Pathfinder
Behind the Scenes on the Isle of Wight; 2019
Thursday
It’s dropping-off time at GL2 and Mother Croose goes easy on her offspring by making a last-minute decision to stop the car before pushing him out of the door and zooming home for fifty-odd hours of peace, quiet and a much-needed dose of R & R. Mother Hine is slightly perturbed however due to WH’s staunch refusal to take a last long look back, while Mother Bevan seems fully recovered following CC’s nocturnal visit to Stearman Villas last Saturday evening for a post-Stevenage/Oasis sleepover.
Coach Wilson is unavailable due to having to sort out some million-pound deal or other, so The Chef and grandson Romeo climb the mini bus steps for their first-ever visit to the Dinosaur Isle. There’s little traffic on the A417 and Crickley Hill’s virtually empty, so we arrive at Chieveley in plenty of time in readiness of an early-morning visit to Greggs, before The Chef’s satnav throws out the first of its decidedly dodgy instructions, suggesting we should call into the Vodafone HQ on the left instead of Speenhamland Primary School on the right.
There’s a decent choice of pre-match music in the players’ changing area, while the staff space around the corner in this school where all the clocks show a different time, is interestingly situated next to the ‘Therapy Room’. An omen, perhaps?
Newbury’s ground is an interesting beast as you have to walk up a hill to reach it and after conceding a duo of first half goals from corners, the team has the proverbial mountain to climb in the second period. Croose cuts the deficit following a Bennett corner five minutes in, but within thirty seconds the hosts have restored their two-goal cushion and they add a couple more before the final whistle concludes the morning’s action. Bevan and Hine both strike the woodwork in the final ten minutes as we could and probably should have made the scoreline somewhat closer, but Newbury are quicker to the ball all over the pitch and as such, good value for their victory.
‘Sweet Caroline’ is blaring out post-match, while fifty yards away, the Therapy Room is put to good use for a stint of contemplation, meditation and a fair bit of out-and-out depression. Chicken pasta is on the menu, which doesn’t go down too well with The Chef as it isn’t deep-fried. Croose, Milton and Ansermoz agree and duck out completely, while Bevan joins the non-involved section following a single mouthful. Bennett, Hine, Simpson, Brockbank, Beaumont and Romeo however, all get stuck in as if there’s no tomorrow, with several going back for seconds.
The misfiring satnav takes us on to the wrong carriageway of the A34, necessitating a quick exit and reconfiguration halfway down the High Street of a rather quaint West Berkshire village. The secret with these things is to say nothing and keep going, meaning no-one in the back suspects anything untoward has occurred and apart from Beaumont’s desperate, tortoise-like squeals resulting in an impromptu visit to the public conveniences at Rownham’s Services, we arrive at Gate 7 of the Red Funnel terminal in pretty fine fettle.
The serving lady in the Ferry Café asks if we’re a private school, a question which, whatever people’s political stance on the subject is, probably translates as a compliment to all concerned.
Twelve minutes after a ten-man referendum votes unanimously that we go up onto the top deck of the Red Falcon and enjoy the wind, cold and potential rain coming off The Solent, a second referendum votes 7-3 in favour of retreating into the warmth of the ship’s lounge, where The Chef immediately latches on to a group of six unsuspecting travellers and starts up a one-way conversation in which he overtly enthuses about the various delights of our great Roman city by repeating the same sentence a dozen times over. On swivelling his head for no more than three seconds to check if Romeo is still eating something indescribable from a white polystyrene container, he’s more than a little mystified to discover that the six have become two, the four are nowhere to be seen and the duo are only still there because they’re wedged in a seat between a man who really shouldn’t be eating his fourth ice cream of this fledgling voyage and the formidable figure of The Chef himself.
Ignoring the satnav that seems intent on taking us up a three-foot wide country lane to the right, we veer left and rack up at The Sandhill Hotel, where the nice people (Bevan, Beaumont & Simpson) are allocated a triple room next door to The Chef and Romeo at the penthouse end of the building. On the first floor, Ansermoz and Bennett take up residence in Room 8, Bennett immediately claiming the double bed as Ansermoz is still wallowing in a state of post-match, slow-releasing shock (a bit like slow-release fertiliser, but without the side effects), Brockbank and Hine move seamlessly into Room 17, while Croose and Milton are appropriately entombed at the far end of the corridor in number 15.
It’s dinner time and Room Ten plus Five take exception to the vegetable soup, while Simpson manages half the contents of his bowl before calling time on a starter he didn’t order. Simpson at least restores faith in the team’s powers of resilience by, along with Bevan, seeing off the cherry tomatoes that add a touch of much-needed colour to his burger and chips which, after checking the spreadsheet, he definitely did order. Ansermoz is slow but sure in his eating, while Beaumont, Bennett, Brockbank and Hine consume everything that adorns their plates, patterns included.
Sandown Pier is the evening destination after a twenty-minute walk along the seafront that takes us past a long row of expensive-looking beach huts and a blue balloon lurking on the beach that creates a sense of excitement that no-one can quite understand. On the pier, a posse of intrepid adventurers brave the Adventure Golf that wends its way around a series of papier mache ‘Aztec’ ruins, Milton refuses to believe that the claw-like machine that keeps slipping off the giant bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk isn’t rigged, while Croose stares wide-eyed at his half-full bowl of 2p pieces on hearing we’re departing immediately.
The first evening’s diaries are never of the greatest quality and this literary group’s follow suit, while back in Gloucester, seven sets of parents receive phone calls of varying length and two receive no call at all. Mother Hine is distraught as WH refuses to press the big green button, while Mother Croose is also distraught; not because CC hasn’t rung as she knew he wouldn’t, but when she looks at the clock, the realisation that she only has around forty hours of freedom remaining kicks in and a frantic search for the aspirin bottle ensues.
Friday
There’s sausage and bacon sandwiches for breakfast and toast and butter for Bennett as the table boasts the look and aroma of painstakingly applied hair gel, with only Ansermoz, Croose and Simpson abstaining, preferring the island’s au naturale early-morning look instead.
With the box and two carrier bags holding the packed lunch safely wedged in the back seat of the bus, we’re off to Shanklin seafront, a destination whose name suggests it’s not two miles inland, where the sat nav claims it should be.
The Pirates Cove Crazy Golf is one of those really entertaining courses where the average par is a 3 and everyone can have a bit of success. Unless you’re Brockbank or Simpson, that is. The latter has a mouth like an upturned banana as he contrives to miss each hole by little more than a centimetre, while the former just misses each hole. The captain’s score of 74 actually includes a hole in one which just goes to show he really should have left the satnav alone when attempting the other 17. Both Hine and Romeo also table a much-celebrated numero uno, but their achievements come minus the baggage carried by our esteemed leader. In Team One, Bevan and Beaumont are both extremely competitive, but only Bevan is any good. Mr Hardwicke eventually beats Mr Abbeymead (Ansermoz) by two points to win the first prize overall and will constantly remind everyone of the fact for the next 36 hours. In the group competition, Team One beats Team Two by nine shots (302-311), a revelation that means the upturned banana has little chance of flipping over any time soon.
There’s celebratory ice creams from an outlet that’s five hours away from shutting down for a six-month winter recess, an arms-around-each-other photo opportunity atop the sea wall, a brief stint in the roadside arcade where a thousand tickets gets you a pack of six out-of-date Haribos and a visit to the gift shop where Bennett buys an Isle of Wight pencil for ‘My family to share.’ It’s the thought that counts.
With the daunting prospect of a hundred-plus foot ascent back up to the car park, we locate the Cliff Lift, a modern-day Otis inside a fifty-year-old concrete pillar. £5.60 is a small price to pay for being whisked up the cliff in no more than fifty seconds, before stepping out onto a platform with glass sides, meaning, to several people’s obvious consternation, you can almost touch the void up which we’ve just been transported.
‘I’ll put my GPS on,’ states Pathfinder, as he sets off down Common Road with a sureness of step that suggests he knows exactly where he’s going. Thirty minutes later and after a trio of pointless detours, we eventually discover the bus, which is unsurprisingly still parked in exactly the same spot as we left it, despite The Chef’s ongoing claims that, ‘Someone must have moved it.’
Four miles to the right instead of two miles to the left as the sat nav suggests, is the Isle of Wight Zoo and the nice people on reception allow us to use the café for our packed lunch as the weather is taking a turn for the worse. Milton doesn’t eat crusts and Croose doesn’t eat much at all, but overall the throng is well fed, despite three people who can be identified by the horrid fishy smell they now emit, completing their lunch time refreshment with a packet of utterly disgusting prawn cocktail crisps.
The spider monkeys provide an entertaining introduction to the zoo’s interesting inhabitants and the lemurs or racoons or whatever they are indulge in a cacophony of high-pitched squealing reminiscent of the mini bus on the final leg of last Saturday’s journey home from Stevenage, but it’s the big cats that captivate the group the most. With three o’clock being lion feeding time, no-one really notices the rain as the big cats are up on their hind legs against the perimeter fence, dragging down the hunks of meat that have been tied up there by the duo of keepers who made a pretty quick getaway just before the big brown restraining gate was opened.
With feeding time over, the presence of the rain becomes much more obvious, so it’s back to the hotel for a shower of the much warmer variety and a six-round sports quiz in the downstairs lounge. Bennett & Hine eventually come out on top with an impressive 48 out of 60, Bevan & Croose take second spot after totalling 44, while Brockbank & Ansermoz (40½) end up as mid-table as you can possibly get. Milton doesn’t know where Cheltenham’s ground is as he and Simpson finish on 35½, giving them fourth place or the last-but-one spot, depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty. Beaumont however has drawn the shortest straw and is partnered with Romeo who understandably doesn’t know much, meaning the upturned banana has changed faces for an hour or so at least.
The sausage & mash and pasta bolognese both go down well, with only Croose & Milton dropping points, meaning we have a very definite Waitrose-Asda split in the quality of the eating on display. Dining concluded, we complete the majority of the diary entries, which in most cases are much-improved from the previous evening’s effort, before jumping back on the bus for the short shunt up to the swimming pool, where the hot drinks machine in the viewing area café requires an honours degree in applied science to get it to work.
The room inspection is completed and three of the four abodes are particularly impressive. Oddly, they are the same three that were pretty good last night, with rooms 17 & 19 gaining a perfect ten, while room 8 is just behind after losing a single mark for having an unruly bed. It was the double, before anyone asks.
Saturday
We get up bright and early – well, early, anyway. Milton, Brockbank and Ansermoz stir with a lack of enthusiasm that is marked, to say the least. You’d struggle to find better sleepers on a railway track. When a head eventually appears, it’s as if they’ve each forgotten that Halloween was actually two days ago, but by seven o’clock, everyone’s congregated at the breakfast table and, crusts apart, it’s pretty much a Waitrose-rated performance from all concerned.
Bags are packed and for the first time in living memory, there are no left-overs discovered lurking in darkened corners - rooms 8, 17 & 19 are as spotless as you could possibly imagine. And to the complete mystification of everyone else, so is room 15. Even Croose’s tie is safely connected to his still-white shirt collar.
There are no problems with the satnav on the drive from the hotel to the ferry terminal, largely because we don’t switch it on. There are vehicles aplenty boarding the Red Eagle and an executive decision not to call a top deck referendum is made, despite there being a limited number of available seats in the fast-filling lounge. The Chef has found one such pew however and sits there fiddling with his route finder, before confidently proclaiming that, ‘Any minute now, we’ll be heading that-a-way,’ which isn’t any great surprise as he’s pointing at the front of the vessel. Precisely four and a half seconds later, the tannoy bing-bongs and the captain announces that due to the high winds both here and everywhere else within a 20-mile radius, our departure from East Cowes will be delayed.
The next hour and a half is spent in urgent communication with both Portsmouth and the Whatsapp operators, while The Chef blocks in a whole range of disinterested people while he describes in detail the workings of his favourite electrical appliance, the deep-fat fryer. At the back of the lounge, Beaumont is displaying signs of acute rugby-induced stress, though not nearly as acute as the bloke with the World Cup Final playing on his i-pad who is surrounded by a bevy of black-jumpered footballers desperate to find out the latest deficit.
There’s a collective sigh of disappointment as South Africa score again and in a moment of almost perfect synergy, our game against Pompey is postponed at exactly the same time. ‘What a downer,’ laments both Beaumont and the wife of the man with the i-pad, as The Chef has arrived and is entertaining everyone with a memorised presentation in which he extols the culinary virtues of his current supply of matchday pork sausages.
The Solent crossing completed, we finally clear the dockland area of Southampton at 11.45 and despite Pathfinder leading us down two false routeways, we decamp at Membury at five to one, which when all said and done is pretty good going. The arrival of two tubs of Kentucky Fried Hen proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are no would-be vegetarians in this team; suddenly Room 15 are Happy Eaters, an event that even brings a wry smile to the face of the old bloke with the white beard who’s adorning the side of the big red bucket.
We arrive back at GL2 at 2.18 exactly, Mother Hine and Mother Croose standing next to each other, but wearing what might best be described as contrasting expressions; one filled with glee at her favourite (only) son’s return and one that most obviously isn’t. Brockbank, Beaumont, Bennett and Simpson remain aboard the fun bus, determined to elongate their tour by another few hours by making the 20-mile trip to Evesham to watch the mighty Gloucester City play the equally mighty Curzon Ashton, wherever that is. While the Bs and Girls are in a 23000+ crowd at the Cardiff City stadium, the Fab Four are in the company of 237 others at the Hartwell & Spiers Jubilee arena, which is not an arena at all, but a field with a fence around it.
Ex-GPSFA captain Spencer Hamilton (2006/07) must have been trying out The Chef’s satnav during the warm-up, as he puts Curzon 2-1 ahead with a fine finish into the bottom corner of his own net, but centre forward Marlon Jackson swoops, Croose-like, to grab a second half equaliser as both sides seem sort of happy with a point apiece. Most of the crowd are pleased it’s finished, point apiece or not, knowing they won’t have to suffer in this little corner of Worcestershire for another fourteen days at least. And four new, might-be supporters of the future have little idea what misery lies ahead if they don’t give up their supposed allegiance to some distant PL team or other and support their local side instead. Or what misery lies ahead if they do.
Life is indeed a sliding door full of ifs, buts and maybes.
Sunday morning in a house near Quedgeley and The Chef’s in reflective mood. ‘If I hadn’t put that satnav on, I might just have got home before midnight.’
Over at Whaddon Road, maybe Cheltenham would have beaten Forest Green if they had known where their ground was situated.
On the next Adventure Golf Course, will El Capitano discover his bearings and get within a foot of those little round holes?
And when the Real Room Inspector returns, will the inhabitants of Room Ten Plus Five take a turn for the better and switch off their lights, tidy their beds, sort out their bags, hang up their towels, clear up their floor….
Maybe. Just maybe.
IOW 2019: Ansermoz; Beaumont, Brockbank, Simpson; Milton, Bevan, Bennett, Hine; Croose.
Thursday
It’s dropping-off time at GL2 and Mother Croose goes easy on her offspring by making a last-minute decision to stop the car before pushing him out of the door and zooming home for fifty-odd hours of peace, quiet and a much-needed dose of R & R. Mother Hine is slightly perturbed however due to WH’s staunch refusal to take a last long look back, while Mother Bevan seems fully recovered following CC’s nocturnal visit to Stearman Villas last Saturday evening for a post-Stevenage/Oasis sleepover.
Coach Wilson is unavailable due to having to sort out some million-pound deal or other, so The Chef and grandson Romeo climb the mini bus steps for their first-ever visit to the Dinosaur Isle. There’s little traffic on the A417 and Crickley Hill’s virtually empty, so we arrive at Chieveley in plenty of time in readiness of an early-morning visit to Greggs, before The Chef’s satnav throws out the first of its decidedly dodgy instructions, suggesting we should call into the Vodafone HQ on the left instead of Speenhamland Primary School on the right.
There’s a decent choice of pre-match music in the players’ changing area, while the staff space around the corner in this school where all the clocks show a different time, is interestingly situated next to the ‘Therapy Room’. An omen, perhaps?
Newbury’s ground is an interesting beast as you have to walk up a hill to reach it and after conceding a duo of first half goals from corners, the team has the proverbial mountain to climb in the second period. Croose cuts the deficit following a Bennett corner five minutes in, but within thirty seconds the hosts have restored their two-goal cushion and they add a couple more before the final whistle concludes the morning’s action. Bevan and Hine both strike the woodwork in the final ten minutes as we could and probably should have made the scoreline somewhat closer, but Newbury are quicker to the ball all over the pitch and as such, good value for their victory.
‘Sweet Caroline’ is blaring out post-match, while fifty yards away, the Therapy Room is put to good use for a stint of contemplation, meditation and a fair bit of out-and-out depression. Chicken pasta is on the menu, which doesn’t go down too well with The Chef as it isn’t deep-fried. Croose, Milton and Ansermoz agree and duck out completely, while Bevan joins the non-involved section following a single mouthful. Bennett, Hine, Simpson, Brockbank, Beaumont and Romeo however, all get stuck in as if there’s no tomorrow, with several going back for seconds.
The misfiring satnav takes us on to the wrong carriageway of the A34, necessitating a quick exit and reconfiguration halfway down the High Street of a rather quaint West Berkshire village. The secret with these things is to say nothing and keep going, meaning no-one in the back suspects anything untoward has occurred and apart from Beaumont’s desperate, tortoise-like squeals resulting in an impromptu visit to the public conveniences at Rownham’s Services, we arrive at Gate 7 of the Red Funnel terminal in pretty fine fettle.
The serving lady in the Ferry Café asks if we’re a private school, a question which, whatever people’s political stance on the subject is, probably translates as a compliment to all concerned.
Twelve minutes after a ten-man referendum votes unanimously that we go up onto the top deck of the Red Falcon and enjoy the wind, cold and potential rain coming off The Solent, a second referendum votes 7-3 in favour of retreating into the warmth of the ship’s lounge, where The Chef immediately latches on to a group of six unsuspecting travellers and starts up a one-way conversation in which he overtly enthuses about the various delights of our great Roman city by repeating the same sentence a dozen times over. On swivelling his head for no more than three seconds to check if Romeo is still eating something indescribable from a white polystyrene container, he’s more than a little mystified to discover that the six have become two, the four are nowhere to be seen and the duo are only still there because they’re wedged in a seat between a man who really shouldn’t be eating his fourth ice cream of this fledgling voyage and the formidable figure of The Chef himself.
Ignoring the satnav that seems intent on taking us up a three-foot wide country lane to the right, we veer left and rack up at The Sandhill Hotel, where the nice people (Bevan, Beaumont & Simpson) are allocated a triple room next door to The Chef and Romeo at the penthouse end of the building. On the first floor, Ansermoz and Bennett take up residence in Room 8, Bennett immediately claiming the double bed as Ansermoz is still wallowing in a state of post-match, slow-releasing shock (a bit like slow-release fertiliser, but without the side effects), Brockbank and Hine move seamlessly into Room 17, while Croose and Milton are appropriately entombed at the far end of the corridor in number 15.
It’s dinner time and Room Ten plus Five take exception to the vegetable soup, while Simpson manages half the contents of his bowl before calling time on a starter he didn’t order. Simpson at least restores faith in the team’s powers of resilience by, along with Bevan, seeing off the cherry tomatoes that add a touch of much-needed colour to his burger and chips which, after checking the spreadsheet, he definitely did order. Ansermoz is slow but sure in his eating, while Beaumont, Bennett, Brockbank and Hine consume everything that adorns their plates, patterns included.
Sandown Pier is the evening destination after a twenty-minute walk along the seafront that takes us past a long row of expensive-looking beach huts and a blue balloon lurking on the beach that creates a sense of excitement that no-one can quite understand. On the pier, a posse of intrepid adventurers brave the Adventure Golf that wends its way around a series of papier mache ‘Aztec’ ruins, Milton refuses to believe that the claw-like machine that keeps slipping off the giant bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk isn’t rigged, while Croose stares wide-eyed at his half-full bowl of 2p pieces on hearing we’re departing immediately.
The first evening’s diaries are never of the greatest quality and this literary group’s follow suit, while back in Gloucester, seven sets of parents receive phone calls of varying length and two receive no call at all. Mother Hine is distraught as WH refuses to press the big green button, while Mother Croose is also distraught; not because CC hasn’t rung as she knew he wouldn’t, but when she looks at the clock, the realisation that she only has around forty hours of freedom remaining kicks in and a frantic search for the aspirin bottle ensues.
Friday
There’s sausage and bacon sandwiches for breakfast and toast and butter for Bennett as the table boasts the look and aroma of painstakingly applied hair gel, with only Ansermoz, Croose and Simpson abstaining, preferring the island’s au naturale early-morning look instead.
With the box and two carrier bags holding the packed lunch safely wedged in the back seat of the bus, we’re off to Shanklin seafront, a destination whose name suggests it’s not two miles inland, where the sat nav claims it should be.
The Pirates Cove Crazy Golf is one of those really entertaining courses where the average par is a 3 and everyone can have a bit of success. Unless you’re Brockbank or Simpson, that is. The latter has a mouth like an upturned banana as he contrives to miss each hole by little more than a centimetre, while the former just misses each hole. The captain’s score of 74 actually includes a hole in one which just goes to show he really should have left the satnav alone when attempting the other 17. Both Hine and Romeo also table a much-celebrated numero uno, but their achievements come minus the baggage carried by our esteemed leader. In Team One, Bevan and Beaumont are both extremely competitive, but only Bevan is any good. Mr Hardwicke eventually beats Mr Abbeymead (Ansermoz) by two points to win the first prize overall and will constantly remind everyone of the fact for the next 36 hours. In the group competition, Team One beats Team Two by nine shots (302-311), a revelation that means the upturned banana has little chance of flipping over any time soon.
There’s celebratory ice creams from an outlet that’s five hours away from shutting down for a six-month winter recess, an arms-around-each-other photo opportunity atop the sea wall, a brief stint in the roadside arcade where a thousand tickets gets you a pack of six out-of-date Haribos and a visit to the gift shop where Bennett buys an Isle of Wight pencil for ‘My family to share.’ It’s the thought that counts.
With the daunting prospect of a hundred-plus foot ascent back up to the car park, we locate the Cliff Lift, a modern-day Otis inside a fifty-year-old concrete pillar. £5.60 is a small price to pay for being whisked up the cliff in no more than fifty seconds, before stepping out onto a platform with glass sides, meaning, to several people’s obvious consternation, you can almost touch the void up which we’ve just been transported.
‘I’ll put my GPS on,’ states Pathfinder, as he sets off down Common Road with a sureness of step that suggests he knows exactly where he’s going. Thirty minutes later and after a trio of pointless detours, we eventually discover the bus, which is unsurprisingly still parked in exactly the same spot as we left it, despite The Chef’s ongoing claims that, ‘Someone must have moved it.’
Four miles to the right instead of two miles to the left as the sat nav suggests, is the Isle of Wight Zoo and the nice people on reception allow us to use the café for our packed lunch as the weather is taking a turn for the worse. Milton doesn’t eat crusts and Croose doesn’t eat much at all, but overall the throng is well fed, despite three people who can be identified by the horrid fishy smell they now emit, completing their lunch time refreshment with a packet of utterly disgusting prawn cocktail crisps.
The spider monkeys provide an entertaining introduction to the zoo’s interesting inhabitants and the lemurs or racoons or whatever they are indulge in a cacophony of high-pitched squealing reminiscent of the mini bus on the final leg of last Saturday’s journey home from Stevenage, but it’s the big cats that captivate the group the most. With three o’clock being lion feeding time, no-one really notices the rain as the big cats are up on their hind legs against the perimeter fence, dragging down the hunks of meat that have been tied up there by the duo of keepers who made a pretty quick getaway just before the big brown restraining gate was opened.
With feeding time over, the presence of the rain becomes much more obvious, so it’s back to the hotel for a shower of the much warmer variety and a six-round sports quiz in the downstairs lounge. Bennett & Hine eventually come out on top with an impressive 48 out of 60, Bevan & Croose take second spot after totalling 44, while Brockbank & Ansermoz (40½) end up as mid-table as you can possibly get. Milton doesn’t know where Cheltenham’s ground is as he and Simpson finish on 35½, giving them fourth place or the last-but-one spot, depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty. Beaumont however has drawn the shortest straw and is partnered with Romeo who understandably doesn’t know much, meaning the upturned banana has changed faces for an hour or so at least.
The sausage & mash and pasta bolognese both go down well, with only Croose & Milton dropping points, meaning we have a very definite Waitrose-Asda split in the quality of the eating on display. Dining concluded, we complete the majority of the diary entries, which in most cases are much-improved from the previous evening’s effort, before jumping back on the bus for the short shunt up to the swimming pool, where the hot drinks machine in the viewing area café requires an honours degree in applied science to get it to work.
The room inspection is completed and three of the four abodes are particularly impressive. Oddly, they are the same three that were pretty good last night, with rooms 17 & 19 gaining a perfect ten, while room 8 is just behind after losing a single mark for having an unruly bed. It was the double, before anyone asks.
Saturday
We get up bright and early – well, early, anyway. Milton, Brockbank and Ansermoz stir with a lack of enthusiasm that is marked, to say the least. You’d struggle to find better sleepers on a railway track. When a head eventually appears, it’s as if they’ve each forgotten that Halloween was actually two days ago, but by seven o’clock, everyone’s congregated at the breakfast table and, crusts apart, it’s pretty much a Waitrose-rated performance from all concerned.
Bags are packed and for the first time in living memory, there are no left-overs discovered lurking in darkened corners - rooms 8, 17 & 19 are as spotless as you could possibly imagine. And to the complete mystification of everyone else, so is room 15. Even Croose’s tie is safely connected to his still-white shirt collar.
There are no problems with the satnav on the drive from the hotel to the ferry terminal, largely because we don’t switch it on. There are vehicles aplenty boarding the Red Eagle and an executive decision not to call a top deck referendum is made, despite there being a limited number of available seats in the fast-filling lounge. The Chef has found one such pew however and sits there fiddling with his route finder, before confidently proclaiming that, ‘Any minute now, we’ll be heading that-a-way,’ which isn’t any great surprise as he’s pointing at the front of the vessel. Precisely four and a half seconds later, the tannoy bing-bongs and the captain announces that due to the high winds both here and everywhere else within a 20-mile radius, our departure from East Cowes will be delayed.
The next hour and a half is spent in urgent communication with both Portsmouth and the Whatsapp operators, while The Chef blocks in a whole range of disinterested people while he describes in detail the workings of his favourite electrical appliance, the deep-fat fryer. At the back of the lounge, Beaumont is displaying signs of acute rugby-induced stress, though not nearly as acute as the bloke with the World Cup Final playing on his i-pad who is surrounded by a bevy of black-jumpered footballers desperate to find out the latest deficit.
There’s a collective sigh of disappointment as South Africa score again and in a moment of almost perfect synergy, our game against Pompey is postponed at exactly the same time. ‘What a downer,’ laments both Beaumont and the wife of the man with the i-pad, as The Chef has arrived and is entertaining everyone with a memorised presentation in which he extols the culinary virtues of his current supply of matchday pork sausages.
The Solent crossing completed, we finally clear the dockland area of Southampton at 11.45 and despite Pathfinder leading us down two false routeways, we decamp at Membury at five to one, which when all said and done is pretty good going. The arrival of two tubs of Kentucky Fried Hen proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are no would-be vegetarians in this team; suddenly Room 15 are Happy Eaters, an event that even brings a wry smile to the face of the old bloke with the white beard who’s adorning the side of the big red bucket.
We arrive back at GL2 at 2.18 exactly, Mother Hine and Mother Croose standing next to each other, but wearing what might best be described as contrasting expressions; one filled with glee at her favourite (only) son’s return and one that most obviously isn’t. Brockbank, Beaumont, Bennett and Simpson remain aboard the fun bus, determined to elongate their tour by another few hours by making the 20-mile trip to Evesham to watch the mighty Gloucester City play the equally mighty Curzon Ashton, wherever that is. While the Bs and Girls are in a 23000+ crowd at the Cardiff City stadium, the Fab Four are in the company of 237 others at the Hartwell & Spiers Jubilee arena, which is not an arena at all, but a field with a fence around it.
Ex-GPSFA captain Spencer Hamilton (2006/07) must have been trying out The Chef’s satnav during the warm-up, as he puts Curzon 2-1 ahead with a fine finish into the bottom corner of his own net, but centre forward Marlon Jackson swoops, Croose-like, to grab a second half equaliser as both sides seem sort of happy with a point apiece. Most of the crowd are pleased it’s finished, point apiece or not, knowing they won’t have to suffer in this little corner of Worcestershire for another fourteen days at least. And four new, might-be supporters of the future have little idea what misery lies ahead if they don’t give up their supposed allegiance to some distant PL team or other and support their local side instead. Or what misery lies ahead if they do.
Life is indeed a sliding door full of ifs, buts and maybes.
Sunday morning in a house near Quedgeley and The Chef’s in reflective mood. ‘If I hadn’t put that satnav on, I might just have got home before midnight.’
Over at Whaddon Road, maybe Cheltenham would have beaten Forest Green if they had known where their ground was situated.
On the next Adventure Golf Course, will El Capitano discover his bearings and get within a foot of those little round holes?
And when the Real Room Inspector returns, will the inhabitants of Room Ten Plus Five take a turn for the better and switch off their lights, tidy their beds, sort out their bags, hang up their towels, clear up their floor….
Maybe. Just maybe.
IOW 2019: Ansermoz; Beaumont, Brockbank, Simpson; Milton, Bevan, Bennett, Hine; Croose.
