the international break, it’s been donate, box, clean, and look for tenants. Hardly had time to see people
(though haven’t been that in demand anyway) except for the well-attended “Bon Voyage” party I organised last Saturday at Salvador and Amanda and now we’re off. We’ve filled to an eight foot ceiling a 25 square foot storage unit in Wood Green with stuff which is mostly mine. That space does not include the twenty years of letters and cards I was nagged to recycle by a wife who sometimes seems to have no past except when it comes to a memory of my failings.
So, do you get my mood?
Football: Elton John spoke out about the board and the finances. You’re going to have to look into the whole shebang in a lot more detail than I have to decide if he’s right but a season in the premiership (remember the argument about the £40 million income I had at my nephew’s funeral?) and £20million plus for five of our best players in the meantime (Ashley Young, Hameur Bouazza, Marlon King, Danny Shittu, Darius Henderson) and yet there’s no money left and even what was “ring-fenced” for stadium improvement has disappeared. The PM’s belated denial of cash bonuses to those bankers who’ve profited from failure has no equivalent at Vicarage Road. If the economy at large is experiencing a “credit crunch”, the Horns have had a “dividend drain”. Where’s it all gone?
Leaving: I could have improved on the relatively last-minute nature of my boxing up. Having known for months that we would leave, I think I should have planned and selected what to do with what. Instead, I found myself cutting stamps off envelopes containing letters I received before I even got to Manchester from people I still hold dear. Much of that history exists now only in a faulty memory, most of the rest is lost to a mixed-recycling bank that probably means construction filling. I may yet walk on, around on even below part of the mulch of ink and paper that all those words have become.
I felt the love then but not now. As I worked through that trunk of well wishes, clichés, poetry and pretension, I measured my present relationships with those whose past words I cast into the “bags for life” I’d use to carry them downstairs. Some, I’d forgotten: mostly the students who’d signed group “thank you” cards but there were letters from people I couldn’t place. Others were part of the continental drift that ensues from regular movement and change. Most were still there and are still here. I threw away letters telling me of split-ups, requesting advice in the face of temptation, making eternal declarations, describing the most profound feelings and… The hundreds of words of a blog entry are too limited to do justice to the tens of thousands lost to my biographers.
And I am sorry.
Ennui/dread? Past/present? Either way I was tense. The past has been perfect, the future not simple (thank you Carrie from one of the few episodes I’ve watched). Six minutes after we’d sat, Tommy Smith added to John Harley’s equaliser and promise seemed to be fulfilled but the rest was imperfect and goalless. At the end, the faint resolve I’d had to say “goodbye” to those around me I’d never said “hello” to dissolved in Englishness.
Since then and the international break, it’s been donate, box, clean, and look for tenants. Hardly had time to see people
(though haven’t been that in demand anyway) except for the well-attended “Bon Voyage” party I organised last Saturday at Salvador and Amanda and now we’re off. We’ve filled to an eight foot ceiling a 25 square foot storage unit in Wood Green with stuff which is mostly mine. That space does not include the twenty years of letters and cards I was nagged to recycle by a wife who sometimes seems to have no past except when it comes to a memory of my failings.So, do you get my mood?
Football: Elton John spoke out about the board and the finances. You’re going to have to look into the whole shebang in a lot more detail than I have to decide if he’s right but a season in the premiership (remember the argument about the £40 million income I had at my nephew’s funeral?) and £20million plus for five of our best players in the meantime (Ashley Young, Hameur Bouazza, Marlon King, Danny Shittu, Darius Henderson) and yet there’s no money left and even what was “ring-fenced” for stadium improvement has disappeared. The PM’s belated denial of cash bonuses to those bankers who’ve profited from failure has no equivalent at Vicarage Road. If the economy at large is experiencing a “credit crunch”, the Horns have had a “dividend drain”. Where’s it all gone?
Leaving: I could have improved on the relatively last-minute nature of my boxing up. Having known for months that we would leave, I think I should have planned and selected what to do with what. Instead, I found myself cutting stamps off envelopes containing letters I received before I even got to Manchester from people I still hold dear. Much of that history exists now only in a faulty memory, most of the rest is lost to a mixed-recycling bank that probably means construction filling. I may yet walk on, around on even below part of the mulch of ink and paper that all those words have become.
I felt the love then but not now. As I worked through that trunk of well wishes, clichés, poetry and pretension, I measured my present relationships with those whose past words I cast into the “bags for life” I’d use to carry them downstairs. Some, I’d forgotten: mostly the students who’d signed group “thank you” cards but there were letters from people I couldn’t place. Others were part of the continental drift that ensues from regular movement and change. Most were still there and are still here. I threw away letters telling me of split-ups, requesting advice in the face of temptation, making eternal declarations, describing the most profound feelings and… The hundreds of words of a blog entry are too limited to do justice to the tens of thousands lost to my biographers.
And I am sorry.
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