First Impressions of a Future

Towards the end of the eight-hour BA flight (with movies on demand and tasty veggie meals), we flew over hundreds of miles of chocolate-coloured mountains, which seemed from above like a combination of millions of toblerone and a vast crumpled blanket. Breathtaking. We had a very short carousel wait for the packs we need and the cases of presents I lugged and were then out of the enormous Beijing terminal onto an equally outsized expressway to the city centre, replete with the obligatory “bad” drivers, including a police car straddling lanes as he spoke on his mobile. Before we reached the forest of fluted high rises, toasting rapid growth, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of greenery lining both airport transit tracks and the Olympic-sign-blazoned route to the heart of the world’s economic beast, even spying a mountain-biking group in full lycra get-up between the trees.

Not long after I spotted my first foreigner (also cycling), we were at “Convenient Hotel” waiting for our room (we got there before check-out time and the place was busy, as an angry rant from a turned-away almost-guest attested). I decided to wander down a smaller road and passed two street/communal toilets (many homes didn’t/still don’t have their own) before settling on a likely place for a haircut. As I smiled at the hairdresser, she offered “massa massa” but I gestured that I wanted my head shaved. This was gigglingly achieved and then the offer of a massage re-emerged as hands stroked my groin, lips were flexed and I was shown a bed behind a curtain. “Ni bai” (200) was the price but my refusal lead to a halving. Excuses were made but not understood and I got away with nothing more than a blush and an overpriced cut (about £2.50).

After a rest when the room became available, we ate tofu, noodles, mushrooms, spinach and slices of an unidentified root vegetable from an enormous hotpot bowl and I washed it down with Yanjing beer from the bottle, forgoing the use of the shrink-wrapped crockery. Then we taxied it to a bar area near a lake that translates as “back sea”, joined in ti zhenzu (keepy-uppie with a coloured and weighted shuttlecock) and people-watched in a few locations. One of the main points of discussion was the changes that have led to the sort of prices some of the places could charge and Jun put it down to the number of foreigners and the endemic corruption. With absolutely no evidence, I was inclined to believe that at least some of the young locals we saw enjoying their Saturday night had legitimately earned large amounts in the boom this country has enjoyed.

We got back and our forty-hour day was iced with the news that Watford had won their first away match of the season, 3-0 at Southampton. Tamas Priskin scored two and Richard Lee made a penalty-save double. Result!

Throwing away love

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.

Pause

A real own goal

Watford v West Ham (Carling Cup 3^rd Round)

Tuesday 23^rd September

Taking two Hammers with me to the game required a warning in order that they couldn’t throw any victory in my face (in the ground at least). After a couple of pints in Watford’s Wetherspoons, we met Joss inside and settled down to Gianfranco Zola’s first English cup game as a manager. The Horns have injuries aplenty, meaning starts for Ross Jenkins, Jordan Parkes, Al Bangura, Lionel Ainsowrth and Scott Loach (who impressed on Saturday). The Irons’ defence was pretty much first choice but they had a few squad players on show too.

Not long after we’d got there, Loach held on to a shot well when there were West Ham players following up but the first of many references to Saturday’s events (eventually given as a John Eustace own goal) was when Ainsworth shot wide and we started singing “1-0 to the Golden Boys”: anything that went even vaguely close was celebrated as a goal by someone today. “The goal that never was” has made worldwide sports news, the first time we’ve managed that for quite a while.

With such inspiration, the fans shouted the team on and the eleven on the pitch played well against a more than competent (but less than inspired) West Ham, who had their own chances in a game mostly played out in the middle of the field. The drink motivated me to raise my voice a little more than usual, affording me approving glances (from kids, I admit) in what I thought was the absence of our main cheerleader (until I saw him sitting in a different place a little later).

Again the litany was sung in its entirety though I found myself spluttering solo through some lines of our most basic chants. With twenty minutes to go, Tommy Smith crossed and a deflection off one of their defenders put us in front, a fact I made sure Tim was fully aware of. Despite having to sing “We’ve only got ten men” when Jay Demerit limped off with seven or eight minutes left, WFC held on to move into the last sixteen and a game I’ll be in Japan for. Only one match left for me.

Watching it...

Who scored?

Watford v Reading

Saturday 20^th September

Taking an old computer up to Sarah’s house meant catching a train to Bushey and going back to Carpenders Park, the first part of which journey I did with my brother and Kasey (who’d been particularly talkative when they arrived the previous day), allowing the HP tower to fall onto the platform as I disembarked. Fortunately, it proved to be in good working order and I left that and our old map of the world from the bathroom before saying goodbye for a year. I cycled to Kerry’s and gave Joss a football and my rollerblades, which he was soon trying. One unused item after another, we are emptying the flat: the local charity shop has benefited too.

Joss and I had to squeeze under the locked gate for the hospital car-park that is a regular route to matches. Had someone simply failed to do their job adequately or was it spite? This was a question that recurred within the context of the match and the most astonishing footballing decision I’ve ever been witness to. As Joss commented after the match, it had everything a football game might: injuries, a penalty, a disallowed goal, a sending to the stands and then some.

Goalkeeper Mart Poom was substituted just minutes after the start when he came out to head the ball outside his area and went over the top of an opponent, dislocating his shoulder. His replacement, Scott Loach, was kept busy (Reading had started on the front foot and looked like they could be in for a hatful), stopping a couple of point-blank attempts. Although the Royals looked likely to score, the events of the 13^th minute are going to be on a future “What happened next?” section of A Question of Sport: the BBC describe it as “farcical” and “one of the strangest goals ever”, though they should have used inverted commas towards the end of that phrase.

From a Reading corner, John Eustace and Noel Hunt went up for a ball, which the Watford no. 8 seemed to win and send over the goal line a few yards the linesman’s side of the post. Another Reading player tried to keep it in, hooking it back for a third to head against the crossbar (after Loach’s fingertips), it rebounded back into play, there was a third shot parried and then whistle went. There were no appeals, everybody assumed it was a corner or goalkick but the referee’s assistant - Nigel Bannister – had told the ref it was a goal and despite the outrage on and off the pitch, it stood.

The anger and disgust engendered by the injustice at least brought the crowd to life. Along with the predictable hostility (“Cheat”, “Wanker”, “You don’t know what you’re doing” and “You’re going home in a Watford ambulance”), came the self-other merging that is required for great support and we went through the litany of tunes. Whenever the ref was at our end again and the abuse had died down, I led the shouts of the question we wanted an answer to. “Who scored, ref?” “What was his name?”

Discussing it with two guys behind me I correctly (according to other, later, sources) assumed that the mistake had been the assistant seeing the ball cross the goal line and believing it was between the posts. Nevertheless, it hardly makes any sense: a Reading player wouldn’t have been trying to prevent it crossing the line if it were between the sticks. It was suggested at the time and has been since that Reading should just have let Watford score, but as I said in the ground, I read in a “You are the ref” column in The Observer not so long ago that a referee couldn’t allow that type of gamesmanship to stand.

With us still down at half-time (Jobi McAnuff had been taken off injured before that), there were more reports from fans of what media sources were saying and – though it didn’t need it from where we sit at the front of the Rookery – the unfairness was confirmed. When Bannister came on (to boos) and over to us to check the nets, I took up the shout again but he was laughing off the catcalls by looking at one of the Reading players and pointing at himself in “Do they mean me?” mock-surprise. Perhaps at that stage he still didn’t know what he’d done? We discussed that too.

The atmosphere stayed hot and the backing inspired the Golden Boys. Before the hour mark, Tommy Smith scored his fourth goal of the season after penalty-area head tennis. All of us had the same idea for a song; “1-0 to the Golden Boys”. Not long after that Aidy “Betty” Boothroyd was sent to the stands for saying too much, making ref Stuart Attwell even more popular. There were constant problems with two balls on the pitch; it was a shambles and I kicked off “Sign on, with a pen in your hand, and you’ll never ref again”.

That was forgotten quickly as John Joe O’Toole passed to Will Hoskins and ran on to collect the ball and pass it wide of Hahnemann: cue “2-0 to the Golden Boys”. And then it all died.

The injustice righted, the fans quietened, the zest went from the team and it all went back to Reading domination. They had a goal disallowed and then with three minutes left and John Joe O’Toole also off injured (Al Bangura came on), Reading got a penalty from what was said to be a Jay Demerit tackle. They scored (shame for Loachy, who played really well), the points were shared and the result, if not the entire day’s proceedings, was fair.

The stink

Watford v Plymouth Argyle
Tuesday 17th September

Within a few minutes of our slightly late arrival – and as three stewards strolled to their seated positions in front of us – the stench of rotting garbage wafted into the Rookery. It was not that, however, which kept the 13,000 fans quiet, but the rubbish being played out on the pitch. The Horns were uninspired and Plymouth, bottom of the table without a win, were able to pass better and move faster. On the half-hour, they put together a fine combination that culminated in a curling shot inside Mart Poom’s post in front of us and the team went off to boos at half-time.
Despite the intermittent recurrence of the pong, the Yellow Army was in better voice in the second half but not for the first time this season, the response team’s heavy-handedness with the standing fans at the back of the stand led to chants of “stand up if you hate stewards”. On the pitch, our captain Jay Demerit had his hands above his head as the ball was crossed into the area and from the resultant penalty Argyle scored their second away goal of the night and season.
Two-nil down the team stepped up a gear and Tommy Smith had a cross-shot converted by John Joe O’Toole to put us in with a hope. Meanwhile, Joss was warned by the leader of the fluorescent jackets that he’d made two obscene hand gestures and one more and he’d walk. I called him a naughty boy. Then the same guy and several of his henchmen came to cause trouble with the cheer-leading Liam (Curly) I have mentioned several times before and none of us could follow the game as we protested their over-reaction. The game finished with a 2-1 defeat but it was the misuse of authority - rather than the result or the inexplicable reek - which stank.