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Waiting For The Score (When We Were Nine Or Ten)

Crispin Thomas

Thursday, December 16th, 2004

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 can you still remember
somewhere way back when
the being sent to bed at night
when you were nine or ten?
while outside in the distance
the muffled magic roar
the biting nails the hoping
just waiting for the score –
listening by your window
until that whistle blew
and if they sang with cheers or boos
somehow you just knew –
but way before the Internet
and long before Five Live
no mobile phones or Sky in homes
how did we all survive?
for banned and barred from News At Nine
we’d hang there by the door
for word of something in between
the weather and some war –
when evening games were out of bounds
you’d lie there in your bed
with autographs and cowboy books
but longing in your head –
oh cruel world – oh cruel world
oh ancient stupid rule
“it’s only football – off you go
tomorrow you’ve got school! ” –
but in my striped pyjamas
I must have looked a sight
on creeping out to ask the fans
returning in the night
from cup-tie replays in the fog
and nights they shovelled snow
from terraces and frozen grass
but we could never go –
yet somehow you get over it
the heartache and the stuff
and if you’re thinking texts are slow
well boy we had it tough –
no information highway
no up-dates at a touch
no way of ever going to see
the team we loved so much
but still we can remember
that ‘somewhere’ way back when
and being sent to bed at night
when we were nine or ten

© CTO4

Notes

Gor Bless A.A.MIlne.As i slip ‘sadly’ into wistful- deranged -childhood- nostalgia la-la land ! .Such is the power of fluff! Nevertheless I wrote this late one night whilst expectantly planning for some up-coming football poetry work with 9 and 10 years olds and beyond at Chelsea in 2005. With the project task of life from 1948 (the year I was born) to now in football and in life,.I was just thinking about how different our childhoods are and were.Trying to imagine, deep inside, the way children see fooltball things today and how we saw them .Basically trying to remember how I felt at that age,about football and everything..Days and fretful nights ,when losing at home (and not human suffering or war) was the height of “un-fairness”.Can you remember when you were nine or ten?
Bless ! (as they say!)

Source: https://footballpoets.org/poems/waiting-for-the-score-when-we-were-nine-or-ten/