Aah, Crewe. I'd've gone to this were we not in the grip of the pandemic. I've (rather perversely) enjoyed some good times in Crewe as a younger man......
I met my ex-wife in Crewe. It's a long story. She was from Sandbach. In a moment of rash post-University poverty, of the sort where you 'get to know' your bank manager rather better than you'd have liked and he you, I took a job. I was probably urged on by the sort of overdraft which, in the true spirit of the bohemian, I'd largely ignored until my cash card kept getting spat out by ATM's, much in the same derisory way that my schoolmates gobbed on the playground.
The job was advertised as 'Research Co-ordinator' but in actuality meant spending very dull periods of time reading dismal articles in libraries about social administration and welfare, scribbling copious notes in reporter's notebooks. I was living in South West London, precariously, not paying rent, at a friend's two bedroom hovel in Tooting Broadway. He was working on his Master's. His whole rent was subsidised by his affluent parents who lived somewhere exotic in Surrey (I think it was Virginia Water). He was a slob. I mean that with great fondness. He never cleaned the place once. We frequently found mould in the stainless steel sink.
I earned £20,000 per year, which was a fair sum for 1995. The trouble was, I kept half of my earnings. The other half was stolen by the bank to 'reduce' my overdraft.
I was happy though. I'd previously read and written essays on Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London', so I knew how to budget. We ate the brown-turning fruit and veg from Tooting Market for '10p the lot'. We drank in the local Wetherspoon pub where a pint of their Scotch Bitter was 69p. Poverty is useful for the young. They thrive on it. We also used my friend's NUS card to drink in my old student union, where a tenner could get you very drunk indeed and the walk home was across Wimbledon golf course, tripping over divots and falling fully into bunkers.
I got involved in Crewe because I met a friend of a friend who edited Crewe fanzine 'Super Dario Land' and invited me to stay at his parent's semi in Nantwich and 'take in a game'. My biggest expense was the train fare, and that was reduced by my friend's student reduction, so I went. The first few times it was rather jolly. Crewe played Notts County and won 2-1. They then played Mansfield and drew 0-0, which was a bit crap. We got drunk in The Cheshire Cat before and after the match. Jules (the Crewe fanzine editor) had his parents' place to himself. They often went to his grandmother's house in Northwich. We got gloriously drunk and stoned in their absence. Jules' girlfriend, Suzie, introduced me to her best friend. We got on well. Then, three years later, we got married.
So I like Crewe. Always have, even when they beat us in the late 90's as we were going for automatic promotion and needed the points. I became friendly with Jermaine Wright when he played for Crewe. He was always out on the town after a game and we often bumped into him. I like to think it was me that persuaded him to join Ipswich. It wasn't though. He was ambitious and he fancied it.
I left London in 1996 and moved back home with mum and dad for a year, financially better off, overdraft paid, student loans being repaid, a couple of thousand in my new current account. I found a job locally and then found another and then another until I ended up where I am now. I married my girlfriend. Her parents, Jules and his then-wife all came. Mum and Dad put them up in the Premier Inn down the road. They all joined me for an Ipswich game, the first Bolton play-off semi, which we lost.
And then we settled into married life in our new home. It's still my home. The mortgage is paid. My ex didn't want half the house when we divorced. It's the only thing I thanked her for.
Tel had this down as a draw on his Ladbrokes bet. He hasn't been seen this week. Mrs Tel decided that their in-laws were over the worst of Coronavirus and, as I write, is now staying with them, having gone last Thursday. Tel then went down with a heavy cold, a chesty one, for which he is dosing himself liberally with decent brandy and Benilyn. "Fought I'd caught it" he spluttered on the phone on Friday. "But issa cold for definite. Bleedin' cough's like a load of treacle toffee an' me nose keeps runnin'. Don' wanna give it yer". I hastily agreed and he sneezed twice, loudly. It sounded like a wet foghorn.
He asked me if I had any antibiotics I hadn't taken. "I'd see me GP but they aint gonna want me cumin' anywhere near 'em in this state. 'Is receptionist even sounded scared speakin' ter me on the blower". He thinks it's a chest infection. Sadly, I had no antibiotics, but I did have menthol crystals. "Bleedin' wot?" he asked, irritably. Then he said, crossly "Don' need no noo age rubbish around me. I need anti's".
He called back yesterday, success in his voice. A late appointment. Prescribed antibiotics for a 'mild chest infection'. He can drink on them as well. The best of all worlds. He sounded slightly better. "Brandy. Thass wot yer need when yer coughin'. Drank the 'ole bottle larse night. Two left in the cupboard tho' fank gawd". He rang off, promising to ring next week to arrange a meet up.
I had a walk before all this, my usual, only increased over Cattawade and to the shores of the Stour, the calmness and the slow-rising mist enveloping me. I popped to Tesco on the way home, buying bread and milk and sausages and bacon and tomatoes and Tropicana smooth and a paper and some fags. Fry up. Pot of Tea. Shower, then dressing gown over joggers and t-shirt, did some work on the laptop, cleaned and dusted and hoovered the house, fed the birds, marvelled at a buzzard soaring high over the house. By then it was one o'clock. Footy. I eschewed the scum game and watched Everton v Newcastle.
I didn't watch the Crewe game on Ifollow. But I'd've gone as I said earlier. Just to recapture those happier memories, before the fall-outs and the arguments and the silent spells, when she spent her time not speaking to me or staying away with her friends in Chelmsford, and then she'd come home and nothing was right, not me, not where we lived, not her, nothing. And then the affair. And then the affair. And then the leaving, the packing up, the driving to her friend's to be with him, except he didn't know what he wanted and so he failed her as well. And then, nothing. The occasional visit for money. Her dreams, expressed forcibly, from someone I once knew well but now didn't recognise.
And now there's nothing left of her, no tangible thread. Only memories. You can't relive those. You can only recapture. Jules doesn't live in Crewe any more either. He divorced as well, and moved to the US in 2011. So there's nothing left. I prefer it kept like that. Onwards, ever onwards, never back. No regrets. But that's not true. There are always regrets. They just dim, like the memories.
Ipswich is becoming the same and that's my greatest regret. The equaliser, the Bishop red card, all spilled out in front of me and I just sat numbed. Even the forum on here was blasé. What's happening to us? Is it altruism? Is it stronger? Is the repeated pain just too much?
Jules would have been unhappy with a 1-1 against Ipswich. I guess that's the most painful realisation of how far we've fallen of all. But we never learn. Oh well. |  |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
