Football Poets

A Robin replies to Basil

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR READERS AND MAY ALL YOUR TEAMS WIN EVERYTHING IN THE NEW YEAR.

Secondly, a BIG thank you to all our readers and supporters. You have helped this website have another very successful couple of months. Since I wrote in October, we have featured in Channel 4’s “Writing for Kicks” schools book for KS3; the BBC promoted us on their guide to the best of the net; we feature on the British Council’s website, no less, and the December issue of When Saturday Comes put us in the top 5 football web-sites. Our poems have also appeared on both BBC and ITV. I wouldn’t dream of thinking that media attention is a necessary validation of what we all do – but it is nice to be noticed, don’t you think? You know that when you write you are guaranteed an audience. You have all helped all this happen – we are all working as a team, with no manager either! Thanks again and have a great Christmas and 2002. – Stuart.

Dearest Bank Manager

Dearest Bank Manager,
I am writing to thank you for bouncing the cheque which I had assumed would pay Father Christmas for his many services recently rendered to my family. By my calculations, some three nano-seconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival of the funds in my account needed to honour it.
I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement, which has, I admit, been in place for only some twenty two years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity and also for debiting my account with £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience I caused you.
But no more will our relationships be blighted by these unsavoury incidents, for I am restructuring my affairs in 2002, taking as my model, the very procedures of your very own bank. To this end, please be advised of the following changes:
Firstly, I have noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you I am confronted by an impersonal, ever-changing, pre-recorded faceless entity. From now on, I choose to deal with a flesh and blood person only. My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee of your branch, whom you must nominate. Please find attached the Application Contract Form, which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages.
In due course your employee will be issued with a PIN number by me, which must be quoted in all dealings with me. I am sorry that it runs to twenty eight digits – but your nominated employee may call me at any time and will be answered by an automated voice and by pressing the appropriate buttons s/he will be guided through an extensive set of menus.
This may involve a lengthy wait but uplifting music will play for the duration, for example, Woody Guthrie, “Oh our clubs are floored with marble With a guard at every door, And the vaults are filled with silver That supporters sweated for.” After twenty minutes of that, our mutual contact will probably know it off by heart.
Finally, we come to costs. Firstly, there is the matter of the advertising material you send me. This I will read for a fee of £30 a page. Enquiries from your nominated contact will be billed at £5 per minute and as my new telephone service runs at 75p a minute, you would be advised to keep inquiries short.
May I wish you a happy if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year –
Your humble client,
Stuart Butler.

I can’t claim any ownership of this – I was sent it as an E mail last Christmas and altered it to a 3 minute piece to perform on stage.

Nor can we claim total ownership of the feature on football in the trenches at Christmas 1914 and 1915 – this is within the archive section of the website. If you haven’t seen this before, or even if you have, it’s well worth a visit. (Editor’s note: a mistake in the text in that section – Bertie Felstead was not the oldest man in the country, that accolade goes to Fred Moore of Hampshire, born November 21st. 1892.)

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