Festive Breaks
Different people have different ways of celebrating the festive season and different people have different ways of celebrating its end.
Pink Alert has spent the last thirteen non-GPSFA days seeing how many three-letter ways there are of disguising his horrifically coloured boots and as such gaining a couple of much-need brownie points from the management. With brown being the operative word, he’s tried wax and ink and pol and ish and dub and bin, but finally settles for good old-fashioned mud after realising that a really big tin of jet black paint has far too many letters in it.
Over at Pippin Close Hospital, fellow Longlevens-ite Lazarus has decided that the opportunity of having non-stop 24-hour care and thus the perfect excuse to lie in bed watching the Premier League unfold throughout Boxing Day courtesy of Amazon Prime, is a far better idea than travelling to the Phillips 66 Community Stadium to watch Gloucester City subside 3-0 to a very average Leamington team. The Photographer, who by his own admission only eats sprouts once a year (‘That’s me done for 2019,’ he proclaimed at 2.15pm on December 25th), leaves all his greens at the pre-match meal on the 26th, much to the delight of The Chairman, whose 1951/52 New Year’s resolution, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth’, clearly still holds good. While Lazarus continues his long-term recovery, Father S is over at the Hartpury outlet village, buying up as many post-Xmas bargains in the Boxing Day half-price sale as his fairly meagre holiday savings allow, meaning Lazarus’s Brother J, Mother P, Granddad G and Grandma C’s festive presents for 364 days’ time are all sorted by midday. Only Malcolm X to go then.
One of our Own has been busy moving house after spending the past four months persuading Mother Bevan that living on The Edge will really enhance his game, and help promote his central midfield ranking from sergeant to general. Having set the stop watch to count down exactly 309 hours and 12½ minutes from the moment he stepped off the Swansea mini bus on the evening of Saturday 21st December to the moment he leaves his new abode for training on the afternoon of Friday 3rd January, he arrives at Oxstalls chomping at the proverbial bit and in desperate need of a painfully administered sedative.
Nice OB has enjoyed an interesting break; after spending several hours scanning the unused Thomas Cook tourist brochures that he discovered while returning the coffee cups to the Highnam Primary School staff room, he’s surprised to see how many Croatian towns begin with the last four letters of the (English) alphabet. Despite his non-stop pleas to make a winter’s return trip to the country that inspired what will undoubtedly be a lifelong love of Reptilia Testudines, he’s bundled into the back of the car and whisked up the M1 to spend Christmas in the West Yorkshire town of Wetherby. ‘At least it starts with a W,’ insists Mother Beaumont later that evening, as she soaks her still-aching feet in a metal tub that’s topped up at regular intervals with a kettleful of boiling water.
Sweet Caroline (Junior) has had a miserable festive experience. Expecting to spend the majority of his time off indulging in his second-favourite pastime (sleeping), he’s appalled to hear the family are off to a camp site in Woodstock for a seven-day Neil Diamond revival concert. On Monday morning he’s woken at the crack of dawn by Father Hine blaring out a pretty tuneless rendition of ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’, an explosion of noise that not even burying your head in the depths of your eco-friendly FGR soundproof sleeping bag can successfully suppress. Tuesday at 07:00 it’s ‘Love on the Rocks’, while Wednesday’s early-morning chorus, ‘Nothing but a Heartache’ rings oh, so true for the remainder of the ‘So good, so good’ mid-Oxfordshire experience.
The trendsetters amongst the group, the seasonally-appropriate duo BC - Brockbank and Curtis, have spent most of late December / early January at the hairstylists. The skipper has made regular visits to the H2O Hair Design salon at Olympus Park, where Chris & Dave have spent an inordinate amount of time ensuring that his return to the fray sees him leading the way in regard to fringe settings. Curtis on the other hand has enjoyed half a dozen trips to Tyler Creed, an establishment which is situated on the second of Church Road’s mini roundabouts, only a couple of hundred yards from the big green gates of the Home of Football. ‘If I decide to head the ball in the first home game after Christmas, I can get down there pretty quick to have my follicles re-done,’ reasons our marauding left back. ‘Can I join you?’ asks Brockers, ‘those cockney songs that Chas & Dave keep singing while shaping my crown are driving me nuts.’
Croose also makes half a dozen visits to Tyler Creed over the course of the festive break, but it’ll come as no surprise to regular readers that the establishment’s doors have been triple-locked on each occasion. While festive knots of Gordian proportions were being tied on Sisson’s Road, our centre forward was hard at work reading his favourite literary pieces – Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings trilogy’ and Stephen Hawkings’ ‘A Briefer History of Time’, resulting firstly in a misplaced matrimonial band and secondly, remarkably early appearances at both Friday evening’s coaching session and Saturday morning’s meet-up at Longlevens. At least one of the two went down well.
Frederick Whaddon Road Milton is also rumoured to have spent the majority of the 13-day break swotting up on various events of historical interest as part of his late-December Y6 homework. ‘I’ve been researching Frederick the Great, who did amazing things as the ruler of Prussia and is one of the most important people in the history of the world,’ gloats the team’s only Heronian. ‘But you were named after Frederick I,’ interjects Croatia Testudine, the only person who knows about such things. ‘And he wasn’t.’
Just up the road in Mordor Drive, Stavrou Junior has had to watch thirteen early-morning reruns of Father Ansermoz’s favourite film, the WWII epic, ‘The Guns of Navarone’. ‘There I am,’ says the Colonel, pointing excitedly at the black & white images climbing a nasty-looking cliff for the twelfth consecutive 7.27am screening, ‘just to the right of Gregory Peck and….’ ‘I know, I know,’ replies SJ, ‘and two ledges down from David Niven. Now is it time for breakfast yet?’
Over at Bloomfield, there’s a festively lyrical version of everyone’s favourite paper & pencil word guessing game that includes a noose, a platform, a scaffold and a seasonal song taking place. ‘On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I’m going to have an A’, sings the Nicer half of Elmbridge, making the self-same choice of letter that he’s made on each of the previous eleven afternoons. Unsurprisingly, not one of that multitude of games features a single human limb being drawn on the executioner’s apparatus. ‘Monopoly next year,’ sighs a somewhat dispirited Mr A, who will spend the next twelve months planning to build hotels on both Mayfair and Park Lane and liquidate, financially at any rate, the rest of the family in the process.
And so, to Saturday. With the Friday morning temperature registering a balmy Diana Ross times three, The Groundsman’s absent again, having been struck down with a dose of Beri Beri or some other tropical disease, such as hearing there’s an across-the-board ten per cent discount at the car boot sale down the cattle market.
The early birds each arrive clutching their most cherished Christmas gifts: The Chef enters with a gallon bottle of ‘Premier’ cooking oil squeezed under each arm, The Photographer a leather-bound original of ‘Scams & Rackets for the 2020s’ sitting atop his big ready money-making machine and The Chairman with a tray of flapjacks and tub of Celebrations, though he hasn’t as yet decided whether to put them in the kitchen and raffle respectively, or leave them on the passenger seat of his car to ingest ‘should an emergency arise’ on the journey home.
Outside on the patio, Mother Simpson has come out in support of Mother Beaumont and forsaken her jackboots in preference of a pair of ankle huggers, similar to those modelled by Mother Bennett in the mid-December defeat of Sutton. Colonel Stavrou nods his approval.
With Bath missing a good number of their first-choice players due to a variety of extended Alpine holidays, the visitors are no match for a city team keen to start the new year as they had nearly finished the old one. With BC, alongside initially The Croatian and later Pink Alert giving little away despite it now being AD (after December), the visitors rarely trouble Ansermoz in the home goal, who is genuinely unhappy when his hoped-for clean sheet is scuppered by a fine 34th minute strike from Kiely.
The team’s midfielders meanwhile have little need to make their Friday evening recovery runs and they, alongside a variety of forward players display some nice touches and pleasing interplay in what is, in all fairness, a very one-sided affair. Credit to Bath though who never stop trying to play out from the back, even if at times it creates its own problems when they lose the ball to an eager black & yellow challenge.
For the record, Now-On-Time and One of Our Own net three apiece, while Triple A Plus Two, Sweet Caroline and a first of the season for JC complete the tally.
The afternoon after the morning before is an odd mix of pleasure and disappointment. With the Bs beating Swindon and the Girls recording a fine victory over both Barking & Dagenham, there are three Ws on the results board, which is always a pleasing conclusion to the morning’s endeavours.
With The Chairman having decided that an emergency on the way back to Highnam Villas is a distinct possibility, he immediately opens the BMW’s under-used throttle and heads, post haste, to the lay-by just down from the Toby Carvery at Over to ‘see off’ the flapjacks and Celebrations that didn’t quite make either the kitchen counter or the raffle. With said Chairman otherwise engaged, The Photographer is the only other peruser of the King Teddy all-day menu, a list he searches most Saturday afternoons for any mention of either gravy or 20% off. Or preferably, both. At 3.05 he consults the GCFC twitter account to find that the not-so-mighty Tigers are already one-nil down at Darlington. It looks like being another long post meridian.
6.55pm and the last batch of now Lemon Fresh kit comes out of the washing machine. In the meantime, Darlington have won 2-1 and Blyth have won too, meaning the gap at the bottom of the National League North is down to just six points. The gloom is partially lifted however by seeing that all the black & yellow socks, shorts and shirts have exited the drum turned the right way out, meaning that they were all left in the middle of the changing room floor just as they should have been. All bar one shirt, that is. And the one shirt has number nine on the back of it. Whether it be relegation possibilities or errant centre forwards, you do the maths.
Gloucester A: Stavrou Junior; Croatia Testudine, Caramel Sundae, JC; Born Again, One of Our Own, Lazarus, Triple A plus Two; Right-on-Time; Sweet Caroline, Pink Alert.
Pink Alert has spent the last thirteen non-GPSFA days seeing how many three-letter ways there are of disguising his horrifically coloured boots and as such gaining a couple of much-need brownie points from the management. With brown being the operative word, he’s tried wax and ink and pol and ish and dub and bin, but finally settles for good old-fashioned mud after realising that a really big tin of jet black paint has far too many letters in it.
Over at Pippin Close Hospital, fellow Longlevens-ite Lazarus has decided that the opportunity of having non-stop 24-hour care and thus the perfect excuse to lie in bed watching the Premier League unfold throughout Boxing Day courtesy of Amazon Prime, is a far better idea than travelling to the Phillips 66 Community Stadium to watch Gloucester City subside 3-0 to a very average Leamington team. The Photographer, who by his own admission only eats sprouts once a year (‘That’s me done for 2019,’ he proclaimed at 2.15pm on December 25th), leaves all his greens at the pre-match meal on the 26th, much to the delight of The Chairman, whose 1951/52 New Year’s resolution, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth’, clearly still holds good. While Lazarus continues his long-term recovery, Father S is over at the Hartpury outlet village, buying up as many post-Xmas bargains in the Boxing Day half-price sale as his fairly meagre holiday savings allow, meaning Lazarus’s Brother J, Mother P, Granddad G and Grandma C’s festive presents for 364 days’ time are all sorted by midday. Only Malcolm X to go then.
One of our Own has been busy moving house after spending the past four months persuading Mother Bevan that living on The Edge will really enhance his game, and help promote his central midfield ranking from sergeant to general. Having set the stop watch to count down exactly 309 hours and 12½ minutes from the moment he stepped off the Swansea mini bus on the evening of Saturday 21st December to the moment he leaves his new abode for training on the afternoon of Friday 3rd January, he arrives at Oxstalls chomping at the proverbial bit and in desperate need of a painfully administered sedative.
Nice OB has enjoyed an interesting break; after spending several hours scanning the unused Thomas Cook tourist brochures that he discovered while returning the coffee cups to the Highnam Primary School staff room, he’s surprised to see how many Croatian towns begin with the last four letters of the (English) alphabet. Despite his non-stop pleas to make a winter’s return trip to the country that inspired what will undoubtedly be a lifelong love of Reptilia Testudines, he’s bundled into the back of the car and whisked up the M1 to spend Christmas in the West Yorkshire town of Wetherby. ‘At least it starts with a W,’ insists Mother Beaumont later that evening, as she soaks her still-aching feet in a metal tub that’s topped up at regular intervals with a kettleful of boiling water.
Sweet Caroline (Junior) has had a miserable festive experience. Expecting to spend the majority of his time off indulging in his second-favourite pastime (sleeping), he’s appalled to hear the family are off to a camp site in Woodstock for a seven-day Neil Diamond revival concert. On Monday morning he’s woken at the crack of dawn by Father Hine blaring out a pretty tuneless rendition of ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’, an explosion of noise that not even burying your head in the depths of your eco-friendly FGR soundproof sleeping bag can successfully suppress. Tuesday at 07:00 it’s ‘Love on the Rocks’, while Wednesday’s early-morning chorus, ‘Nothing but a Heartache’ rings oh, so true for the remainder of the ‘So good, so good’ mid-Oxfordshire experience.
The trendsetters amongst the group, the seasonally-appropriate duo BC - Brockbank and Curtis, have spent most of late December / early January at the hairstylists. The skipper has made regular visits to the H2O Hair Design salon at Olympus Park, where Chris & Dave have spent an inordinate amount of time ensuring that his return to the fray sees him leading the way in regard to fringe settings. Curtis on the other hand has enjoyed half a dozen trips to Tyler Creed, an establishment which is situated on the second of Church Road’s mini roundabouts, only a couple of hundred yards from the big green gates of the Home of Football. ‘If I decide to head the ball in the first home game after Christmas, I can get down there pretty quick to have my follicles re-done,’ reasons our marauding left back. ‘Can I join you?’ asks Brockers, ‘those cockney songs that Chas & Dave keep singing while shaping my crown are driving me nuts.’
Croose also makes half a dozen visits to Tyler Creed over the course of the festive break, but it’ll come as no surprise to regular readers that the establishment’s doors have been triple-locked on each occasion. While festive knots of Gordian proportions were being tied on Sisson’s Road, our centre forward was hard at work reading his favourite literary pieces – Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings trilogy’ and Stephen Hawkings’ ‘A Briefer History of Time’, resulting firstly in a misplaced matrimonial band and secondly, remarkably early appearances at both Friday evening’s coaching session and Saturday morning’s meet-up at Longlevens. At least one of the two went down well.
Frederick Whaddon Road Milton is also rumoured to have spent the majority of the 13-day break swotting up on various events of historical interest as part of his late-December Y6 homework. ‘I’ve been researching Frederick the Great, who did amazing things as the ruler of Prussia and is one of the most important people in the history of the world,’ gloats the team’s only Heronian. ‘But you were named after Frederick I,’ interjects Croatia Testudine, the only person who knows about such things. ‘And he wasn’t.’
Just up the road in Mordor Drive, Stavrou Junior has had to watch thirteen early-morning reruns of Father Ansermoz’s favourite film, the WWII epic, ‘The Guns of Navarone’. ‘There I am,’ says the Colonel, pointing excitedly at the black & white images climbing a nasty-looking cliff for the twelfth consecutive 7.27am screening, ‘just to the right of Gregory Peck and….’ ‘I know, I know,’ replies SJ, ‘and two ledges down from David Niven. Now is it time for breakfast yet?’
Over at Bloomfield, there’s a festively lyrical version of everyone’s favourite paper & pencil word guessing game that includes a noose, a platform, a scaffold and a seasonal song taking place. ‘On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I’m going to have an A’, sings the Nicer half of Elmbridge, making the self-same choice of letter that he’s made on each of the previous eleven afternoons. Unsurprisingly, not one of that multitude of games features a single human limb being drawn on the executioner’s apparatus. ‘Monopoly next year,’ sighs a somewhat dispirited Mr A, who will spend the next twelve months planning to build hotels on both Mayfair and Park Lane and liquidate, financially at any rate, the rest of the family in the process.
And so, to Saturday. With the Friday morning temperature registering a balmy Diana Ross times three, The Groundsman’s absent again, having been struck down with a dose of Beri Beri or some other tropical disease, such as hearing there’s an across-the-board ten per cent discount at the car boot sale down the cattle market.
The early birds each arrive clutching their most cherished Christmas gifts: The Chef enters with a gallon bottle of ‘Premier’ cooking oil squeezed under each arm, The Photographer a leather-bound original of ‘Scams & Rackets for the 2020s’ sitting atop his big ready money-making machine and The Chairman with a tray of flapjacks and tub of Celebrations, though he hasn’t as yet decided whether to put them in the kitchen and raffle respectively, or leave them on the passenger seat of his car to ingest ‘should an emergency arise’ on the journey home.
Outside on the patio, Mother Simpson has come out in support of Mother Beaumont and forsaken her jackboots in preference of a pair of ankle huggers, similar to those modelled by Mother Bennett in the mid-December defeat of Sutton. Colonel Stavrou nods his approval.
With Bath missing a good number of their first-choice players due to a variety of extended Alpine holidays, the visitors are no match for a city team keen to start the new year as they had nearly finished the old one. With BC, alongside initially The Croatian and later Pink Alert giving little away despite it now being AD (after December), the visitors rarely trouble Ansermoz in the home goal, who is genuinely unhappy when his hoped-for clean sheet is scuppered by a fine 34th minute strike from Kiely.
The team’s midfielders meanwhile have little need to make their Friday evening recovery runs and they, alongside a variety of forward players display some nice touches and pleasing interplay in what is, in all fairness, a very one-sided affair. Credit to Bath though who never stop trying to play out from the back, even if at times it creates its own problems when they lose the ball to an eager black & yellow challenge.
For the record, Now-On-Time and One of Our Own net three apiece, while Triple A Plus Two, Sweet Caroline and a first of the season for JC complete the tally.
The afternoon after the morning before is an odd mix of pleasure and disappointment. With the Bs beating Swindon and the Girls recording a fine victory over both Barking & Dagenham, there are three Ws on the results board, which is always a pleasing conclusion to the morning’s endeavours.
With The Chairman having decided that an emergency on the way back to Highnam Villas is a distinct possibility, he immediately opens the BMW’s under-used throttle and heads, post haste, to the lay-by just down from the Toby Carvery at Over to ‘see off’ the flapjacks and Celebrations that didn’t quite make either the kitchen counter or the raffle. With said Chairman otherwise engaged, The Photographer is the only other peruser of the King Teddy all-day menu, a list he searches most Saturday afternoons for any mention of either gravy or 20% off. Or preferably, both. At 3.05 he consults the GCFC twitter account to find that the not-so-mighty Tigers are already one-nil down at Darlington. It looks like being another long post meridian.
6.55pm and the last batch of now Lemon Fresh kit comes out of the washing machine. In the meantime, Darlington have won 2-1 and Blyth have won too, meaning the gap at the bottom of the National League North is down to just six points. The gloom is partially lifted however by seeing that all the black & yellow socks, shorts and shirts have exited the drum turned the right way out, meaning that they were all left in the middle of the changing room floor just as they should have been. All bar one shirt, that is. And the one shirt has number nine on the back of it. Whether it be relegation possibilities or errant centre forwards, you do the maths.
Gloucester A: Stavrou Junior; Croatia Testudine, Caramel Sundae, JC; Born Again, One of Our Own, Lazarus, Triple A plus Two; Right-on-Time; Sweet Caroline, Pink Alert.
