7.50am and, as most people are aware, Vaile has a season-long ban from all things yellow hanging over him. His crime was to extract Folley from the little plastic box and place him in Pew One (right behind the driver) in his first and only delve into the ancient art of ‘Puthimthereism’, better known in this day and age as ‘Seat Allocation’. Nice Tommy Manning has taken over and immediately receives a verbal warning in regard to his future conduct, having committed the second most heinous extraction possible by allocating Vaile, complete with skeleton face covering, to the pew that Folley’s now thankfully vacated. ‘Swings and roundabouts,’ mutters Coach Wilson, though what this has to actually do with anything other than the local park, no-one’s quite sure.

There’s no service stop on the way to the north-east corner of the second city, though we have a run-through of the GPSFA equivalent of Desert Island Discs as we head seamlessly up the M5. ‘Nothing but a Heartache’ and ‘Sweet Caroline’ (first verse only) are just two of the Neil Diamond classics belted out in the section between Junction 9 (Tewkesbury) and Junction 6 (Worcester North). If people just stopped to think for a minute, they’d probably realise just how true the first one really is.

As soon as we near the M42, two things happen almost instantaneously; the singing stops and is replaced by the strange yet gratifying sound of voices talking quietly amongst themselves and both the Real Navigator and Co-Navigator begin waving their arms furiously to indicate that we need to move into the inside lane with as much haste as is humanly possible.

Castle Vale is the antonym of salubrious in anyone’s thesaurus – the entry roundabout sports an odd-looking, 30-foot high ‘Welcome’ structure that’s seemingly made up of Poundland bathroom tiles with a papier mache knight in baking foil armour, brandishing a fearsome-looking sword, sitting proudly atop the oddly-shaped, 1990s/medieval (delete as applicable) pillar. A ‘Keep Left’ bollard is lying asunder on the nearside pavement, there’s an armchair blocking an alleyway on the other side of the road and a wall with the type of graffiti that would take someone with a far deeper understanding of the Enigma Code than us to decipher even the first three scribblings.

The stadium itself however is a thriving hub of Saturday morning Birmingham District League football, with around a hundred enthusiastic soles sitting in the stand, chatting around the perimeter fence or indulging in the breakfast-style offerings of the resident burger van. We’re on the pitch outside though, a bobbly old sward with a yellow rope along one side and the remains of the debris that the very pleasant home coaches have removed from the multi-use surface on the other.

The focus in the warm-up is good and there can be no faulting the effort from both sides on a morning when the chill wind makes even the resident polar bears think twice before venturing out into the streets and cul-de-sacs that make up Castle Vale. Or maybe there are other reasons, self-preservation perhaps, why they’ve decided to stay at home.

We enjoy most of the possession without forcing the home keeper into a serious save, with Vaile and Manning doing well down the left and McLarney and White similarly effective on the right. Harborne take the lead midway through the first half though when a well-placed free kick on the left eludes everyone to find the far corner and we’re one down at half time.

The NSPCC’s recently publicised concerns regarding the decapitation and consumption of little orange babies at the mid-point of U11 football matches means it’s only penguins (along with kit kats, jaffa cakes and chocolate digestives) that are put to the sword on this particular February morning. No doubt we’ll be getting a letter from the World Wildlife people if anyone of that ilk ever finds out what’s just been happening.

The second half follows a similar pattern to the first, but with the wind at our backs, we are even more in control. Harborne break quickly ten minutes in to extend their lead however, but soon after, a through ball from the indefatigable Model gives Brooks the opportunity to reduce the arrears.

The search for a leveller intensifies and the keeper produces a fine save to deny Clifford before tipping Manning’s free kick over the bar. Well struck corners from Buckland and Manning are equally well defended by the home side, but with just five minutes remaining, Manning seizes on a moment of hesitancy in the Harborne rearguard to crack home the equaliser off the inside of the far post. There is more pressure and a couple more opportunities to complete a Sutton-style comeback, but the players are happy enough at the end to applaud the eleven visiting supporters in a crowd that’s struggling to break the twenty mark, before retreating to the sanctity of the mini bus where hands are warmed and the circulatory system slowly massaged back into something resembling life.

The very nice Birmingham SFA has organised post-match sausage & chips from the burger van inside the main arena and for the brace of very nice ladies serving the masses, nothing is too much trouble. The Model elicits a sneer from Vaile by smothering his chips in a sea of vile red stuff, though Vaile then repeats the act by ejecting a solution purporting to be mayonnaise from one of the dozen bottles of fried food condiments onto the contents of his own polystyrene tray. The ladies even come up with a bap-full of fried onions to take their bacon rolls to the very highest echelons of the MCL (Mobile Catering Ladder) as a brief period of relative calm descends over Castle Vale, a metaphor rarely used in this part of the West Midlands.

‘Mr Cook says I’m the go-to man when it comes to punctuation and grammar,’ exhorts Captain Bennett, minutes before we pull out of the now-deserted car park, but only seconds before saying ‘Could of,’ much to the disgust and barely-repressed ire of Coach Wilson. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ frowns The Lens, a question that draws a stare out of CW, whose laser beam eyes bore into the photographer with a ferocity that means there’s no mention of potential sales, clandestine offers, money under the floorboards or summer weekends in uptown Skegness until we’re firmly on the M6 heading south.

Strensham Services has enjoyed a much-needed facelift in recent years, though outlets such as Leon – ‘Naturally Fast Food’ have only a handful of eaters sampling their impressively marketed ‘Save the Planet’ wares, while McDonald’s next door has at least fifty people awaiting its slightly less ethical delights. There’s the obligatory weekly exchange of cash for ‘It only takes cards’ digital orders, though Bennett is singularly unimpressed to find he is to be owed 68p on top of the penny he’s still awaiting from Membury a couple of weeks ago, while McLarney gains then loses the £2 that’s been double-ringed in his ‘Money I’m Still Missing’ journal that he carries with him wherever he goes.

White indulges in Mozarella Sticks, whatever they are, before having his request to ‘Find something else to eat’ declined before he’s actually completed the appeal, while Vaile purchases his forty-fourth £7.76 meal of the season, before dipping his fries in a dodgy-looking McFlurry, also for the forty-fourth time since the end of September. Across the way, Folley and Hayes are far too aristocratic to get involved in anything as ordinary as Maccy D’s and closet themselves alongside Coach Wilson on a corner table in Costa, sipping their vanilla lattes or whatever it is they drink, while no doubt indulging in some deeply meaningful discourse on the rise and fall of the Third Reich, if CW’s previous twenty years of two-to-one seminars is anything to go by.

It’s only a twenty-minute jaunt from Strensham back to Longlevens and we’re back at The Ranch shortly before two, and an hour and a bit before yet another soul-destroying afternoon at New Meadow Park kicks off, though at this particular moment we can only guess that Gloucester City will fail to score and lose yet again, this time against high-flying Brackley Town. ‘It’s all huff and puff,’ moans a shivering Martyn Ellis a few hours later. ‘I haven’t seen too much puff,’ counters the bloke on his left. ‘Nor huff,’ adds his mate on the right, seconds before the trio see a man in an orange steward’s jacket open the stadium gates, giving people the opportunity they’ve been waiting for all game and escape the torpor with five minutes plus added time still remaining.

Back at GL2, the cars drive away as the team decamps to the various parts of the city for an afternoon watching the FA Cup scores coming in with a quick snooze and ten minutes on the X-Box to boot. And by three o’clock, White will no doubt be eating again – after all, it’ll be at least an hour and a bit since the last time he indulged in this sort of weekend entertainment.

Back in Castle Vale, they’re boarding up the hatches and nailing down everything that moves and most things that don’t. A squall of icy rain splatters the helmet of the tin foil knight and the resident polar bears find a second homeless armchair to add to their ever-growing alleyway barricade. Saturday night’s not too far away and as on all these weekly occasions, Sunday morning is something that everyone in these parts simply hopes they’ll be around to see.

Gloucester A: Folley; McLarney, Hayes, Vaile; White, Clifford, Hanlon, Manning; Brooks; Bennet, Buckland