| The Warky Championship Report 2025/26: Swansea (A), Watford (H) 11:03 - Nov 9 with 675 views | Warkystache |
Welcome back for another slice of the seldom-seen. I've been busy. That's my excuse, innit?
I mean 'busy' not in the HarryfromBath sense (where did he go by the way?) but in the work sense. They've discussed redundancies at my branch. The pay-outs look nice, if you didn't have to go through all the palaver of finding a new job at nearly fifty-two. Sick records come into play. The fear (all too prevalent these days) of being unemployed and slowly devouring your savings and redundancy money as you frantically apply for stuff you don't really understand. What's a 'Diversity and Inclusion Resource Manager'? Do you need special qualifications? Pink hair? A nose ring? A cluster of cheap tattoos?
We get to have our CV 'professionally appraised', which came as news as I haven't actually got a CV. Haven't had one since I was twenty-one and newly graduated, chino-wearing, Crew Company blue Oxford shirt, brown brogues. The mid 1990's type. Chuck in the curtains hair style and the reliance on forty-a-day Marlboro Lights lit by a Ronson which always ran out of petrol quick. Add a deep sense of foreboding, entering a workplace which actually demanded you do stuff rather than sleep in a corner, waking only to nip out for more fags.
Watford at home on a mild yet damp Tuesday night then. Back to reality. Leaving work at 4pm on the vague pretence of a GP appointment (can't give football attendance as a decent excuse any more. One of the Birmingham supporters used that one a while ago. He's now top of the redundancy lists they've mooted in the managerial circles). A five-thirty 'dinner' of McDonalds in their drive-thru car park, stationed near the bins. Goodness, they use a lot of plastic. Perhaps Ed Miliband should tax them? A stray french fry slipping in the gap between the passenger seat and the central console, where I keep that ageing half packet of Polos and the obligatory Tesco money-off vouchers (expired in 2024. Need to clean my car out at some point). The little open pot of tomato ketchup stained my passenger seat when I drove off without realising.
Ipswich appeared as a well-lit oasis in the endless stop-start of the A14. Like Bartertown in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, we reached the signs for the football ground and saw the floodlights lit and realised it was 'Bust a deal, face the wheel' time of finding a vacant parking space vaguely near the town centre without paying through the nose. Watford though? They were due a spanking surely? Away record which looked familiarly barren. Play in yellow. Another Norwich clone. Think they're better than they are. Well....
Terry was absent for this one. He's promised he can make Wrexham on the 22nd. He was actually in Champneys in Tring with Mrs Tel. They booked a cheap midweek deal for a spa experience with a glass of prosecco chucked in and free massages and spa treatments which sounded to the uninitiated like deviant Gestapo torture sessions in Leipzig during the Second World War. They involved boiling mud and what looked suspiciously like water-boarding in the brochure he showed me in the pub on Friday night, self-consciously, fearing I'd take the piss and then loudly involve the rest of the pub in chortling glee. The brochure could've been a four-star sex mag for all the cagey hesitancy he took retrieving it from his inside jacket pocket.
I left before Nunez missed that last-minute chance. My eyes were starting to feel heavy and the atmosphere, one of expectancy earlier, became dulled by the endless stream of missed chances and poor final passes. 1-1. Should have won. Even this board admitted that much.
Yesterday was a nothing type. Early morning walk. Used the non-expired Tesco vouchers from the car to get a whopping six quid off a loaf of sourdough, a two pint carton of milk, a box of Twinings extra strength tea bags, a jar of Wilkins Old Times Orange marmalade, the papers, a box of stem ginger biccies and a bottle of original lucozade as the old hangover still twinged a bit. Oh and twelve Panadol Extra. Terry and I spent Friday night drinking and eating as usual. The local is trying to capture the cocktails market (which must be a growing one in Manningtree as the women were knocking them back) and the landlord, Jamie, talked us into trying one of his creations, a Stormy Night, comprising a double Kraken rum, half a lime juiced up in a squeezer and topped with ginger beer. It was nice enough. Then he announced a happy hour of all cocktails as buy one get one free and we tried the lot in a furore of 'get me money's worth 'ere, like'. And so my morning head throbbed and my guts slewed like the water in the bottom of a washer/drier.
Housework. A lunchtime trip to another pub in the car for a large diet coke with ice and a sandwich of bacon, brie and cranberry sauce. No beer. Couldn't face it. Home at 2pm for the footy. And we won 4-1 and Norwich lost again at home and that Simon Thomas on Sky looked pig sick. Hahahaha.
Oh well. Roll on the international break and a chance to collect my thoughts and update my CV to cover the last thirty-odd years. Perhaps I'll chance another role? Pub management? No. Tel would drink my profits. Writing for a living? No. Too lazy.
See you in two weeks. |  |
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