The lead up to Christmas is rarely straightforward in any walk of life. Weekends mean shopping, and the opportunity to find odd things, which, then bought in panic, will be opened in forced smile disappointment on Christmas Day, never to see the light again. Personal presents involve feats of planning, expense and the novel usage of research to see where one might purloin. Most shops in Colchester and Ipswich are rubbish at hoarding interesting stock. So it means London. Or possibly Norwich or Cambridge for the less enthusiastic provincial.
I would rather be dragged by my thinning thatch to hell than be caught shopping in Norwich. Friends say “Oh it’s marvellous” with the sort of self-indulgent disregard that any Ipswich fan would suspect meant they ‘din’t like football’. One friend found a cheap original Mouseman cheeseboard in an antique shop; paid a mere £80 because it had bits in distress, as though some ruddy-cheeked scum had attempted to use it for kindling. He’d have paid at least £180 for that in London, he told us, wide-eyed.
Cambridge is better, but it is also infested by students. Of the sort we had when I was one such. It appears the Nirvana grunge look from the early 1990’s never left. Indeed, grown children with posh accents and downy hair on cheeks, women with multi-colours in hair and Robert Smith mascara, all of them wear ‘Nevermind’ and that smiley face effort that Nirvana were known for, almost more so than their songs back when I was an undergraduate at one of our lesser universities in ’92. It seems modern culture is better at copying the past than thinking up its own future.
So London. Jostled by crowds. No more Hare Cheap Day returns on Greater Anglia. Liverpool Street brimming with foreigners, cheap day returners from Chelmsford and football supporters, as well as people who went for an early morn restorative pint and a brandy chaser. That was just me, actually. Wetherspoons may be universally derided for their food but they do a good cheap pint of Guinness, and their brandy isn’t undrinkable.
I always feel like I’ve been pickpocketed in London, so my walking gait is that of normal but suffused with a quick, anxious pat down of pocket for the reassurance that my wallet is still in place with my iPhone. Although pickpocketing is back to Victorian levels of scum and thievery in our capital, I managed to escape unpicked for the remainder of the day.
No Terry by the way. Not this weekend. He’s with the wife, preparing for his Christmas party next Sunday. He’ll be back next Saturday because we play Newcastle. But this weekend, we agreed, would be devoted to doing all the bits I wouldn’t get a chance to do next weekend. I’m working all week this coming week. Off on Christmas Eve until the 2nd. Birmingham’s good for shopping as well. So that’s some of the anxiety taken out.
Did the shopping and stopped in another pub for a pricier pint of the black stuff because they had Sky Sports on. Leeds against Preston in one bar. Soccer Saturday in the next. It was 2pm and I set my bags down on a chair and sat back to order a pint, mentally deliberating whether to get a steak pie or not, then seeing the food come out to another table and deciding not. It was massive. My appetite has shrunk in recent years. We don’t go for our Friday night curry any more, mainly because the last time we did, I spent the day after in gastroenterological distress. It’s my body taking fluent, devilish revenge. Terry thinks I’m just avoiding him.
I stayed for the 3pm kick-off’s and celebrated quietly as we went 1-0 up away at Wolverhampton, the sort of game when a defeat just signals we’ve accepted our lot back in the Championship. And don’t go thinking it’ll be all that easy next time, oh ho no, just look at the Scum. And Leeds.
1-0. Own goal. Comical by all accounts. I wasn’t laughing. I was gleeful. It remained 1-0 as I left, several pints later, a merrier feeling in my bones than any of the Christmas lights and constant repeats of Wham’s ’84 classic could beget in any of the stores I shopped in. The cold wasn’t even noticeable.
Back to Liverpool Street on a dirty tube train. Still 1-0 according to my phone, the natural light dimming outside and the night pouring in to the fold. Puddles reflected lit shops and Christmas lights. I debated another pint and then decided not. I’d have a few in the local. Forest v Villa at 5.30. I was on the train at 4.30. I might even get to see the end of the first half.
Manningtree-bound. Calling at Stratford, Shenfield, Chelmsford, Witham, Colchester, Manningtree, Ipswich, Diss and Norwich. Surrounded by people with rosy cheeks and expensive coats and scarves, all bagged up to the nines, discussing whether Aunt Vi would like her Penhaligons foot lotion set or why Fortnums was better than Harrods food hall for biscuits. They got off at Chelmsford and Colchester.
Checked my phone just after Stratford and balls, 1-1. The M25 hove away as I sat, disconsolate, wondering why it always happened to us. I allowed myself another check as we skirted Shenfield. 1-2. Jackie Taylor! Whaaaaat? Then I checked again. It said FT. We’d bloody won it! A quick seat-shifting celebration which made people look at me as if I’d started transforming into the American Werewolf in London. But then a bloke sat three tables down did the same thing and looked back at me and winked and I clocked his ITFC wooly hat and we shared a moment of unrefined joy.
Manningtree station has never looked so charming in the foggy darkness. The pub was half-full so I found a table easily and nodded to the locals who sat nursing their IPA at the bar. One said, apropos of nothing, ‘Bloody Town won then, lucky ole Ipswich’ and I even nodded and smiled!
It’s Christmas Time and there’s no need to be afraid. We’re only one point behind Palace and Leicester got hammered. OK, Newcastle might be difficult next Saturday but what the hell? Let’s do them as well. |  |
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