Premier Unravel-Inn

Forgive me, it's late.

Anyway - despite much happy diversion at Burton with Shane (plus unexpected others) and plenty of attractive TV - it's time to actively disbelieve the hype and gaze covetously over to where the action is:









Leek, Leek, Leek attack! Amen, brothers.

Workwise, meanwhile, if current trends continue, I'm set for accredited take-no-shit status in early to mid to 2036. Grr!

The downhill shalom

So dear reader,

What of these times we live in? Firstly, I hope this missive finds you well.

And me? All in all, not bad... y'know, industrious enough [I'm feeling like what in football jargon is referred to as a 'good pro,' ideally without the imminent free transfer] though lacking a smidge in the momentum and inspiration departments, hence the intermittent service.

We have, and will have traveled both near and far, but mostly near: from beautiful telly (no, really: a rare, rare thing - TV that's a bit special) to The / A Beautiful Game in the space of a week, via a steaming heap of fresh horse manure for the allotment. And work, and Life, and normality, and b-o-o-k-s and the Sunshine Cafe - yes, those too, mm.

Good times are these - at least, quite good. I may even push the boat out this week for Everton vs Sporting Lisbon or (if I'm feeling logistically awkward) Loughborough Dynamo vs Leek. And I am childless on Wednesday, which leaves me free to visit the new People's History Museum. Happy days.

Furthermore, Sam received [gratefully] a new t-shirt from M and Q in Canada a couple of weeks back. The box-heckling result here in ST6 being: "sod the downhill slalom (initially - auspiciously? - mistyped): what we really want to know is what the cuddly mascot's up to!"

So thanks are due to them too. See? Times're not bad at all. They're quite good, in fact. The itchy question is: where do we go from here, or will we be swept away on the crest of some unforeseen (or all too predictable) wave?

One contemplates the next six weeks with interest, foreboding, and - most of all - mixed feelings.

Yours in hopeful anticlimax,

M.

Busy doing nothing...

Bugger. The allotment's frozen and I have all but decided to take the risk of not applying for jobs despite various looming spectres. Well, then, what could be more productive than this?

Despite the prominence of some truly awful stock music, I particularly like the Hijo de Puta track that kicks in with beautiful timing around 19 minutes, the Carlos Valderrama stuff (the briefest CV cameo can polish any turd - any turd), the gentle ridicule of that certain-kind-of-masculinity, and the general lack of Premiership hubris throughout.

No more than a montage really, this, but a nonetheless superior one without the laboured Anglo-Saxon bias. Probably deserves a more inspiring title than it got.

The REAL Football Factory

Oi! Time for the off!

After I had infiltrated Belper's top boys (average age 73) with a plastic spoon (milky) I lifted from the condiments table, I spent the remaining 86 minutes behind the goal that Leek were attacking. In the lashing wind and driving rain, Groundhog and I were among the *six.*

Hardcore.

1-1, ill-deserved equaliser in the dying minutes. Squalid as sport goes. Posh clubhouse though. "We only do Guinness Extra Cold." Ha facking ha.

Photo is licensed under Creative Commons by Jonathan Gill.

Carsten Ist kunst?

Crowded Penalty Area. Pork and Unripe Tomato, 2009.

And so it was, my three brawny bratwursts bore uncanny resemblances to Carstens Jancker and Ramelow (not the most demonstrative link in the latter case, but too good to miss). Shamefully, I couldn't think of a name for number three. A little more Bohemian and it could have been Jan Koller, perhaps.

Ah... food, football and national stereotypes. The gifts that just keep on giving...

I stayed on my feet, dear reader

Name drop:

So, like many footballers of less-than-international standing, I contrived to happen upon Rio Ferdinand's trailing leg in the Pumpkin at Stockport station today. He was arranged around a tea-puddled table with some guy I took to be his agent, waiting for a London-bound train that had been cancelled. And I must say, the guy is incredibly tall and skinny, built like a human dragonfly.

All I can say is it's a shame he can't tackle Johnny Foreigner nearly as effectively as he can polish off three packets of Starburst. Obviously, my attempts to persuade him that his future lies in Unibond One (South) will provide the latest tapping-up scandal in tomorrow's tabloids. Sadly he didn't seem tempted by the offer of a fully-chauffered 1995 Ibiza and all the cheese oatcakes he can eat.

No matter. You heard it here first. And then he was gone - through the gaggle of tracksuited PE students with camera phones - to First Class, and that London.

Noose Lane

A few weeks back, Groundhog and I ventured west to Oswestry, where TNS were sadly defeated by Fram Reykjavik. It was entertaining but felt a little artificial, with its sunshine and its Europa League flags, its regulation all-seatedness, and its Hugh Dallas.

So this evening we began our season proper with a jaunt down the M6 to Willenhall, which is anything but artificial. Somehow I knew we weren't quite pioneers, but this was to be our first away game with Leek Town, this season's adopted team, who had rebounded from 3-1 down to draw with Loughborough Dynamo at the weekend.

The match was played out beneath darkening skies thick like monochrome toothpaste. Thumping studs roused swirling dust storms like stetsons in the Nevada Desert. The smell of Deep Heat emanated spontaneously from the thighs of plucky midfielders. In the bar behind the Willenhall goal a fruit machine shuffled out a stream of cash-prize consciousness to distant spectators. Every now and again, a foghorn would sound across the Black Country night: "ANOTHER DISGRACE, REF!" Plus ça change.

2-1. Glorious. Life begins at (seven) forty-five. And thanks to work stuff, I won't even be at Vale Park this Saturday.

Brand values

As you ascend from Lime Kiln traffic lights towards Hanley, you pass a hand car wash facility on the right, which merrily proclaims itself to be "the best hand job in town." In fact it's pretty much adjacent to the venerable horse-trough from which this blog takes its name.

Today, while queueing interminably to turn right, I noticed that Soap Suds also carries signage for a well-known local taxi firm. Also printed on the sign were the logo of Staffordshire's only Premier League football club, and the initials of the club's well-known firm, the N40.

I find this discouraging. In passing, I was mildly shocked by it. I can't think of any other business that would identify itself so obviously and officially with that sort of stuff.

Bizarre, at best, no?

Goodbye to all that

Saltergate's final Saturdays slip by, certainly my last. A place absolutely shot through - too often soaked through - with a sense of collective memory. Pissy, piecemeal, impossible to replace with shit-for-purpose uniformity.



Gratuitous plumbing shot fitted as standard.

Tuesday Night Music Club

This week... *reflects*... objectively a good one. Nonetheless, I now commit its muted highlights to pixels, prematurely. Sorry, it's all dragging of boots and backward glances tonight.

And so, the cutaway shot. Tuesday evening:

A Stopfordian slosh of Extra Stout, while stalling for the 21.23 home. Your faux-humble narrator holed up in the snug, arousing the curiosity of the more philosophical regulars while poring over something wordy-looking.

It could all have gone so wrong, but - having politely declined the pick of a dozen large shoulders-of-lamb (out of a suitcase, "half price, son - Asda's best!") - I was spontaneously treated (emphasise passive form of the verb) to a one-man skiffle revival.

There then followed a procession of pasted-smile anecdotes about Lonnie Donegan's top Fleetwood nightspots. Oh, it were grand.

Places to go, suddenly so many people to see! I just had to hit the rails.

Then, the home straight, a sighting of Elvis Himself - perhaps - arranged convincingly on my rear windscreen courtesy of some deft avian artist. A genius: the indisputable craft of a sparrow, the prolific arse of a Crow.

Meanwhile never stops - we fly over Chesterfield the day after tomorrow. The Dreaming Spire, no less (singular - this noted church a childhood shorthand for We Are Really Not Nearly There Yet, and in 2009 we're still not There yet).

Nil-one certainty, and a drive home predictably laden with the usual heavy sighs.

Oddball queries

Sheepishness, possibly rank hypocrisy follows:

Oooh, isn't it so passé to list allegedly hilarious search queries on one's blog-site?

Indulge me just this once:

have stoke city fans ever thrown their scarves in the trent?

The Horror! Well, I'd like to think that any offenders might be just a few of the many Mentadent squirms that wear their colours around Burslem. May they discover the error of their ways.

And just to clarify, I don't mind Stoke City one bit - just not if you're growing up in the north of Stoke-on-Trent.

On which note, I'm off to Cefn Druids with Groundhog this evening - wOOt, &c. I am also seriously toying with the idea of emigrating to Oz next year, Friday night footie appearing to offer more family friendliness despite the country ramble to get there.

Hmmm. And of course, no compromised loyalties.

Curva Vox

It's been a while, with much water beneath the bridge. Sadly, poohsticks remains a sore point (metaphorical poohsticks, that is, mm.).

On the morning of the Vale match - last weekend - at which I was due to host various part-time 'loids and hangers-on, I woke up unable to get out of bed thanks to a particularly agonising back spasm. My inner Danny Dire felt like the facking mankey, fer sher.

I'd been waiting five years for Darlo to visit the Potteries. Rather, I would have been had it not been for this worth-rehashing quirk of fortune.... heh - I love the way the Stoke defender just looks embarassed after Carlos Logan's goal- childish giggle, bit of wee .

Premiership, you're having a laugh dum-dee-dum, etc.

In any case, I wasn't going to be perching contentedly on any desolate yellow plastic for 90 minutes anytime soon. Therefore I had to make do with the sounds of Darlo's failings drifting in on the breeze through the open window - an experience brought to you by some left-over Cocodamol, a drug whose opiate qualities might have been handy.

Failing to attend a Darlo game taking place less than a quarter of a mile from my home was a crap experience at the time, but in hindsight I Am Not That Gutted To Have Missed This. Now we can concentrate on survival etc, with a possible trip to Rochdale into the bargain - ooh, now then.

As pain avoidance I considered the great issue of our time whilst listing to the left with the support of some pillows, a true clash of ideologies... That is:

A) Should one watch a match panopticon-fashion? i.e. in a diagnostic stylee and from a detached and elevated standpoint (such as the comparatively enormous Air Products Stand at Gresty Road), or;

B) Should one actively and deliberately seek a position close enough to lose the objectivity? i.e. placing oneself to glare straight into the whites of a centre half's eyes, attaining involuntary synching of heartbeat with the nervy symphony of studs in the 'greasy' floodlit turf.

Hmm - I should point out that most of my football is taken at a modest lower-division dose, and I would assert that there's a strong dichotomy of experience - the atmosphere of an 'end,' home or away, rarely carries to the grandstanders in the way it might do here (actually, Spangly Princess' post did a grand job as a surrogate football-going experience, though the Curva is a long way removed from the Hamil).

Actually, at the football as in any theatre in fact, I tend strongly towards the latter. Admittedly, the lack of anaytical perspective does render me as foul-mouthedly bemused as anyone when some battered old cushion (typically Julian Alsop or Leo Fortune-West, Aldo Serena if you like old-school Serie A) ghosts in at the back stick to shin a last-minute winner.

On which note I'll alt-tab to the epic 'white corridor with office plants and awkward officials' shots that are such an endearing feature of Bet365's half-time Serie A coverage - a refreshing if irrelevant counterpoise to the usual half-time hyperbole.

Without a paddle

An excellent article by David Conn in today's Guardian.

"Reynolds refused to be sunk, bouncing back with a business selling "adult bedroom furniture" and S&M equipment, under the unbeatable slogan: "Your home may well be your castle, but where do you put the dungeon?" But in October 2005 he was back in prison himself, convicted of defrauding the Inland Revenue of more than £400,000 tax.

"Now, when the fans sit watching their team in that cantilevered bowl of grand pretension, it is as if they are paying, every week, to spend time in Reynolds' head."

I couldn't have put or pictured it better.

Oh Crap

I'm off work with tonsillitis.

It's poo, it goes on for days, and I could have sworn only small children were supposed to get it. Anyway it's left me a little paranoid as I ended up in hospital last time I had it, on a drip that single-handedly destroyed The Illness in just a few hours.

So I mumble as I type, sounding a little like a mousier Shane McGowan would, if he were sucking on Strepsils, which isn't much good when your job entails a certain soupcon of semi-assertive can-I-have-everybody's-attention-please.

I move away from the keyboard, to spit.

Actually I sound so slurredly drunk (and clearly appear slovenly ragged) that the nice ladies at the Co-Op Pharmacy took one look and simply assumed that my mega-consignment of penicillin would be a nothing-to-pay jobby.

So, I tell myself, I'm lucky to have very supportive colleagues and yes, I'm glad this didn't happen when I was doing freelance work. And then while I was counting my blessings and thinking of something cheerful to do (see, I'm determined to find the positives), this.

At least the spittal glass is more than half full. Anyone got any old wives' remedies to share?

Perspective

Once in a while, I venture round the corner from my home to watch the Vale.

This evening, I hadn't even realised there was a match on. But when the sky bleaches with floodlit aquamarine out the back of our house, then inner child makes for the door.

Thus I took my place beside some Norwegian groundhoppers. They were taking great pride in doing as the Romans do. Given the sedateness of the lawn bowls, this consisted mainly of lively appreciation of Boomer. Especially the bit where he rubs their various Eliteserien scarves around his family-friendly anatomy.

Ten minutes before the final whistle, the groundhoppers departed in (mock?) disgust, one of their number (dressed by Norwich City) turning briefly to scream, "SHATE, VILE!"

That rather sums it up - except that when you support a different team, as I do, it's better than counselling.

Go analogue

I guess I won't be going to Valley Parade tonight, then - though I'd already returned from work early, what with those pesky Londoners and their "adverse weather conditions" screwing up the West Coast.

The journey is great - if late - in such climes. The Cloud hangs vague and distant in the snow, and ice formations cling to the morning trains like tatters. I've spent a lot of time on the permanent way in the past few days, which is agreeable; it's given me an opportunity to re-read JK Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929, and to regret (slightly) not bothering more with economic history, now that my studious phase belongs to days gone by.

Or so it feels. Dangers of anachronism and all that, but there are some scary parallels to be had in that book. Anyway, as I was saying... oh, Milos is particularly good on that sort of stuff. Now where was I?

Ah...

This week we finally get the keys to a new allotment garden, which will no doubt feature here on occasion. If anyone has any insights, comment away - I'm especially interested in social gardening anecdotes from far-off lands like Canada and even Longton.

The great thing is that the plot has only recently been vacated, so is workable. Here is the initial to-do list:

1. Cover most of plot to make things easier and enable gradual approach with occasional, unscheduled half-heartedness, and anticipate 'losing battles' with weeds.
2. Repair greenhouse roof and paint shed.
3. Weed strawberry patch.
4. Create dedicated toddler area, easily accessible with miniature wheelbarrow.
5. Plant some potatoes when the time comes.

Then scratch head &c, &c. All of which may be handy when we have to get frugal again later this year, children being as good an incentive as any...

Desire Paths

What was I saying about being the happiest I've ever been?

This week, I've been reading The Selfish Capitalist, a readable work of popular psychology in which ranting psychologist Oliver James has some agreeable things to say about the link between excessive materialism and mental illness.

At the moment the only paid-for product I'm coveting is an internet radio, so that I can listen to wonderful programmes like this sans laptop in the kitchen, before realising - inevitably - that good radiophonics only happen at stupid o'clock.

Still.

Today delivered the mighty Quakers to the Midlands, through the medium of Shrewsbury Town. I felt moved to go. I'd never visited Salop's new stadium, though I knew that it couldn't match the cobbled-togetherness of Gay Meadow.

So, I abandoned my car on a link road between the Park and Ride and Sainsbury's. The Meole Brace area of Shrewbury harbours an enormous retail drag-net that conceals the adjacent football ground. In these places, all roads really do lead to nowhere, unless you're looking for a parking space.

It seems that with no obvious pedestrian access to the rest of the world, the disenfranchised fan must find his own path. The New Meadow was clearly built for the car but features pre-bought permit-only parking. The developers were also keen to force pedestrians to circle the stadium at a distance before the pavement descends and sweeps towards gates at the far end.

None the less, just as at the 'pioneering' Sixfields, real people have forged 'desire paths' between foliage and on either side of crash barriers, and by eking out treachorous footholds on deadly-looking slopes.

I like this - the map would probably suggest that a giant octopus had fallen roadkill to a large alien spacecraft. The [relative] directness and occasional daring append some downtrodden humanity to an otherwise aseptic scene snapped together in fresh concrete and perspex.

Believe it or not, I do acknowledge - whilst casting around nervously - the superior and onobstructed views in these new stadia, with their echo-free PA. Guilt. Must spend evening flogging self in penance.

So what did we learn from this game? Rob Purdie, he's important. Franz Burgmeier can play. As can Pawel Abbott - so skilful, so slow, so good to see him back. And Ricky Ravenhill, there's a ball-winner who at best plays like the pimped-up progeny of a mini motorcycle and a combine harvester.

And that, moreover, I don't believe in fate - but fate trumps form, every time. The latter-named fellow was shown the red card amid a 20-man brawl, a good 77 minutes after the Shrewsbury winner that all seasoned Darlo fans know we never come back from. We're always crap at Salop - but at least we played football this time.

Later, as I stared hard and close at newly-pointed breeze blocks following the final whistle, I could only wonder why the urinals are always seeping over, even in grounds with such recent plumbing. I don't know the answer, but I'm sure as dammit that it's a significant motif.

Homeward bound. The skies darkened around Market Drayton, and a Spanish radio broadcast bled into Five Live - it was a phone-in on the subject of La Primera Liga, of which I am ignorant. There were grumbled cliches worthy of Lawro himself: witness, "futbolistas que jugan por la camiseta" (or better-rendered, better-remembered Spanish to that effect).

In Sainsbury's, I had bought hot-cross buns. In the one-basket queue I overheard a shopper confide to his companion that, "they don't know what eventually killed her." But me, I'd hazard a guess - and venture a few quid on a season ticket at Leek Town or Kidsgrove into the bargain.

Zombie Movie

Having secured Saturday afternoon off without delaying to dither over the weather forecast, I embarked for deepest Lancashire harbouring some noble intentions - principally to travel north via Rawtenstall, there to imbibe invigorating herbal nicenesses in its Temperance Bar before taking to the windswept terrace in the cold fourth division weather.



Alas, 'twas not to be. So after a short Sandbach sojourn to assess my options - very few - I chose to screech left at Thelwall and set a course for Goodison Park.

This, as it happens, was the first football ground I ever visited - back on 5 May 1990 with my Swedish pal Jaws - and I last visited in 1994, a rare punctuation mark in my mostly televisual relationship with the Blues.

Family never bequeathed me a football team. Instead my parents sent me to a different school at which all 'the glories' (except Jaws) supported Liverpool. I dutifully chose Southall, Nevin, and Stuart McCall. Everton remains my second eleven - but I grew up, started to go to football, and - critically - never got Sky.

One fact remains: I still need some motivation to watch Match of the Day infrequently.

That summer day, I can still recall, we followed a group of Aston Villa fans with an airhorn past freshly-planted beds in Stanley Park. The roaring nineties were barely underway, and teams could get away with fielding moustachioed centre halves like Derek Mountfield.

We blinked in the glare as we ascended to our seats from the dank intestines of the Bullens Road stand, with its vast and gloomy shadows. I remember the visceral impact of seeing more people than I'd ever seen in one place before, and that huge Main Stand opposite. I can still hear and feel the thudding of feet on the balcony at moments of excitement.

The place felt epic, as things do when you're a child. That was my first experience of a football stadium, and it still shapes my expectation. While I've downsized since then (a lot), I still like a football ground to have a relationship and a sense of interaction with its surroundings.

Goodison epitomises this, and feels both lived in and lived around. This part of Liverpool is among the purest of tarditional football landscapes in England. Grandstands from the 1930s, 1970s and 1990s (boooo - the old Park End looked great) tower above tightly-packed terraces and narrow streets, a picture offset by a majestic Victorian park (currently under restoration, looks good) and the occasional glimpse of a distant dockyard crane.



Today, Hull City were the visitors. I haven't been to a top-flight game since Highfield Road (RIP) some thirteen years ago.

I felt a guilty sense of anticipation, and, on approaching the ticket office, not a little paranoia. Like a tourist I clutched my wallet anxiously, especially since a real-lifeLiverpudlian had in real life offered to look after my car in exchange for a real-life tenner.

Ten notes, they tell me, is normal. Fourth division it ain't. Which is genuinely grim.

Very nearly deterred I demanded the cheapest ticket in the house. A large sum of money secured me a berth in what felt like steerage, an enclosed position way back beneath the upper tier of the Gwladys Street end, a steel-and-plank structure dating back to 1938.

It was close enough to the ceiling that I could inspect the botchy repointing of the balcony floor, and well behind two enormous steel girders with mighty rivets, big ones like they don't make anymore.

If you like traditional football grounds, Goodison is a thrilling survivor. There's only one Premiership-era stand at the Park End. The rest is true vintage. Even the titanic Main Stand, erected in the seventies, could never have been built to a standard pattern - it's wedge-shaped design created to accommodate the surrounding streets. In aerial photos, it doesn't look all that different to its predecessor - it's still a snug fit with its community.

Despite being built years apart, Gwladys Street (1938) and Bullens Road (1926) retain the unity of a pre-war Leitch design, although their upturned roofs are later additions. There's also an antique combination of wooden panelling and cross-hatched balcony trusses that inspires a real sense of timelessness if you've ever seen it in footage of Pele, Eusebio or North Korea in the 1966 World Cup finals.

To our right, the old church, St. Lukes. Offering refreshments before the match, it still occupies a corner of the ground, despite long-forgotten attempts to demolish it in the thirties.

So, what is Premiership football like in 2008?

Eek. It's different. It has those animated advertising hoardings that made Serie A look exotic in the last century. Gone are the ticket stubs (I rifled through my coat, convinced I'd lost mine) replaced by a swipey barcode system awkwardly appended to the old turnstiles (this had to be explained to me, step-by-step). Fancy.

Newly arrived are far-eastern tourists doing John Lennon peace signs next to a superhuman-looking bronze of Dixie Dean. Oh, and you're supposed to turn on your Bluetooth so that a low-resolution version of Mikel Arteta can invade your handset with various offers. Anthropologically, it's interesting, as academics like to say indifferently.

But - I also noticed how well-kept the ground is. Not in a flower beds kind-of-way, but just in the sense that it seems painted and looked after, rather than peeling and rusty. The scrawled "NF" and "Keep Everton White" graffiti seems to have been consigned to a bygone era, which can't be a bad thing either, with all of today's bile reserved for Nick Barmby, who moved across the park to Anfield back in 2000.



And - there's a strangely intensifying effect to be had when watching from a darkened vantage point that's way back beneath. The game - a 2-0 win for a striker-less Everton against a team that barely made its presence felt - wasn't that inspiring. But Goodison Park is like being in a rowdy zombie movie. The noise is amplified, hoardes rise and groan as one, and you can't see the sky - only the crowd and the pitch.

Since I normally spend long periods looking at other fans or at the surrounding landscape beyond low-rise terraces, it's a novel - or at least, half-forgotten - experience. It's a long time since I've been stuck in traffic after a game or swept along with the crowd through a narrow street, but it's one worth repeating once in a while.

Oh, yes - and this was very exciting indeed. For just a moment, I recalled vaguely the allure of following a team that can play a bit. But only a bit ;-)

"Try pulling your eyelid down as far as it'll go..."

Away at Morecambe.

It's not quite often one of Britain's leading football bloggers can be tempted from his secret scribing facility somewhere in deepest Staffordshire (I've seen it: think your cool best-mate-from-school's Optimus Prime toy, but with more with more grounds under its belt) for a brief encounter between perhaps the two giants of the modern game - that's Morecambe versus the mighty Quakers to you.

Saturday's fixture at Christie Park presented just such a temptation, and our guest expert was kind enough to buy me a pint of Black Sheep into the bargain. For my part, I hope to bust my Brightonian cherry at Edgar Street in February. There may be foine coider on hand, albeit in very small driveable quantities.

Thanks to Groundhog for the company and continued tolerance, in any case.

And so on towards Morecambe through the mist and HGV spray, up the M6 and down the A5105 Coastal Road, passing en route through the mighty-sounding Bolton-le-Sands and Carnforth, of Brief Encounter (the real one) fame. All the while wondering if - like last year - this afternoon's game was somehow predestined to be postponed or abandoned.

Neither of us was too confident, least of all myself - and thus I delivered my finest Celia Johnson:

"If we control ourselves...
and behave like sensible human beings...
there's still time!"

If. And. Would we have a sufficient window to make Fylde or Squire's Gate - if the Gods were with us?

Speculatively, I fumbled the radio buttons for information. None was forthcoming from the once-rocksteady 693 Medium Wave (nowadays "the home of live sport," long vacated by "useful information delivered in a timely fashion.")

Alas, Radio Lancashire starts its football broadcast at the ungodly hour of 2pm, and so we listened respectfully to some homely programming about humble garden wormeries instead.

Happily, anyone familiar with last year's corresponding fixture - or, with the wormicide witnessed at the hands of Darlington's River Skerne a few years back - knows that this course of action was entirely appropriate.

In any case, Morecambe shows its best side when approached in the roundabout fashion. Last year I shunted through Lancaster's seasonal traffic for what seemed like hours (maybe it was just Lawro-on-the-Radio effect).

Taking the Coastal Road, on the other hand, lays the seafront before you like some magic carpet made of asphalt and salt water. It was high tide, and a winter murk hammocked the air, nearly abolishing the tonal difference between sea and sky.



Wading birds pottered around in the wet sands and standing water. Groundhog vaulted the concrete wall and ninja-rolled like Bruce Lee onto the promenade. Self-consciously, I probed for an ample gap to squeeze through. He is more athletic than I, despite his advancing years...

We stared out towards America, and contemplated its possibilities. Or those of Grange-over-Sands. Not for too long, though.

While we're here, I'm disappointed to learn that Morecambe's Jug-of-Tea is no more. And I keep meaning to go and see the Midland Hotel, but I'm sure its resplendence won't quite measure up.

Onwards to the ground, featuring a high-class chippy by the away end - om nom nom nom! - and with a whole would-be grandstand accounted for by the presence of an ARC car wash where the lukewarm pie counter should be. With a little under an hour till kick-off, we plumped for a short walk to the York Hotel.

Cantering briskly along, I liked the way that the intermittent terraced street was composed of short-then-tall house and shop frontages, looking a bit like the joined-up letters of a child's handwriting. Out and about in Morecambe, there's plenty of rambling shorthand for faded grandeur and past glories, but most of all there's a welcoming humanity.



The pub was ace, the bouncer very personable. The back room was what all "sports bars" should be and won't ever be, one day.

OK, so the big screen with Sky Sports is concessionably a necessary evil, but the walls - all festooned with the scarves of lower-divison and non-league opposition - rendered the place welcoming and inclusive.

Here's a place that feels like it belongs to Morecambe, full of the names of old mutual acquaintances you didn't know they knew: Bedlington Terriers, Droylsden, Farnborough Town, Kidderminster Harriers...

The ninety minutes were disappointing, Darlo losing 1-0 and slipping to sixth. "Never at the races," sighed the bobbing, twitching woolly headgear at the full-time urinals. And, having announced that I felt like some "atmosphere" we had taken our place behind the goal amongst fans who'd decided that referee Jarnail Singh's alleged resemblance to Monty Panesar was too hilarious to let pass. Much of the first half was spent warbling on about it. Wonderful. We were so going to get on...

But when all's said and done we've been here before. We've been much worse before. Good results, most fans understand, are far more exhilirating in adversity. In fact we've rarely been much good at all, ever since 1883. Who can claim honestly that the prospect of success is what it's all about? Though admittedly it is nice to have a decent team this year...

For me, the great thing about following your team away (and I think it's better in nearly every respect at this level), is that you spend time in all kinds of places you'd rarely venture otherwise.

Each season brings a new promise of peregrination. Were it not for the football, instead of Boston (a few seasons back, that one) you'd choose... well, would you ever need to make that choice anyway?

There, we sat in some pub on the old Lincolnshire harbourfront, a little spooked by the fact that a middle-aged couple were taking notes on us and exchanging giggles in a fashion they clearly thought clandestine. Like two kids at the back of the class. More likely stories on Boston here.



As often than not, there's a wonderful sense of place both outside and inside the ground (though this is changing, as I'm sure to discover at Shrewsbury).

Morecambe is a great example, but there's something to recommend every seasoned ground, even in the places that otherwise privilege grit and character over any ostensible charm - see Dagenham and Redbridge's pie and mash (and of course, liquor) shop and the beautiful 1930s pub round the corner from their Victoria Road ground (one that looks a dive from the outside, but which is stunning within).

It's not that the football isn't important. It's the fact that it comes embedded in the landscape, with such a rich hinterland. More on this in future posts, no doubt. But I think that's why I rarely go home disappointed.

There will be Bloods

Oh well, 0-1. I've just returned from the appropriately-named Butchers Arms in Droylsden. The first twenty minutes aside, the mighty Quakers were outfought by The Bloods. It's a fair reflection, and all a bit too familiar, but I'm still not feeling magnanimous enough to buy into the 'romance' of the cup thing. At least it wasn't as bad as Hornchurch, and what's more we're still top of the league.

Unfortunately the whole evening, romance or none, was overshadowed by some trouble and by a rather serious injury. Liam Hatch, who has been outstanding during his loan spell from Peterborough, has a suspected broken neck. Facilities are limited at this level, there was no ambulance on site and so the match was suspended for at least half an hour while Hatch lay immobile in the cold, awaiting the arrival of trained medical staff.

It's a long hour down the three motorways from Tameside to the Potteries when you're out of the cup (a fact underlined by the jubilant pitch invasion from Droylsden's resident scallies). Still, a young man's basic health and livelihood are in question all of a sudden due to a chance collision, and I'd imagine most Darlo fans will be willing enough to call this one a write-off.

Well done Droylsden. You deserved it.