So that was that. Two vaguely winnable league games, one point and we're doing a "Sam Parkin" with a striker who scored 30 odd league goals last season.
Tel's well. We went to our local golf club for a carvery on Sunday. Neither of us play the poxy game; Tel was invited as he used to be on the committee of the local tradesperson's guild. This was in the eighties and early nineties. He quit because he had a disagreement with the then chairman and told him to "drop dead". Which, sadly, two weeks later the poor bloke did. "'Eart they reckoned" said Tel. "Farnd'im in bed". He sniffed the air and looked pensively at his pint. "Yeah" he said thoughtfully, "not me finest 'our that. Ah liked old Frank. 'E reminded me of me dad a bit. Sorta pompous, always right, but he used to buy 'is slim panatellas from me an' 'e liked a drink".
We sat in silence, Tel in memorandum for someone he had exchanged a thoughtless cross word with over something trivial and no longer even memorable. It's been like that this week. The Posh game killed off more than our stuttering promotion push. Tel's working this Saturday, but he's off for the Oxford home game the following week. I asked him tentatively if he fancied it and he made a face a bit like I'd imagine he'd make if I propositioned him for furtive sexual acts. "Nah, you're welcome to tha'" he said, swigging his pint with a nonchalance he probably didn't feel.
So we lost to Sunderland away, following a hectic week filled with training days and trips to London to some soulless office where the men wore more make-up than the women and the cost of a takeaway cuppa meant a second mortgage. At least work paid for my travel. The Birmingham lot reacted like I'd been halfway across the universe. "Bloordy Lundon eh?" said one young Brummie. "Nevvah been meself. Seen pickchures on the tellleee loike". They think I live in some sort of Stiletto world because I'm from Essex. Half of them were secretly disappointed by the lack of furry dice in my car. Apparently, I spend my evenings on a sun bed being shagged by some bird with blonde extensions and plastic tits. Little Britain. It's bigger than we think.
We went for lunch on Sunday. To the golf club, parking amongst the Jags and the Audis and the spotless 4x4's. We were met by the club secretary, a bloke clad in blazer with a club crest sewn on the pocket and grey flannel trousers. "'Ello Graham" said Tel, shaking his hand. I proffered mine and he shook it. "Wife couldn't make it then, Terry?" he said. I nearly made some joke about transitioning and this was the third stage of the hormone treatment, but then we were off, on a guided tour of the men's changing rooms. They smelt vaguely of sweaty socks and Badedas.
The tour concluded in the boardroom cum trophy room, filled with pictures of moustachioed men in Farah's and Fred Perry polo shirts and wearing one white glove, holding crap-looking trophies and smiling insincerely. Said trophies dotted a wooden cabinet in the far corner, gleaming dully, gilt golfers badly sculpted preparing to make expansive drives. "Do you play?" asked Graham, eyeing me with speculation, in case I had a spare two grand and a proclivity for wasting a bit of time batting small balls at non-existent holes over five hundred acres. "Nah" said Tel. "Neiver of us do. Me bruvver-in-lor used to, quite good 'e woz, til 'e discovered the wimmin an' the ole booze". Graham took us back to the bar fairly sharpish after that little pronouncement.
We had the carvery, which was overcooked meat and soft veg, and a few drinks, and then we left. It was quite depressing in a way. Rich old men, dressed like Sandy Lyle, their clubs and their bags top of range, wheeled past us on their way for a windy and wet round. We got the hell out. Tel drank zero alcohol lager. He drove. He wanted a proper drink. We parked the car at his and went down the local.
Then tonight and we drew away at Wimbledon, and another part of me died, a part that insisted we'd still be OK, a part that found optimism even when the results meant the head refuted it. And so it's on to Burton on Saturday, a heavy heart and an overwhelming feeling that this is Ipswich Town, my Ipswich Town, a club in flux and stagnation, a club owned by a rich man who cares nothing for it. And the history retreats a little further into the murky past, remembered only with longing.
It's gone beyond fury and blame and frustration. This is it. This stuttering, weak, characterless, wan club is it. Founded in good intentions, run by good people, now the shrivelled corpse of all it once valued and served. Destined for another season of faux toil with a squad of bottle-jobs, past-it's and never-were's. It's not even about the lack of money any more. Leeds, Pompey, Coventry, they've had it worse. I don't see them putting up with third best. Yet we still go, in hope, to be let down yet again.
See you at PR on Saturday. I hope I'm still there after 60 minutes this time....... |  |
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