Thursday

9.20am: Getting away on the dot is always a good start to any trip and BOS consistently sets the tone (hence his initials), arriving well before the departure time and getting the chance to dip his fingers into the little plastic box to sort out the seat allocations. Freddie F’s in Pew No 1, which is a relief, but Jacob M’s in Pew No 2….

There are a few chords echoing from the rear seats as we turn right at The Frogmill, but not too much else until we’re past Oxford and roaring merrily down the M40. This group’s singing is very different to last year’s, who were at it pretty much non-stop, usually with the same verses repeated around a hundred times per journey. But at least they were relatively tuneful. Our erstwhile goalkeeper this time around was part of the ‘Young Voices’ concert at the NEC earlier this season; the annual gathering of about 8,000 schoolchildren all belting out the same tunes at approximately the same time makes for a pretty awe-inspiring sight and sound, but for the sake of the other 7,999, let’s hope he didn’t sing.

A majority vote decrees we forego the pre-planned Beaconsfield toilet stop and instead head straight for an extended lunch break at South Mimms. On arrival, RB heads straight for the ‘Good Breakfast’ outlet and a sausage & bacon bap, while everyone else makes for KFC to partake in the ritualistic, start-of-tour celebratory lunch. The Photographer, thinking it’s his turn to pay, settles for a Subway cookie and a cuppa tea, though frustratingly for him, he doesn’t have time to upgrade once he discovers it’s not yet his shout.

The big service station screen carries the news of John Motson’s passing at the age of 77. Twenty-nine years ago, almost to the day, the parents on our 1994 London tour stayed at the same St Albans hotel as Motty, who, by all accounts, displayed a big, black hole in his legendary encyclopaedic footballing knowledge by revealing he’d never heard of GPSFA. How very disappointing.

The M25 and M11 are both pretty clear and we rack up at Douglas Eyre at 1.15 on the dot, just as we said we would. There are a couple of resident geese padding around just outside the entrance, testament to the fact that the Walthamstow reservoirs are just across the way from this oasis of green in the middle of north-west London’s hustle and bustle, narrow streets and traffic-laden roads.

Today’s match is for the Grizdale-Larter Cup, a trophy named after two stalwarts of Hackney SFA who each died during the Covid year. The pair oversaw a plethora of Hackney U11 seasons, during which time a good number of future professional players took their first steps in the game, many of whom attended the memorial service to mark JL & DG’s dedication to the young people of this fascinating London borough.

We take an early 2-0 lead, Mckinley heading home Jude’s corner and Amadou finishing first time following Roko’s fine pass. The hosts come back strongly though to equalise, but another Mckinley header from Jude’s free kick and a long-awaited first goal of the season from RB put us 4-2 ahead before a late Hackney fightback sees them level from the penalty spot with just two minutes remaining.

Medals are presented to all players as the cup is shared for the second year running, though this season’s encounter has featured eight more goals than last year’s game. Two people (MO & TB) lose their first eating marks of the trip, while JS profits (materially, not points-wise), to the tune of an extra sausage that mysteriously materialises, Star Trek-style, on his plate. NC leaves Douglas Eyre still on a Bo Derek (Perfect 10) for eating, much to everybody’s mystification, following his October travails in the Isle of Wight. The Photographer eats his fill due to everything being free and we depart Douglas Eyre having left only a good impression (and a few of Theo Barnett’s chips & beans).

The team think it’s slow-going, but we’re more than a little pleased to exit NW London, navigate the M25 and squeeze past the south side of St Albans during rush hour in seventy minutes flat and we rack up at the Holiday Inn in Hemel shortly before 6.30.

The rooms are apportioned: in 230 are Roko & Mckinley – Roko’s dinner-plate eyes suggesting he’s very much in favour of this pairing. Theo & Jude are in 237, while Amadou & Niko are sharing number 240. Toby & Braden start unpacking in 242, while Jacob & Freddie realise, as there’s no-one else still in the corridor, that they’re about to be billeted together in 243. If Paddy Power were in situ, they’d already be taking bets on who’ll be the Room Inspector’s soon-to-be Wooden-spoonists.

We’re back out at seven and in Hollywood Bowl, north Watford, by twenty-past. Despite there being a few teething problems with the new Longlevens phone, most people get through to home, while Roko busies himself with the task of becoming London bowling champion in scoring a nice round hundred. Damari, in his absence, mysteriously accumulates a score of 61 on the digital total (we sent the names to Hollywood Bowl while he was still in the land of the living) and in so doing proves that mind always triumphs over matter and you can clearly knock over a load of skittle pins just by thinking about it.

The second referendum of the day sees McDonald’s (400 yards from The Bowl) next up and a glorious six minutes of silence descends over Woodside as everyone tucks in to their various culinary acquisitions. Niko polishes everything off in between toilet visits and a quick scan of ‘Paddington Out and About’, which is without doubt (nutrition-wise) the Happiest bit of his Happy Meal.

Nice Roko B offers to buy The Photographer a meal as his has been provided and it’s no surprise when The Lens begrudgingly (but immediately) accepts. RB knows full well that the ‘begrudging’ bit is all for show, as The Lens suddenly shouts out: ‘Okay, then’ at the very point he thinks the offer is about to be withdrawn. ‘Still haven’t spent anything,’ he says to no-one in particular, while rueing the fact that without his Big, Red, Money-Making Machine being in tow, his chances of snapping and selling the locals pictures of themselves consuming twenty chicken nuggets and a containerful of very large fries are somewhat limited.

There’s a quick walk around the car park to aid the initial digestion process before entering the Diary Room for the first writing session of the trip. Mckinley immediately asks to use the facilities and upsets everyone else by leaving the bathroom door open afterwards. Jacob and Toby both start their journals strongly, while Niko doesn’t quite finish his due to requiring an ‘Anadin’ break. The wonders of faith-healing, a process initially instigated by the invention of Calpol, are clearly extended to anything containing a small amount of Paracetamol and within five minutes he’s perked up again and raring to go once more.

He’s even happier when he gets his first-ever Eating ‘10’, but not quite as smiley on discovering that he and AD have only scored 8 (bag on floor, curtains not fully closed and toilet seat up) on Thursday evening’s room marks. 237 (Jude & Theo) come in at 8.5 – clearly the hair dryer being left out is not as heinous an oversight as an upturned loo seat. Roko and Mckinley (230) suffer from pyjamas being left on the bed and shoes not being in the closet amongst other atrocities and bag a ‘7’, while 242 (Toby & BOS) have a kit bag on the floor, a bottle on the table and PJs on the bed, but still finish equal first on 8.5 in today’s ratings. Not finishing equal first – or anywhere near second, third or fourth, is 243 (Freddie & Jacob). There are clothes on the bed, clothes on the floor, clothes on the table, an unflushed loo, dirty water in the bath – and that’s just the first section of a rather long list. The fact that they score 2 is more to do with the largesse of the Room Inspector, rather than being deserving of any tidiness marks at all.

Friday

8.00am and there are the usual sights and sounds of a lovely, sunny, spring morning in deepest Hertfordshire – groans, grunts, surprise, hair, eyes and retreating beneath the duvet are just some of the features of rooms 230, 237, 240 & 243 of the Holiday Inn, Hemel Hempstead. The inhabitants of Room 242 (BOS & Toby), however, are washed, dressed and raring to go long before their key card is swiped, though they have to return to the bathroom to clean their gnashers before being allowed anywhere near a public place.

The HI restaurant is properly full, but we have two reserved tables in the middle of 80-100 tourists and commuters, from which the various buffet stations can be accessed. Fruit juice & toast are at the back, cereals in the middle, pastries and yogurt to the right and cooked to the left. Jacob Magness’s peepers involuntarily shoot forth, just before his roving Cyclopean eye has taken in even half of the Nirvana in front of him and he moves off immediately to begin an eating journey that threatens to double our already substantial hotel invoice. He’s one of those rare specimens who, in later life, will be banned from ‘All you can eat’ restaurants because they haven’t got enough supplies to restock the shelves quickly enough and for whom an ‘all-inclusive cruise’ doesn’t include the other 150 people on board the ship.

Elsewhere, people eat well, though Captain Fred has an early-morning tussle with a couple of bacon rashers that end with a minus one and Theo B spends fifteen minutes fastidiously removing around 55 raisins from what is a sorry-looking pastry at the end of its rather extensive surgery. Niko, wisely, parks himself on The Lens’s table, meaning he’s largely unsupervised due to the camera owner upsetting any number of other guests by continually wandering around the place photographing anyone he can see wearing a GPSFA polo shirt. Until he realises that breakfast is included in the price, that is, at which points he finally sits down and eats as much as he can.

We’re on the bus at ten and heading east to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, having earlier registered our number plate on the ‘London Low Emissions’ website, thus saving the driver two seventy-quid fines as happened exactly twelve months previously.

‘Are you sure we can stop here?’ asks The Lens, who likes to do everything by the book apart from pay, as we park up on the empty strip of land adjoining the southern corner of this amazing structure. It’s genuinely like a ten-star hotel inside and we get to see the vast majority of it thanks to being one of very few groups to be apportioned their own personal guide. Russ joins us due to Coach Stalley working for the son of Daniel Levy, the Spurs’ Chairman, so there really is a connection between GPSFA & Spurs, despite it being a slightly tenuous one, much to Niko C’s well-disguised delight.

This evening’s diaries will reveal that the favourite parts of the tour were seeing the trophies (as someone said, they didn’t know Spurs had ever won anything), the home changing room, the manager’s quarters, the tunnel, pitch & dugout, the Premier Lounge with the formations through the decades embossed on the tiles nearest the glass-fronted tunnel, the NFL changing area and the press room. So just about everything, really. This state-of-the-art labyrinth is to The Lens is what breakfast is to Jacob M and he never tires of snapping BOS’s photogenic teeth, Jude’s ‘Jack G’ hairband or RB’s ‘Great Gatsby’-style coiffure. Toby G & Amadou D don’t seem to think smiling is necessary in photos though, and even the manager’s childish, face-pulling attempts to upturn the corners of their mouths falls on pretty stoney ground. Not sure why he thinks this is important though, as he’s never knowingly smiled on one, either.

The stadium tour is appropriately concluded in the Spurs Café, where FF & RB share a pepperoni pizza; JS, meanwhile, snaffles a whole one on his own. The other seven plump for chicken goujons, while MO indulges himself in a BBQ sauce dip that takes him a million times longer to complete than it did for The Photographer to exclaim: ‘Oh, good!’ when hearing the earlier announcement: ‘I’ll pay.’

The walk back down the High Street to the bus is an interesting one: on the left a billion-pound super stadium, while on the right a whole street of terraced 60s shops selling everything from Tottenham Jerk Chicken to London’s Best Tattoos, while the frontage with the ‘Great Kebabs’ sign suggests this Turkish emporium has a very limited number of actual Delights. It’s the Old v the New, the Drab v the Flash, the Haves v the Have-Nots and it’s all very thought-provoking, if nothing else.

The Lens eruditely describes the northbound traffic as ‘London-like’ as we head back to the HI to change into match kit before making the 20-minute jaunt to St Albans for an afternoon encounter which won’t live long in the memory. In fact, apart from an FF effort that is deflected wide by the home keeper just before the break and a remarkable catch/save from JM midway through the second half (after he’s kicked the ball straight to their player), I’ve forgotten everything about it. No bother, there are more exciting things to come and they’re in the shape of ten rampaging Ninja Warriors.

There’s plenty of sweat expounded on the sizeable course after we’re stung for ten pairs of Ninja socks, the purpose of which, apart from being able to see people in the dark, remains unclear. The Photographer, though, manages to negotiate a free pair, so he, at least, is happy. It’s Maccy D’s again for evening meal, but this one’s back in Hemel, where Niko isn’t as impressed with the limited toilet facilities as he is with the acquisition of another Paddington storybook. Amadou is more than happy with his plant food burger, however, while Jacob is thrilled with a huge wrap that lasts circa fifteen seconds before finding its way into the introductory end of his alimentary canal.

Room inspections see the marks inching up on yesterday’s totals – 230 (MO & RB) score 8.5 (light still on, toilet seat still up; curtains now open), while 237 (JS & TB) have gone to 9 (Dove Cream and curtains both open). 240 (AD & NC) have left their Lynx out and haven’t adjusted the position of the toilet seat) but are also on 9, as are TG & BOS in 242 – curtains open and the clothes in the cupboard not being particularly tidy, their only Friday evening discrepancies. But the biggest movers of all – and in the right direction, too – are 243 (FF & JM), who have doubled their score – to 4, their only oversights being: Coats on chair, curtains open, hat on table, PJs on the bed, bath dirty, toilet not flushed, dirty towel in the corner of the bathroom and a dirty hankie on the bedside table. Things are certainly looking up.

The diaries are moving on as well and apart from Mckinley, who’s been forced to write left-handed due to the big, red ball in Ninja colliding with his right shoulder, everyone puts together a half-decent account of the day’s happenings. Half an Anadin tablet will no doubt cure it, though. On the other side of the room, Amadou uses the facilities and upsets everyone else by not closing the door afterwards. So that’s what plant food does to you….

Saturday

We’re rewarded for making it to Day Three by having a much-needed lie-in. Even BOS & TG aren’t quite topped and tailed, though they’re not far away when the 8.30 waking call (lights turned on; curtains suddenly opened) comes around. JS looks the worst of a bad bunch, eyes like dark pools plummeting to unimaginable depths as he attempts to piece together what the intonation ‘Good morning, Campers,’ really involves. In the next bed, roommate TB’s new-found, Clutterbuck-styled thatch means that the Isle of Wight’s, first-thing-in-the-morning, lesser-spotted porcupine spikes are now a thing of the dim and distant past.

We don’t start the second Holiday Inn breakfast until 9.10, which allows the majority of the guests time for some early-morning sustenance before JM arrives to clear the remainder of the restaurant decks. Thinking there won’t be anything left once The Goalkeeper arrives, The Lens has snuck down already and helped himself to a full English before the rest of us pitch up at the buffet. It’s amazing what the prospect of a free meal can do for his appetite.

Having ensured that we’re the last game on at Woking (doing all the tour organising has its perks; not many, but important ones), we enjoy a leisurely departure following the final room inspection of the tour. 230 (MO & RB) is the only abode to score a perfect 10, with nothing at all left behind, while 240 (AD & NC) and 242 (BOS & TG) come in at a very creditable 9 following a pair of minor oversights. While nothing is left in 237 (JS & TB), it would have been had the Room Inspector not intervened, so 1.5 is deducted in lieu. Room 243 (FF & JM) goes up another two to six out of ten; no doubt those impressive mathematicians, AD & TG could tell us that this is a 200% increase on Thursday’s total, if anyone had bothered to ask them. 243’s problem, unsurprisingly, is in the bathroom, but due to this being an ‘open’ blog in that anyone can read it, there is no justification for any more detail. As a final attempt at making things better, the bedroom window is left as far open as the latch will allow, meaning as long as no-one enters before next Wednesday, we should be okay.

It’s an easy drive to Woking, where we play against a very good side with three or four extremely useful players. The energy levels, commitment and resilience of our team, however, are all top class and despite most of the game being played in our half, it remains goalless at half-time. Mckinley, BOS and Niko are excellent in the Gloucester back line, while Jacob, as has become his wont, catches everything.

Freddie and Theo both strive manfully (or boyfully?) up front and on forty minutes we go close to taking the lead, Jude finding Toby on the left and his well struck drive is equally well saved by the keeper. From the resulting corner, the slightest touch from a Woking defender diverts the ball away from Mckinley, who for a split second looks as if he’ll repeat his Hackney tricks.

Woking eventually take the lead midway through the second period, the ball being scrambled over the line after Jacob had saved the initial spot kick. The hosts add a second four minutes later, but with Roko, Amadou and the indefatigable Hey, Jude – along with everyone else – continuing to give their all, there are no further goals.

A second defeat in two days, but this was a properly resolute Gloucester performance with full marks for Commitment, Attitude, Focus & Effort, with a whole load of Grit thrown in for good measure. We might not have played the silky football that our hosts at times displayed, but the aforementioned things are the transferable aptitudes of successful people and in regard to this, we’re very much heading in the right direction.

There’s post-match pizza before we say our goodbyes before heading back up the M4 to Membury, where the girls’ team, buoyed by their excellent 2-2 draw on the pitch just above ours, are already feasting themselves on a Colonel Sanders recipe that seems to have caught on, judging by the number of people sporting a red & white box at the top of the well-used escalator.

We finally pull in at GL2 at 5.06, four minutes before our ETA and just under 56 hours since we first set out; bags are removed, farewells proffered and diaries handed out. When parents scan the journals’ pages later in the weekend, they will recount specific details of what the writers’ perceptions were of the last few days. And when those very same recounts are extracted from the bottom drawer and the dust brushed from their covers in the years and decades to come, they’ll remind the reader of some of the things they said and some of the things they did during London ’23. But far more importantly, it’ll help them remember, just how it made them feel.

#Carpe Diem

Gloucester: Jacob Magness; Niko Clutterbuck, Mckinley Oakes, Braden O’Sullivan; Theo Barnett, Amadou Diallo, Toby Glazier, Roko Bajzek, Jude Smit; Freddie Fabian.