Football Poets

Memories are Made of This

Remember when the Likely Lads
Wanted to avoid the final score?
Well, this was the exact opposite:
A twenty first century digital version
Where we expect constant updates and news.

But don’t get them.

For alas! There is no signal at all
At twelfth century Llanthony Priory;
And just a fleeting momentary contact
High up in the hills by Offa’s Dyke,
Where you gaze upon blue remembered hills,
And a faint silver gleam in the east:
The River Severn, and the Cotswold hills of home.
But what good is that when you want to know the score?

We started our climb from the Priory,
and asked fellow foxglove ramblers
If anyone knew the score.
No one knew.
No one was bothered.
No one was interested.

We climbed some more.
And reached two box trees,
The remnant, Bill thought, of a box hedge,
Where once a cottage stood,
Where once, Bill thought, slates and shingles were cut,
By some Wordsworthian revenant;
And there, a few yards further on,
A crumbled wall; once, perhaps,
The enclosure for the slater’s cow,
And a once tended vegetable patch:
A Wordsworthian moment, it’s true.
But an imagined solitary
From a reimagined Lyrical Ballads
Could not provide me with the score
From the end of the 18th century,
And nor could the next group of wayfarers.

But the next trio offered hope.
Walkers in red Welsh shirts.
I talked of the recent Wales v Switzerland match,
And, duty done, I thought I could broach the topic:
‘I don’t suppose you know how England are getting on?’
‘Well. Do you know. Up there I had a funny feeling.
I felt that Sterling had scored.’
His mate called out: ‘But that was before they’d kicked off.’
I checked my watch. 3.25.
Are they having me on or not?

We carried on climbing. Phone running low.
A momentary signal and message:
‘Ooh ah Roonata’;
I knew that Charlotte Rooney had drawn
England in the sweepstake. So, this was good news.
But was it a delayed celebration of a goal?
Late coming through? Or the result?
But battery low and signal lost,
I was none the wiser in the heather,
The cotton grass and the billberries.

We carried on climbing.
To reach a cairn high up on Offa’s Dyke.
And here I exhausted my phone with a message to Charlotte
And here I sat, exhausted, with joy and relief:
Her reply: ‘One nil to us.’

Bill, who has no interest in football,
But who enjoys football cliches,
Wondered if I would like more context,
And read, verbatim, the words of the players,
In an old school Private Eye,
Ashen-faced Ron Knee Mockney accent.
It was a signal moment:
Gammon, as it were, declaiming
The words of a new England,
And the new England silencing the boo boys.
This is the new ‘Us’.
Football’s Coming to a new Home.
To a new Us.
That’s how it felt by the cairn, high up on Offa’s Dyke.
I crossed my fingers.

And we came home to Llanthony Priory
For a couple of celebratory pints;
I stood where the monks once sat penitent,
And asked a young man if he knew the result –
He looked as though he might want to know.
‘Old school,’ he said. ‘No signal.
I had to use a pay phone down the road.’
We laughed.
Bill started to sing:
‘Memories are made of this.’

They certainly are.
And I’m dreaming of a new England.
Without the boo boys.
And so when I got home,
I signed this petition:

http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/statement-signed-by-politicians-union-leaders-and-campaigners-opposing-the-booing-of-players-taketheknee-government-failure-to-act/

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