This week's report is largely redundant. I couldn't make the game yesterday as I had to work. It involves a bigwig and a fiver, but isn't Watership Down. No rabbits were imperilled.
As those of you who keep a keen eye on these proceedings will be aware, I work in Birmingham. This involves a long daily commute and a lot of p*ss-taking about football from all of the Brummie variant footy fans, whose teams are all (aside from the old bloke who supports Walsall and the two strange Kidderminster Harriers supporters) are in leagues above the Town.
The majority are Villains and Bluenoses. The Villains think themselves the superior, what with their £30 million midfielders from the Scum and their Premier League top-ten ambitions. Next comes the Wolverhampton lot, a strange clutch of supporters who bemoan their Chinese owners Fosun for their meanness in the transfer market and the loss of their manager to the Spurs when they'd moaned about him constantly last season.
The Bluenoses are the poor relations. No, sorry, The Covvers are the poor relations; no home ground until this season, sharing St Andrews with the Bluenoses and all that. The Bluenoses and the Covvers are, of course, Championship sides. One is doing better than the other. The Birmingham City fans are convinced they're getting promoted this season. So are the Baggies, but they're represented by three now that two of their number have taken jobs in other offices, and so they can be shouted down in Championship inter-rivalry stakes. The Covvers number four supporters, three of whom bought season-tickets to the Ricoh/Coventry Building Society Stadium as it is now (they still call it the Ricoh).
It's a potent blend of flat-vowelled Broomie banter around the canteen. Then I appear and they all unite to take the proverbial. Even though we've probably outspent all but the Premier lot and the Baggies, we are officially the figure of fun. New team, no wins, a few former Baggies sprinkled around, we are an anomaly. The Wolves and the Villa dismiss us as lower-league fodder. The Bluenoses think we're destined to remain in League One like we did the Championship. The Cov fans chortle and say we've traded our jewels for junk (they'd wanted Flynn Downes and Dozzell, in fact they were incandescent that their club never bid for either). It's a difficult office to work at when your club isn't winning despite expectations.
The reason for working on a Saturday involves a bigwig and a fiver. Basically, the tale is this. We have a visit from our Managing Director booked for tomorrow. We've never seen him in the seven years I've been working here. Some of the older staff said they remembered seeing someone a long time ago, but no, that was one of the former MD's who has since retired and died.
I foolishly bet another worker a fiver that we (the Town) would have seven points from our first three games when the fixtures came out in June. Aah, those halcyon, hazy, transfer-frenzied days when we were embarking on eye-opening signings and were causing disgruntled episodes of green-eye from the likes of Pompey and Sunderland supporters. My co-worker, a Bluenose, took my bet and added another potential; namely that the loser would cover the other for Saturday 21st August when we would be required to get our sh*t in order for the MD visit on the 23rd. I looked at the fixture list again and failed to see how we wouldn't manage two wins and a draw from the likes of Morecambe, Burton and Cheltenham. I never even envisaged missing the MK Dons.
And the hope lasted until Fraser missed that penalty at the Pirelli and hence I was working with a few Bluenoses yesterday who hadn't been bothered by a trip to Luton Town and whose cheers rang out from 3.30pm to 5.00pm as they won 5-0. And meanwhile they gleefully updated the MK Dons 78th minute equaliser, and I shut my office door and got on with my paperwork in gloom, resolving to leave as near to 5.15pm as possible and to avoid the Burger King drive-thru at Milton Keynes.
Still, I got loads done and the MD will find us ship-shape when he comes at 10am tomorrow. I'm off shopping in a mo. I awoke at 9am this morning with a heavy heart and aching back and no bread or bacon in the house. So I had coffee for breakfast and dreaded the return tomorrow, the long drive and the mickey-taking from football fans whose teams all bloody won.
No Tel this week as well. He was ensconced in Braintree having steak with the in-laws on Friday and out at a restaurant in Chelmsford last night. He's spent a week with The Tone and Sand as he calls them, making them sound like a crap Wetherspoons in Dovercourt. They've been to Southwold and Yarmouth this week, probably having fun on the 'muzzies in Yarmouth and drinking the Adnams in Southwold. I don't know for certain because he hasn't called. He knew I was working yesterday and he knows I'll be working again on Monday, and he's still coming with me to the Wimbledon game next Saturday, despite his misgivings.
Sorry and all that for those who love a bit of Tel. Still, at least the next report'll be full of him. Perhaps not as full as he'd probably like. This was a write-off week. I get them now and then. It feels more 'Plague Dogs' than 'Watership Down' right now. But hey, it pays the mortgage.
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