Pilgrims
Somewhere around 7.50pm on Wednesday 19th January 1750, Queen Victoria proclaimed that she ‘was not amused’ when a member of the royal household arrived twenty minutes late for dinner. Around 7.50am on Thursday 19th January 2019, Coach Stalley proclaims he’s not amused either, as no-one’s bothered to tell him the mini bus’s departure time has been put back twenty minutes and that the 1200 seconds he’s spent lurking in the Longlevens library-edge bushes could, and should, have been avoided. Coach Wilson meanwhile was also not amused when, last Saturday afternoon, someone suggested he should take a weekend in England’s Ocean City rather than spend a fortnight on the west coast of India, soaking up the Goan rays. Suffice to say, he’s not with us today.
The pilgrims pass Cullompton, home of the recently (and thankfully) deposed Gloucester City manager, Toddy. Cullompton’s a pleasant enough place, residents aside, but closer inspection of the name reveals the letter ‘L’ is prominent, but the letter ‘W’ is nowhere to be seen. Just like the results, then.
Exeter Services is an interesting place, where old meets new and we’re not talking about the GPSFA coaching staff. There’s WHS and the loos which are still very 1960s, while Chow (Asian Kitchen) and Kuspy Kreme Doughnuts are very 2019. The majority of players opt for Gregg’s though, which is on the 2019 side of in-between, while the staff head for Arlo’s, an eatery of similarly modern times. Coach Stalley opts for their signature fry-up, breakfast in a pan (no egg, extra sausage), but is not amused for the second time this morning when it arrives on a big red plate.
Across the way, Myatt’s on his knees and contrary to popular opinion, it’s got nothing to do with his recent experience, when he spent a rather quiet fortnight with the Benedictine monks at Prinknash. No, his Starburst’s burst and he’s busy rescuing the red ones first, enthusiastically helped by Wasp and Jones, whose new-found benevolence has more to do with the amount of confectionery they can greedily stash in their trouser pockets, than helping a team mate suffering from acute Post-Dropping Disorder.
An unannounced inspection of the mini bus on arrival at Plympton reveals an empty Minstrels wrapper beneath the seat just vacated by Jones, who’s literally been the butt of all manner of accusations on the journey down. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth’ Fieldhouse has been the principal perpetrator in the assertion stakes, but he does it in such a nice way that no-one (else) seems to notice.
Also appearing on arrival at Plympton is Mother Brown, who’s been enjoying the sights and sounds of the county immediately west of Devon, whose name the population of Plymouth steadfastly refuse to mention. Millward’s enthusiasm to get changed as fast as humanly possible is understandable, as he can’t wait for Warm-Up number 56 and a good old-fashioned knees-up to begin proceedings; HD’s reticence to pull his left sock over his left foot is understandable too, as the prospect of getting involved in yet more pre-match skipping just doesn’t bear thinking about.
There’s a healthy green & white gathering on two sides of the excellent 3G facility at Plympton Academy, who get behind the hosts from the off, but despite Plymouth having the better of the possession in the first thirty, it’s the visitors that have the best chance of the half when Obieri is upended in the box, but Flower in the Green’s goal saves the resulting spot kick.
Obieri and Mother Brown (what’s he doing up there?) both find the side netting before the break, but at the other end Plymouth fire in a succession of testing crosses from both left and right, though thankfully none of them find their target.
There’s a knot of Gloucester fans amidst the touchline sea of green: Father Ted, Father Vye and Father Jones have shared a car and numerous tales, many of which cannot be recounted in a family blog such as this. Father Hundred Per Cent Burgess is also in attendance, though Young Oliver, Son of the Godfather, hasn’t been able to make the trip due to last Saturday afternoon’s ’discussion’ with El Capitano over the controversial ‘goal’ moment. Get well soon, SOTG. Mother Brown (Senior) and Father Brown garner an odd look or five from the locals, who seem to sense they’ve been ‘over the (Tamar) bridge’ recently, while Mother Daniels has swapped her early-morning pink coat for her late-morning yellow one; Father Daniels meanwhile is for once not wearing his Antarctic headgear and is therefore what the Urban Dictionary might describe as travelling ‘incognito’.
The second half follows a similar vein to the first and despite Iron Man heading just wide from a corner and May driving inches past the far post, it’s the homesters that are very much in the ascendancy. Iron Man puts in a definitive performance at centre back and along with Jones, Millward and Slider, makes a number of terrific blocks to keep our goal intact. Behind them High Definition is just that; his positioning, saves and general handling being first class from beginning to end.
There’s a tinge of momentary end-of-game disappointment from the players that the record-breaking winning run has come to an end – as all good things do – but when considering that we were second best in a footballing sense for only the second time to date this season, the spirit, bravery and commitment to earn a very creditable draw against a really good side were all top class. Every truly successful person in both sport and life possesses these attributes, usually in abundance, and they are often the difference between the average achievers and the good, or even great.
Next stop, the boards and slides of Plymouth Life Centre, which is situated about fifty yards from the Plymouth Argyle versus Coventry City League One fixture, but no-one even considers a visit to Home Park, the rather noisy next-door neighbour. Meanwhile in the leisure centre cafe, it’s a Tale of Two Cities in the National League South as Oxford meet Gloucester on twitter, a Joe Hanks (GPSFA 2005/06) penalty putting the Mighty Yellows a half time goal to the good. On 61 minutes it’s ‘end-to-end’ according to the latest tweet, but when you haven’t won for four and a half months, end-to-end is the last thing you want, the actual end being the only thing that really matters. At 4.52pm the final whistle signals the end of 141 days of hurt, but oddly no-one in the packed-out café seems to be the slightest bit interested.
The troops file in and Myatt offers an erudite explanation of what everyone’s been up to during the last hour and a half. ‘We done diving,’ he says. ‘What?’ asks High Definition, aghast at what he’s just heard. ‘We done diving,’ confirms Myatt, at which point HD considers that skipping and line dancing may not be that distasteful after all. At precisely the same time, in her little house in downtown Cheltenham, a shiver travels down Miss Bussey’s spine. She’s not quite sure what’s caused it or even if it actually happened, but nevertheless checks each of the double-glazed windows and oak-panelled doors for draughts, before reviewing the invoice provided by the contractor who sorted her roof tiles and loft insulation a week last Monday. Surely not, she thinks, before returning to her usual Saturday afternoon pastimes of watching Final Score, while at the same time planning Monday morning’s hugely exciting grammar lesson for the lovely Year 6 children at Norton Centre of Excellence.
‘It’s like a castle’ opines someone from the back seat as we alight at the extremely pleasant Duke of Cornwall, where rooms are allocated and everyone retires to their chambers for forty-five-minutes of what’s loosely referred to as ‘down time’. On the fourth floor, Slider and Obieri relax in the Royal Suite, a cavern so large the incumbents need a magnetic compass to help them locate the bathroom. ‘I’ll make the hot chocolate,’ Iron Man tells the other members of his abode three floors below. ‘And I’ll tell you about diving,’ offers a second. ‘Oh good,’ says Jones, replying to both roommates at once, though one senses he may not be telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at this particular time.
Ten-Pin bowling, and there’s not a parking space in sight at the Barbican Centre, so we make do with the forecourt of Enterprise Rent-a-Car, two hundred yards down the main street. On the alley, Mother Brown is cock-a-hoop at beating Burgess by a single pin, but less than happy that he’s been well trumped by HD. Obieri meanwhile claims to have beaten everyone in sight and surprisingly nobody even considers putting forward a counter-argument.
It’s ten past ten at the Duke of Cornwall and all are heading for bed and a Saturday evening Match of the Day treat. Elsewhere, at the Copthorne Hotel just down the road, Father Daniels is dusting off his Retro Cossack polar headgear and nipping off to the downstairs bar for the evening’s fancy dress party, where the door sign says you have to come as a famous person who once sailed westwards from Plymouth harbour. As well as Scott of the Antarctic, there’s a Francis Drake, a Captain Cook and eighty five Plymouth Brethren in attendance and by the time the party’s over, the three great explorers have not only been fully converted, but have also signed fifty per cent of their worldly goods over to a pretty dodgy sounding New World evangelical order located somewhere near Wainlode.
Sunday morning and breakfast in the rather salubrious surroundings of the DOC hotel restaurant; there’s an impressive chandelier hanging from the beautifully domed ceiling, beneath which the grand old Duke no doubt sat for hours on end counting and recounting his ill-gotten gains circa 1870 or thereabouts.
Millward descends the spiral staircase having spent around forty minutes perfecting a neatly gelled quiff, while Slider’s hair arrangement has taken no time at all; literally. Iron Man is in full voice, regaling anyone who wishes to listen about a three o’clock disturbance outside the hotel that hardly anyone else has heard. He’s going to prove it by checking his personalised security cameras once breakfast is over, a system more commonly known as CCTV.
Slider is an interesting eater and a very well-mannered young man into the bargain. He starts with a bowl of melon and something orange, tests the scrambled egg and ketchup on toast, then finishes with a bowl of melon and something orange. Myatt follows a similar pattern – cornflakes, followed by bacon and beans on toast, followed by cornflakes – for anyone with a Roget’s Thesaurus at hand, we are witnessing perfectly palindromic breakfasts of the highest order. Elsewhere, May, Wasp and Mother Brown (Junior) order bacon sandwiches; MB removes the crusts, Wasp removes nothing and May removes just about every sliver of fat before moving the little that remains constantly around his plate in an attempt to persuade people that he’s actually eating something.
Across the way, Jones prepares fastidiously for the game by ordering bacon, egg, sausage, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans and toast, then extra toast with which to make a bacon sandwich from the bits of porker that remain on his plate. Just like his phone calls and the valiant deeds of his namesake, Lawrence Titus Oates, it takes him some considerable time. And if he continues in this vein, the great British pig may well become an endangered species before he actually finishes his meal.
With the city’s grass pitches out of use due to last week’s rain, today’s kick-off’s been put back to 12.30, which is good news for us as there’s now time for a historic stroll along Plymouth Hoe, Hoe, Hoe, where exactly 431 years ago, Drake apocryphally finished his game of ten-pin bowling before dealing with those Iberian upstarts that constituted the Spanish Armada.
Coach Stalley and the team climb the spiral staircase to reach the top of Smeaton’s Tower, a nineteenth century lighthouse that was removed from the waves and rebuilt brick by brick on the edge of the hoe, as Queen Victoria wasn’t even slightly amused when one of her favourite ships made a mess of itself on the rocks outside. On reaching the pretty exposed balcony that encircles the flasher, Iron Man remembers he doesn’t like heights, despite the fact that every game he plays, he seems to reach new ones.
Even though the venue is the same as yesterday, we arrive ten minutes late for the twentieth year running and Jones is a further ten minutes late for FAWU#57, as fully digesting the bacon, egg, sausage, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, toast and extra toast is taking a little longer than at first anticipated.
The game against Marjon’s U12s sees Obieri complete a fifteen-minute hat trick, the third a sumptuous finish following Burgess’s equally sumptuous pass. Burgess himself and Lettuce make the scoresheet before the break, at which point Obieri, who’s been sulking on the side for the previous ten minutes, determines that Wasp should play up front in the second half, so that’s exactly what happens.
Four minutes in and Beamer’s tactical masterclass bears fruit. Myatt’s dance down the right and pinpoint cross sees Wasp find the bottom corner and set off on a six-second, 200-metre lap of honour in ecstatic celebration of his first Gloucester goal. In the dugout, Obieri and Burgess have spotted the linesman’s raised bib at about the same time that Wasp is buzzing off in the general direction of Cornwall and the new striker’s realisation that his effort won’t count for anything brings tears of despair from Gloucester’s new-found ‘false nine’ and tears of hilarity from everyone else. Wasp is well and truly unamused.
Following another disallowed effort, The Buzzer finally nets one that counts from the penalty spot and loudly claims a Chinese hat trick into the bargain. Lettuce, May and a beauty from Vye complete the scoring against a Marjon’s team that never stop trying to play.
It’s Exeter Services and Arlo’s again, but still not a pan in site, much to Coach Stalley’s chagrin; HD and Lettuce make another visit to Gregg’s, while Millward quenches his thirst to such a degree that thirty minutes after leaving, we’re pulling into Sedgemoor, where nine other people follow Mother Brown, who’s skipping frantically across the concourse, in a Pied Piper-like procession for a much-needed visit to the ‘facilities’. High Definition takes one look at the movement style, places his knees tightly together, raises them up to his chin and steadfastly refuses to move even a single inch.
It’s a happy return to Longlevens for Lettuce, who immediately identifies his mother due to the reappearance of the Siamese double-bobble, while within twenty minutes of returning to Barnwood Villas, Wasp’s long-lost wallet jumps out from the self-same corner of his kit bag that he put it in. Slider’s off for a bath and another sixteen-hour kip to get over the exertions of trekking from his bed to the door of The Royal Suite, while May, somewhat surprisingly, is still clutching his cleverly camouflaged medical bag, despite no-one else being able to see it.
Obieri is off to research taking his coaching badges early, as he’s already halfway to running the team, High Definition contemplates Line Dancing lessons as he can’t keep up this skipping charade prior to every remaining fixture; Mother Brown says he’ll teach him for half the price as he’s got most of the moves already and Iron Man promises to jump more at corners having now overcome his fear of heights.
Lawrence has been offered a place on Masterchef – not cooking in the kitchen, but tasting in the dining area, while our esteemed leader has been placed on an Anger Management course by The Godfather himself. In Sicily.
And as for WC, a letter has been sent to Mrs Farren, the head teacher at Norton Centre of Excellence, recounting in graphic detail our midfielder’s post-swimming utterances. To say that she won’t be amused is something of an understatement.
Happy days.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Wasp; Issur Danielovitch, Slider, Lawrence Oates, El Capitano, Lettuce; The Determinator; WC.
The pilgrims pass Cullompton, home of the recently (and thankfully) deposed Gloucester City manager, Toddy. Cullompton’s a pleasant enough place, residents aside, but closer inspection of the name reveals the letter ‘L’ is prominent, but the letter ‘W’ is nowhere to be seen. Just like the results, then.
Exeter Services is an interesting place, where old meets new and we’re not talking about the GPSFA coaching staff. There’s WHS and the loos which are still very 1960s, while Chow (Asian Kitchen) and Kuspy Kreme Doughnuts are very 2019. The majority of players opt for Gregg’s though, which is on the 2019 side of in-between, while the staff head for Arlo’s, an eatery of similarly modern times. Coach Stalley opts for their signature fry-up, breakfast in a pan (no egg, extra sausage), but is not amused for the second time this morning when it arrives on a big red plate.
Across the way, Myatt’s on his knees and contrary to popular opinion, it’s got nothing to do with his recent experience, when he spent a rather quiet fortnight with the Benedictine monks at Prinknash. No, his Starburst’s burst and he’s busy rescuing the red ones first, enthusiastically helped by Wasp and Jones, whose new-found benevolence has more to do with the amount of confectionery they can greedily stash in their trouser pockets, than helping a team mate suffering from acute Post-Dropping Disorder.
An unannounced inspection of the mini bus on arrival at Plympton reveals an empty Minstrels wrapper beneath the seat just vacated by Jones, who’s literally been the butt of all manner of accusations on the journey down. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth’ Fieldhouse has been the principal perpetrator in the assertion stakes, but he does it in such a nice way that no-one (else) seems to notice.
Also appearing on arrival at Plympton is Mother Brown, who’s been enjoying the sights and sounds of the county immediately west of Devon, whose name the population of Plymouth steadfastly refuse to mention. Millward’s enthusiasm to get changed as fast as humanly possible is understandable, as he can’t wait for Warm-Up number 56 and a good old-fashioned knees-up to begin proceedings; HD’s reticence to pull his left sock over his left foot is understandable too, as the prospect of getting involved in yet more pre-match skipping just doesn’t bear thinking about.
There’s a healthy green & white gathering on two sides of the excellent 3G facility at Plympton Academy, who get behind the hosts from the off, but despite Plymouth having the better of the possession in the first thirty, it’s the visitors that have the best chance of the half when Obieri is upended in the box, but Flower in the Green’s goal saves the resulting spot kick.
Obieri and Mother Brown (what’s he doing up there?) both find the side netting before the break, but at the other end Plymouth fire in a succession of testing crosses from both left and right, though thankfully none of them find their target.
There’s a knot of Gloucester fans amidst the touchline sea of green: Father Ted, Father Vye and Father Jones have shared a car and numerous tales, many of which cannot be recounted in a family blog such as this. Father Hundred Per Cent Burgess is also in attendance, though Young Oliver, Son of the Godfather, hasn’t been able to make the trip due to last Saturday afternoon’s ’discussion’ with El Capitano over the controversial ‘goal’ moment. Get well soon, SOTG. Mother Brown (Senior) and Father Brown garner an odd look or five from the locals, who seem to sense they’ve been ‘over the (Tamar) bridge’ recently, while Mother Daniels has swapped her early-morning pink coat for her late-morning yellow one; Father Daniels meanwhile is for once not wearing his Antarctic headgear and is therefore what the Urban Dictionary might describe as travelling ‘incognito’.
The second half follows a similar vein to the first and despite Iron Man heading just wide from a corner and May driving inches past the far post, it’s the homesters that are very much in the ascendancy. Iron Man puts in a definitive performance at centre back and along with Jones, Millward and Slider, makes a number of terrific blocks to keep our goal intact. Behind them High Definition is just that; his positioning, saves and general handling being first class from beginning to end.
There’s a tinge of momentary end-of-game disappointment from the players that the record-breaking winning run has come to an end – as all good things do – but when considering that we were second best in a footballing sense for only the second time to date this season, the spirit, bravery and commitment to earn a very creditable draw against a really good side were all top class. Every truly successful person in both sport and life possesses these attributes, usually in abundance, and they are often the difference between the average achievers and the good, or even great.
Next stop, the boards and slides of Plymouth Life Centre, which is situated about fifty yards from the Plymouth Argyle versus Coventry City League One fixture, but no-one even considers a visit to Home Park, the rather noisy next-door neighbour. Meanwhile in the leisure centre cafe, it’s a Tale of Two Cities in the National League South as Oxford meet Gloucester on twitter, a Joe Hanks (GPSFA 2005/06) penalty putting the Mighty Yellows a half time goal to the good. On 61 minutes it’s ‘end-to-end’ according to the latest tweet, but when you haven’t won for four and a half months, end-to-end is the last thing you want, the actual end being the only thing that really matters. At 4.52pm the final whistle signals the end of 141 days of hurt, but oddly no-one in the packed-out café seems to be the slightest bit interested.
The troops file in and Myatt offers an erudite explanation of what everyone’s been up to during the last hour and a half. ‘We done diving,’ he says. ‘What?’ asks High Definition, aghast at what he’s just heard. ‘We done diving,’ confirms Myatt, at which point HD considers that skipping and line dancing may not be that distasteful after all. At precisely the same time, in her little house in downtown Cheltenham, a shiver travels down Miss Bussey’s spine. She’s not quite sure what’s caused it or even if it actually happened, but nevertheless checks each of the double-glazed windows and oak-panelled doors for draughts, before reviewing the invoice provided by the contractor who sorted her roof tiles and loft insulation a week last Monday. Surely not, she thinks, before returning to her usual Saturday afternoon pastimes of watching Final Score, while at the same time planning Monday morning’s hugely exciting grammar lesson for the lovely Year 6 children at Norton Centre of Excellence.
‘It’s like a castle’ opines someone from the back seat as we alight at the extremely pleasant Duke of Cornwall, where rooms are allocated and everyone retires to their chambers for forty-five-minutes of what’s loosely referred to as ‘down time’. On the fourth floor, Slider and Obieri relax in the Royal Suite, a cavern so large the incumbents need a magnetic compass to help them locate the bathroom. ‘I’ll make the hot chocolate,’ Iron Man tells the other members of his abode three floors below. ‘And I’ll tell you about diving,’ offers a second. ‘Oh good,’ says Jones, replying to both roommates at once, though one senses he may not be telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth at this particular time.
Ten-Pin bowling, and there’s not a parking space in sight at the Barbican Centre, so we make do with the forecourt of Enterprise Rent-a-Car, two hundred yards down the main street. On the alley, Mother Brown is cock-a-hoop at beating Burgess by a single pin, but less than happy that he’s been well trumped by HD. Obieri meanwhile claims to have beaten everyone in sight and surprisingly nobody even considers putting forward a counter-argument.
It’s ten past ten at the Duke of Cornwall and all are heading for bed and a Saturday evening Match of the Day treat. Elsewhere, at the Copthorne Hotel just down the road, Father Daniels is dusting off his Retro Cossack polar headgear and nipping off to the downstairs bar for the evening’s fancy dress party, where the door sign says you have to come as a famous person who once sailed westwards from Plymouth harbour. As well as Scott of the Antarctic, there’s a Francis Drake, a Captain Cook and eighty five Plymouth Brethren in attendance and by the time the party’s over, the three great explorers have not only been fully converted, but have also signed fifty per cent of their worldly goods over to a pretty dodgy sounding New World evangelical order located somewhere near Wainlode.
Sunday morning and breakfast in the rather salubrious surroundings of the DOC hotel restaurant; there’s an impressive chandelier hanging from the beautifully domed ceiling, beneath which the grand old Duke no doubt sat for hours on end counting and recounting his ill-gotten gains circa 1870 or thereabouts.
Millward descends the spiral staircase having spent around forty minutes perfecting a neatly gelled quiff, while Slider’s hair arrangement has taken no time at all; literally. Iron Man is in full voice, regaling anyone who wishes to listen about a three o’clock disturbance outside the hotel that hardly anyone else has heard. He’s going to prove it by checking his personalised security cameras once breakfast is over, a system more commonly known as CCTV.
Slider is an interesting eater and a very well-mannered young man into the bargain. He starts with a bowl of melon and something orange, tests the scrambled egg and ketchup on toast, then finishes with a bowl of melon and something orange. Myatt follows a similar pattern – cornflakes, followed by bacon and beans on toast, followed by cornflakes – for anyone with a Roget’s Thesaurus at hand, we are witnessing perfectly palindromic breakfasts of the highest order. Elsewhere, May, Wasp and Mother Brown (Junior) order bacon sandwiches; MB removes the crusts, Wasp removes nothing and May removes just about every sliver of fat before moving the little that remains constantly around his plate in an attempt to persuade people that he’s actually eating something.
Across the way, Jones prepares fastidiously for the game by ordering bacon, egg, sausage, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans and toast, then extra toast with which to make a bacon sandwich from the bits of porker that remain on his plate. Just like his phone calls and the valiant deeds of his namesake, Lawrence Titus Oates, it takes him some considerable time. And if he continues in this vein, the great British pig may well become an endangered species before he actually finishes his meal.
With the city’s grass pitches out of use due to last week’s rain, today’s kick-off’s been put back to 12.30, which is good news for us as there’s now time for a historic stroll along Plymouth Hoe, Hoe, Hoe, where exactly 431 years ago, Drake apocryphally finished his game of ten-pin bowling before dealing with those Iberian upstarts that constituted the Spanish Armada.
Coach Stalley and the team climb the spiral staircase to reach the top of Smeaton’s Tower, a nineteenth century lighthouse that was removed from the waves and rebuilt brick by brick on the edge of the hoe, as Queen Victoria wasn’t even slightly amused when one of her favourite ships made a mess of itself on the rocks outside. On reaching the pretty exposed balcony that encircles the flasher, Iron Man remembers he doesn’t like heights, despite the fact that every game he plays, he seems to reach new ones.
Even though the venue is the same as yesterday, we arrive ten minutes late for the twentieth year running and Jones is a further ten minutes late for FAWU#57, as fully digesting the bacon, egg, sausage, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, toast and extra toast is taking a little longer than at first anticipated.
The game against Marjon’s U12s sees Obieri complete a fifteen-minute hat trick, the third a sumptuous finish following Burgess’s equally sumptuous pass. Burgess himself and Lettuce make the scoresheet before the break, at which point Obieri, who’s been sulking on the side for the previous ten minutes, determines that Wasp should play up front in the second half, so that’s exactly what happens.
Four minutes in and Beamer’s tactical masterclass bears fruit. Myatt’s dance down the right and pinpoint cross sees Wasp find the bottom corner and set off on a six-second, 200-metre lap of honour in ecstatic celebration of his first Gloucester goal. In the dugout, Obieri and Burgess have spotted the linesman’s raised bib at about the same time that Wasp is buzzing off in the general direction of Cornwall and the new striker’s realisation that his effort won’t count for anything brings tears of despair from Gloucester’s new-found ‘false nine’ and tears of hilarity from everyone else. Wasp is well and truly unamused.
Following another disallowed effort, The Buzzer finally nets one that counts from the penalty spot and loudly claims a Chinese hat trick into the bargain. Lettuce, May and a beauty from Vye complete the scoring against a Marjon’s team that never stop trying to play.
It’s Exeter Services and Arlo’s again, but still not a pan in site, much to Coach Stalley’s chagrin; HD and Lettuce make another visit to Gregg’s, while Millward quenches his thirst to such a degree that thirty minutes after leaving, we’re pulling into Sedgemoor, where nine other people follow Mother Brown, who’s skipping frantically across the concourse, in a Pied Piper-like procession for a much-needed visit to the ‘facilities’. High Definition takes one look at the movement style, places his knees tightly together, raises them up to his chin and steadfastly refuses to move even a single inch.
It’s a happy return to Longlevens for Lettuce, who immediately identifies his mother due to the reappearance of the Siamese double-bobble, while within twenty minutes of returning to Barnwood Villas, Wasp’s long-lost wallet jumps out from the self-same corner of his kit bag that he put it in. Slider’s off for a bath and another sixteen-hour kip to get over the exertions of trekking from his bed to the door of The Royal Suite, while May, somewhat surprisingly, is still clutching his cleverly camouflaged medical bag, despite no-one else being able to see it.
Obieri is off to research taking his coaching badges early, as he’s already halfway to running the team, High Definition contemplates Line Dancing lessons as he can’t keep up this skipping charade prior to every remaining fixture; Mother Brown says he’ll teach him for half the price as he’s got most of the moves already and Iron Man promises to jump more at corners having now overcome his fear of heights.
Lawrence has been offered a place on Masterchef – not cooking in the kitchen, but tasting in the dining area, while our esteemed leader has been placed on an Anger Management course by The Godfather himself. In Sicily.
And as for WC, a letter has been sent to Mrs Farren, the head teacher at Norton Centre of Excellence, recounting in graphic detail our midfielder’s post-swimming utterances. To say that she won’t be amused is something of an understatement.
Happy days.
Gloucester: High Definition; Mother Brown, Iron Man, Wasp; Issur Danielovitch, Slider, Lawrence Oates, El Capitano, Lettuce; The Determinator; WC.
