Thirty Two
The Plymouth weekend has finally arrived. For the residents of Sissons Road, Saturday 18th January is the day they’ve been counting down to, ever since Saturday 2nd November, when CC returned to the area following a blissful three days in the Isle of Wight. Blissful for the residents, that is. Mrs Cornelius, who lives at the far end of the street, revealed everything (figuratively speaking), when giving a rare interview to Sky Sports News on Thursday morning: ‘It’s been a long one thousand eight hundred and forty eight hours and my tally chart’s used three biros’ worth of ink,’ she explained, ‘but at the end of the day, good things come to those who wait,’ before exhaling loudly and closing the front door with a barely disguised ‘Whoop’ and an extremely impressive display of overhead fist-pumping.
Brockbank leads the way in true captain’s fashion by arriving at the front gates in first position, while Hine is well and truly in eleventh place, having been forced to wait on the Silver Birch sofa until his dad’s latest pop rock LP’s entered its final groove, then wait again in the car until the final line of ‘Love on the Rocks’ is completed. ‘And now all I want is a smile,’ concludes The Diamond, though clearly Simmo hasn’t been listening as he clambers aboard the bus sporting a jam-packed kit bag and an impressively inverted banana that runs the entire length of his upper lip.
Traffic’s light on the M5 as we head noisily towards the weekend’s first service break with a song revealing that Theo’s cheating on someone or other, much to the horror (or glee) of everyone else. Croose meanwhile is being accused of all sorts of things relating to the charabanc’s deteriorating atmospheric conditions for the second week running, much to the horror (no glee) of everyone else. And we haven’t reached Michael Wood yet.
With excitement mounting once Bevan’s told the world he’s seen the big blue ‘1 mile to go’ sign, no-one realises we’re in the wrong lane and need to circumnavigate the motorway exit roundabout twice before disembarking at Exeter services, but on entering, Coach Wilson is distraught to find that Arlo’s has closed down and there’s a Katsu Chicken outlet loitering in the self-same spot that the early-morning fry-ups used to be ordered. Hine Junior meanwhile has discovered that he’s left both his pyjamas and going-out shoes at home and on ringing for replacements, is left utterly bewildered by the fact that Mother Hine can’t immediately go out and find some new ones, despite the fact that she’s currently speeding past Thornbury at about 90mph.
We rack up at Plymouth Academy in good time and fall for the age-old Devonian ruse of following directions to a locked gate with a fine view of the ground beyond the hand-sized padlock. 850 paces towards Saturday’s five-figure target eventually get us on to the 3G, a bespoke, enclosed 9-a-side facility with one and a half sides of spectator areas, pitchside refreshments and an impressive 32-page, full-colour (well green, anyway) matchday programme.
The first half sees the travellers enjoy slightly more of the ball than their hosts, without ever really threatening to score, but Plymouth take a 20th minute lead following a right-wing corner. Moments later, Ansermoz produces an excellent close range save to keep the deficit at one as the jaffa cake-ridden interval is reached, though Simmo’s mouth is still far too downturned to allow anything solid to pass between his lips.
The second half begins with two very fine challenges. Firstly, a great tackle from the homesters’ centre back halts Croose as he’s bearing down on goal for a potential leveller, while at the other end, Beaumont produces a great six-yard box block to keep Plymouth out, for a few minutes at least.
There’s a lot of huff and puff but no real edge about the visitors’ play, meaning The Greens are much the better side after the break, when they add two more strikes to their morning’s tally. Triple A-plus-Two finishes well late on to give the scoreline a more favourable appearance and all credit to the great & good for keeping going to the very end.
There’s a changing room snack before we’re back on the bus for the fifteen-minute jaunt to Plymouth Life Centre, a sizeable off-yellow building right next to the football ground. There’s a bit of ‘ah-ing’ and ‘ooh-ing’ as Croose, who earlier exited the fray with ‘a bit of a groin’ ten minutes into the second half of our 3-1 defeat, limps up the incline to the sports centre’s front entrance. The very same sound comes from the nearby Argyle crowd as the hosts launch another attack on the Mansfield goal barely two hundred yards to our left and also from Coach Wilson, as he realises the 800-space car park is full to the absolute brim. We settle for a spot straddling a grass verge and a couple of mysterious yellow lines, fully accepting that the soon-to-be delivered yellow ticket will put another dent in the driver’s fast-disappearing, but thankfully tax-free, lump sum.
In the absence of any one pound locker coins, most bags are left in the centre’s bustling café, meaning we have to spend large swathes of the afternoon watching Gloucester City’s visit to Guiseley, wherever that is, unfolding on twitter. The class divide across the little round table rears its ugly head once more, with one half consuming a Devon pasty with its fingers, while the other dissects a piece of jam sponge with a teaspoon and a look which at the very least can be described as ‘extremely disapproving’.
With the Mighty Tigers taking an unlikely fourth-minute lead, we nervously play out the first half while viewing what’s happening in the water from the balcony above. There’s a woman underneath the small pool’s fountain with more tattoos than skin, while a troupe of teenagers with ‘Dartmoor Darts Disciples’ emblazoned on their purple t-shirts amble past. Croose meanwhile has clearly forgotten about his limp as he happily wanders around the poolside in his canary yellow outfit, while Milton dances contentedly to the background music, completely impervious to the fact that (a) no-one else is joining in and (b) his every out-of-time move is being recorded (in a notebook) from on high. Over in the other pool, Simmo is modelling the longest pair of swimwear (nee trunks) in the building, which are no problem at all when they’re dry, but as soon as they get wet, they’re so heavy that their owner has to spend most of the two-hour sojourn making sure they remain somewhere close to his waist.
The return to the café is not good; Guiseley have equalised and now take the lead directly from a corner that hits the far post and the keeper before trickling over the line. I shed a few tears, but wipe my eyes just in time before the nice people return to the café and show absolutely no interest at all in the aforementioned result. Croose and Ansermoz eventually appear from the sanctity of the changing room and we return to the bus, Croose claiming his lateness is due to his injury, but no-one pays his sympathy-inducing pleas any attention whatsoever.
The impressive Duke of Cornwall’s only a ten-minute skip and jump away and the allocation of rooms sees Milton, Brockbank and Simmo occupying the triple, while Croose and Hine inhabit a superior twin, which basically means they’ve got an extra bit of space with a sofa and writing desk tagged on to the standard twin bit. Both abodes are on the first floor, while Coach Wilson’s on the fourth with the rest of the gang, having recently finished first in a mobility test that included fewer than three people walking up and down a short flight of stairs. Up in the eves, Curtis and Ansermoz make for a very dodgy pairing, Bennett and Bevan a potentially nice one and Beaumont & Ali a really small one, in room size at any rate. ‘It’s alphabetical,’ explains Coach Wilson, ‘Simmo and Milton are in the largest room, Hine’s in the next biggest and you, Aayaan, well, you’re lucky to have a room with any floor at all.’ ‘Never mind,’ consoles Beaumont, ‘let’s go and have a game of Hangman - and I’ll let you win….’
Forty minutes after checking in, we’re back on the Fun Bus, headed for Ten-Pin in The Barbican. From the Mayflower Steps just down the road, 102 Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America exactly four hundred years ago in search of a new life on the far side of the pond. Tonight, Ansermoz, Milton and Croose would have loved to have scored three figures in the annual bowling contest versus their Plymouth counterparts and while they’re not looking for a new life exactly, their paucity of success on the sides-up alley suggests a brand new pastime might well be a sensible way forward. On the other hand, Simmo displays all the characteristics of a mis-spent youth by accruing a pretty decent 114, with Bevan and Bennett not far behind. We win the bowling with a bit to spare, retaining the TP title for the fourteenth consecutive season, an unprecedented run of success that owes as much to Coach Wilson’s creative accounting over the years as any Gloucestershire predilection for aiming straight. At least this time we really did win, which if nothing else, is extremely morally gratifying.
The evening meal is ordered and consumed by most in a flash, though Coach Wilson decides you can’t eat a five-cheese cheeseburger & chips without a knife and fork, so joins the end of what he euphemistically calls the ‘cutlery queue’. His fifteen-minute wait has two eventual outcomes – one positive and one not so well received. On the good side he can now eat everything without getting his fingers sticky; on the other, by the time he sits down, everything’s stone cold and he has to endure a further five-minute delay before eating, while the kitchen’s mis-firing microwave is called into action.
‘Noah’s been sick,’ gasps Hine, who then completes a verbal questionnaire on the where, what and colour before the matter can be investigated. The where turns out to be the toilet, the what turns out to be chicken (Southern Fried) and the colour turns out to be an interesting shade of orange with a rather fetching hint of yellow. Lazarus is completely unmoved by the temporary blip in proceedings however; no fuss, no upset, no problem, just a glass of iced water and a return to the main aim of Part 2 of the evening, which is attempting to amass ten thousand tickets to exchange for a six-pack (of Haribo’s) at the reception desk.
The return to the Duke sees Hine break into a contented smile on collecting a pyjama package from the hotel reception and Coach Wilson disappear behind a pillar and reappear within seconds as TRI (The Room Inspector), a fearsome figure determined to educate everyone as to the elite standards expected during future trips’ room examinations. With Milton, Simmo and Brockers looking on aghast, TRI finds seven parallel and perpendicular faults in their pristine-looking abode, before moving on to wreak similar mental havoc on four further rooms, a blitz that only concludes a few minutes before Match of the Day comes calling. Never has Gary Lineker been so well received by citizens of our great city.
‘Megan Markle’s been booted out of the royal family,’ offers Born-Again Milton, eager to make a positive impression at 8 o’clock on a sunny but cold Devonian Sunday morning. No-one replies.
The fourth floor is five minutes late coming down for breakfast, with Curtis pinpointed as the main reason for the delay, and one look at the topiary involved in arranging the top of his head suggests that the accusations in this case are extremely well founded. Milton and Hine have also taken a good deal of trouble in regard to their own follicular arrangements, while Simmo has gone one (very big) step further. On hearing the weather’s going to take a turn for the worse next week, he’s arranged his thatch in a design that sticks out at least six inches in front of his forehead to form what looks like a perfect shelter for the front of his body. A couple of lengths of guttering and a five-foot downpipe would round things off rather nicely.
Bevan’s turned up tieless, but escapes losing all ten attitude marks as no official competitions are taking place this weekend. It won’t be like this in London or Jersey, so One of our Own makes a mental note to look in the bottom of his bag the next time he can’t find anything.
Unsurprisingly, Beaumont reads the menu far more diligently than anyone else and orders a bacon sandwich. Ansermoz impresses everyone by getting straight into his five-a-day by selecting an apple from the buffet table, but fails to take a bite. ‘Are there eating marks today?’ asks Hine who, on hearing that there aren’t, promptly leaves half a slice of fried bread and a sliver of hash brown. Croose orders beans, much to the horror of everyone within a hundred-yard radius with no access to a nuclear bunker. Coach Wilson manoeuvres his knife and fork round the contents of his plate with the dexterity of a circus juggler, much to the interest of Bennett, who spends his time at the breakfast table imagining what effect those two implements, controlled by such a master handler, might have had on yesterday evening’s Ten-Pin lavatorial cocktail. ‘They could have rescued the Southern Fried chicken at the very least,’ he silently concludes.
We’re back at Plympton Academy for 9.45, where the bit in the shade still bears the white of last night’s sub-zero temperatures, but by the time we start, all is green and by-and-large, good. The injured Croose has taken up the uncharacteristic position of linesperson, donning the bright yellow flag with the referee’s confidence-boosting strapline, ‘Don’t worry if you get it (all) wrong),’ still ringing in his ears.
The game itself v Marjon’s is one-sided to say the least, and Triple A-plus-Two plunders a 12-minute treble as his pace proves far too much for the year-older backline. Hine nips in for a brace of in-offs, while Curtis helps himself to a couple, causing a wry smile to break out on his left side at least.
With Croose having transferred to the far touchline in the second half, most of the play mysteriously switches to the other flank and Milton is born-again in every respect after he’s found the top of the net with a crisp left-foot finish. And then the moment the world and its dog has been waiting so long for; Hine unselfishly squares the ball across the box and Simmo, despite suffering from an attack of acute vertigo due to being so high up the pitch, pink-foots home the first proper goal of his entire life. The inverted banana suddenly becomes a medieval platter and Curtis’s grin threatens to spread to his right side, if only for a fleeting second or so. Nice Noah Bennett and Nice Theo Bevan are straight into the celebratory pack, while Nice Ollie Beaumont is just behind, despite one of his two inner demons whispering, ‘It could have been you,’ continuously in his right ear, while the second one offers, ‘Buy some pink boots and you too might score,’ in the other. ‘Don’t you ever wear pink boots!’ orders Coach Wilson, sensing the mental struggle going on within, before qualifying it with, ‘Real Croatians don’t wear pink!’ whatever that means.
‘I did a cross’ (sic) when I was six and it dropped into the top corner, but that wasn’t a proper goal,’ explains Simmo to Bianca from Sky Sports immediately after the final whistle, ‘and when our team scored an own goal a couple of years back, the manager gave it to me, even though I was sitting on the subs bench at the time, so that doesn’t really count.’ ‘Wonderful,’ says Bianca, ‘and how does this all make you feel?’ ‘A bit uncomfortable to be honest,’ replies Simmo, ‘because you’ve got right into my space. I know the forecast says it’s going to rain soon, but you really don’t need to be under my shelter.’
There’s no post-match grub today, so we descend on Exeter services for the second time this weekend for a bit of lunch and some. Brockbank leads the way once more by demolishing an entire cheese & tomato pizza followed by some sort of whipped dessert, which appears on the Burger King collection board as number 1053 ‘Cooking’. Bennett is completely mystified by the idea that they put what can only be described as ice cream without the ice in the BK oven and orders one for himself, just to check it out. Ansermoz is busy forcing yet another Whopper down his throat with a gusto that says, ‘Clean sheet,’ though the truth of the matter is that it would have been far harder to let one in today than not. Bevan, Curtis and Milton meanwhile descend on the ‘grabber’ machine around the corner and are thrilled to win a fluorescent yellow banana, a garish orange fish of indeterminate breed and a bright purple barbie girl that has One-of-our-Own grinning from ear to ear over. Cheater.
There’s a new chant as we sidle northbound past Sedgemoor, scene of a seventeenth century battle and the revelation that, ‘Charlie loves Nicola, Charlie loves Nicola’ (repeat 20 times). Thankfully no-one dislikes the lino enough to add the song’s final line, ‘But Nicola doesn’t…..’ (repeat 20 times), so we’ll include it here instead.
The timing’s perfect as we roll up at GL2 dead on half four, exactly thirty two hours and thirty minutes after leaving. It feels like thirty two and a half days, but all in a good way. Mother Bevan is horrified as One of Her Own steps off the bus and presents her with a very orange fish as a present, while Mother Hine would have been horrified that Sweet Caroline (Junior) would rather play football with JC than come home and sit in front of the fire with his new pyjamas on. Sensibly, she’s sent Father Hine along instead, as he’s far more adept at prizing the pair of left-footers apart.
Mother Croose has also declined the delights of GL2, electing to spend her last few minutes of freedom with a double whisky ‘for medicinal purposes’, before forcing a smile and quickly counting the number of days left before the London tour, just as the errant linesman strolls through the door. ‘Thirty two,’ he announces, anticipating his mother’s furtive calculations, before holding his bright yellow flag aloft and disappearing into the kitchen to examine the edible contents of the fridge.
‘But….but,’ stammers Pink Boots, as Mother Simpson says, ‘I don’t believe you,’ for the thirty-second time, ‘and if you keep on telling me these ridiculous stories, you’ll be going to bed at six thirty, with or without pyjamas.’ ‘Okay,’ says Simmo, in one final attempt to appease his mother. ‘I got up at six o’clock this morning, swam the Tamar, shook the water off my hair shelter and flooded the entire ground floor of the Duke of Cornwall’s own hotel,’ he explains. ‘That’s more like it,’ says NS. ‘You know it’s always better to tell the truth.’
Gloucester A (bowling scores in brackets): Stavrou Junior (77); Croatia Testudine (90), Pink Alert (114), Half-Smile (83); Caramel Sundae (89), One of our Own (102), Lazarus (97), Sweet Caroline (80); Triple A-plus-Two (81); Born Again (79), Lino (77).
Brockbank leads the way in true captain’s fashion by arriving at the front gates in first position, while Hine is well and truly in eleventh place, having been forced to wait on the Silver Birch sofa until his dad’s latest pop rock LP’s entered its final groove, then wait again in the car until the final line of ‘Love on the Rocks’ is completed. ‘And now all I want is a smile,’ concludes The Diamond, though clearly Simmo hasn’t been listening as he clambers aboard the bus sporting a jam-packed kit bag and an impressively inverted banana that runs the entire length of his upper lip.
Traffic’s light on the M5 as we head noisily towards the weekend’s first service break with a song revealing that Theo’s cheating on someone or other, much to the horror (or glee) of everyone else. Croose meanwhile is being accused of all sorts of things relating to the charabanc’s deteriorating atmospheric conditions for the second week running, much to the horror (no glee) of everyone else. And we haven’t reached Michael Wood yet.
With excitement mounting once Bevan’s told the world he’s seen the big blue ‘1 mile to go’ sign, no-one realises we’re in the wrong lane and need to circumnavigate the motorway exit roundabout twice before disembarking at Exeter services, but on entering, Coach Wilson is distraught to find that Arlo’s has closed down and there’s a Katsu Chicken outlet loitering in the self-same spot that the early-morning fry-ups used to be ordered. Hine Junior meanwhile has discovered that he’s left both his pyjamas and going-out shoes at home and on ringing for replacements, is left utterly bewildered by the fact that Mother Hine can’t immediately go out and find some new ones, despite the fact that she’s currently speeding past Thornbury at about 90mph.
We rack up at Plymouth Academy in good time and fall for the age-old Devonian ruse of following directions to a locked gate with a fine view of the ground beyond the hand-sized padlock. 850 paces towards Saturday’s five-figure target eventually get us on to the 3G, a bespoke, enclosed 9-a-side facility with one and a half sides of spectator areas, pitchside refreshments and an impressive 32-page, full-colour (well green, anyway) matchday programme.
The first half sees the travellers enjoy slightly more of the ball than their hosts, without ever really threatening to score, but Plymouth take a 20th minute lead following a right-wing corner. Moments later, Ansermoz produces an excellent close range save to keep the deficit at one as the jaffa cake-ridden interval is reached, though Simmo’s mouth is still far too downturned to allow anything solid to pass between his lips.
The second half begins with two very fine challenges. Firstly, a great tackle from the homesters’ centre back halts Croose as he’s bearing down on goal for a potential leveller, while at the other end, Beaumont produces a great six-yard box block to keep Plymouth out, for a few minutes at least.
There’s a lot of huff and puff but no real edge about the visitors’ play, meaning The Greens are much the better side after the break, when they add two more strikes to their morning’s tally. Triple A-plus-Two finishes well late on to give the scoreline a more favourable appearance and all credit to the great & good for keeping going to the very end.
There’s a changing room snack before we’re back on the bus for the fifteen-minute jaunt to Plymouth Life Centre, a sizeable off-yellow building right next to the football ground. There’s a bit of ‘ah-ing’ and ‘ooh-ing’ as Croose, who earlier exited the fray with ‘a bit of a groin’ ten minutes into the second half of our 3-1 defeat, limps up the incline to the sports centre’s front entrance. The very same sound comes from the nearby Argyle crowd as the hosts launch another attack on the Mansfield goal barely two hundred yards to our left and also from Coach Wilson, as he realises the 800-space car park is full to the absolute brim. We settle for a spot straddling a grass verge and a couple of mysterious yellow lines, fully accepting that the soon-to-be delivered yellow ticket will put another dent in the driver’s fast-disappearing, but thankfully tax-free, lump sum.
In the absence of any one pound locker coins, most bags are left in the centre’s bustling café, meaning we have to spend large swathes of the afternoon watching Gloucester City’s visit to Guiseley, wherever that is, unfolding on twitter. The class divide across the little round table rears its ugly head once more, with one half consuming a Devon pasty with its fingers, while the other dissects a piece of jam sponge with a teaspoon and a look which at the very least can be described as ‘extremely disapproving’.
With the Mighty Tigers taking an unlikely fourth-minute lead, we nervously play out the first half while viewing what’s happening in the water from the balcony above. There’s a woman underneath the small pool’s fountain with more tattoos than skin, while a troupe of teenagers with ‘Dartmoor Darts Disciples’ emblazoned on their purple t-shirts amble past. Croose meanwhile has clearly forgotten about his limp as he happily wanders around the poolside in his canary yellow outfit, while Milton dances contentedly to the background music, completely impervious to the fact that (a) no-one else is joining in and (b) his every out-of-time move is being recorded (in a notebook) from on high. Over in the other pool, Simmo is modelling the longest pair of swimwear (nee trunks) in the building, which are no problem at all when they’re dry, but as soon as they get wet, they’re so heavy that their owner has to spend most of the two-hour sojourn making sure they remain somewhere close to his waist.
The return to the café is not good; Guiseley have equalised and now take the lead directly from a corner that hits the far post and the keeper before trickling over the line. I shed a few tears, but wipe my eyes just in time before the nice people return to the café and show absolutely no interest at all in the aforementioned result. Croose and Ansermoz eventually appear from the sanctity of the changing room and we return to the bus, Croose claiming his lateness is due to his injury, but no-one pays his sympathy-inducing pleas any attention whatsoever.
The impressive Duke of Cornwall’s only a ten-minute skip and jump away and the allocation of rooms sees Milton, Brockbank and Simmo occupying the triple, while Croose and Hine inhabit a superior twin, which basically means they’ve got an extra bit of space with a sofa and writing desk tagged on to the standard twin bit. Both abodes are on the first floor, while Coach Wilson’s on the fourth with the rest of the gang, having recently finished first in a mobility test that included fewer than three people walking up and down a short flight of stairs. Up in the eves, Curtis and Ansermoz make for a very dodgy pairing, Bennett and Bevan a potentially nice one and Beaumont & Ali a really small one, in room size at any rate. ‘It’s alphabetical,’ explains Coach Wilson, ‘Simmo and Milton are in the largest room, Hine’s in the next biggest and you, Aayaan, well, you’re lucky to have a room with any floor at all.’ ‘Never mind,’ consoles Beaumont, ‘let’s go and have a game of Hangman - and I’ll let you win….’
Forty minutes after checking in, we’re back on the Fun Bus, headed for Ten-Pin in The Barbican. From the Mayflower Steps just down the road, 102 Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America exactly four hundred years ago in search of a new life on the far side of the pond. Tonight, Ansermoz, Milton and Croose would have loved to have scored three figures in the annual bowling contest versus their Plymouth counterparts and while they’re not looking for a new life exactly, their paucity of success on the sides-up alley suggests a brand new pastime might well be a sensible way forward. On the other hand, Simmo displays all the characteristics of a mis-spent youth by accruing a pretty decent 114, with Bevan and Bennett not far behind. We win the bowling with a bit to spare, retaining the TP title for the fourteenth consecutive season, an unprecedented run of success that owes as much to Coach Wilson’s creative accounting over the years as any Gloucestershire predilection for aiming straight. At least this time we really did win, which if nothing else, is extremely morally gratifying.
The evening meal is ordered and consumed by most in a flash, though Coach Wilson decides you can’t eat a five-cheese cheeseburger & chips without a knife and fork, so joins the end of what he euphemistically calls the ‘cutlery queue’. His fifteen-minute wait has two eventual outcomes – one positive and one not so well received. On the good side he can now eat everything without getting his fingers sticky; on the other, by the time he sits down, everything’s stone cold and he has to endure a further five-minute delay before eating, while the kitchen’s mis-firing microwave is called into action.
‘Noah’s been sick,’ gasps Hine, who then completes a verbal questionnaire on the where, what and colour before the matter can be investigated. The where turns out to be the toilet, the what turns out to be chicken (Southern Fried) and the colour turns out to be an interesting shade of orange with a rather fetching hint of yellow. Lazarus is completely unmoved by the temporary blip in proceedings however; no fuss, no upset, no problem, just a glass of iced water and a return to the main aim of Part 2 of the evening, which is attempting to amass ten thousand tickets to exchange for a six-pack (of Haribo’s) at the reception desk.
The return to the Duke sees Hine break into a contented smile on collecting a pyjama package from the hotel reception and Coach Wilson disappear behind a pillar and reappear within seconds as TRI (The Room Inspector), a fearsome figure determined to educate everyone as to the elite standards expected during future trips’ room examinations. With Milton, Simmo and Brockers looking on aghast, TRI finds seven parallel and perpendicular faults in their pristine-looking abode, before moving on to wreak similar mental havoc on four further rooms, a blitz that only concludes a few minutes before Match of the Day comes calling. Never has Gary Lineker been so well received by citizens of our great city.
‘Megan Markle’s been booted out of the royal family,’ offers Born-Again Milton, eager to make a positive impression at 8 o’clock on a sunny but cold Devonian Sunday morning. No-one replies.
The fourth floor is five minutes late coming down for breakfast, with Curtis pinpointed as the main reason for the delay, and one look at the topiary involved in arranging the top of his head suggests that the accusations in this case are extremely well founded. Milton and Hine have also taken a good deal of trouble in regard to their own follicular arrangements, while Simmo has gone one (very big) step further. On hearing the weather’s going to take a turn for the worse next week, he’s arranged his thatch in a design that sticks out at least six inches in front of his forehead to form what looks like a perfect shelter for the front of his body. A couple of lengths of guttering and a five-foot downpipe would round things off rather nicely.
Bevan’s turned up tieless, but escapes losing all ten attitude marks as no official competitions are taking place this weekend. It won’t be like this in London or Jersey, so One of our Own makes a mental note to look in the bottom of his bag the next time he can’t find anything.
Unsurprisingly, Beaumont reads the menu far more diligently than anyone else and orders a bacon sandwich. Ansermoz impresses everyone by getting straight into his five-a-day by selecting an apple from the buffet table, but fails to take a bite. ‘Are there eating marks today?’ asks Hine who, on hearing that there aren’t, promptly leaves half a slice of fried bread and a sliver of hash brown. Croose orders beans, much to the horror of everyone within a hundred-yard radius with no access to a nuclear bunker. Coach Wilson manoeuvres his knife and fork round the contents of his plate with the dexterity of a circus juggler, much to the interest of Bennett, who spends his time at the breakfast table imagining what effect those two implements, controlled by such a master handler, might have had on yesterday evening’s Ten-Pin lavatorial cocktail. ‘They could have rescued the Southern Fried chicken at the very least,’ he silently concludes.
We’re back at Plympton Academy for 9.45, where the bit in the shade still bears the white of last night’s sub-zero temperatures, but by the time we start, all is green and by-and-large, good. The injured Croose has taken up the uncharacteristic position of linesperson, donning the bright yellow flag with the referee’s confidence-boosting strapline, ‘Don’t worry if you get it (all) wrong),’ still ringing in his ears.
The game itself v Marjon’s is one-sided to say the least, and Triple A-plus-Two plunders a 12-minute treble as his pace proves far too much for the year-older backline. Hine nips in for a brace of in-offs, while Curtis helps himself to a couple, causing a wry smile to break out on his left side at least.
With Croose having transferred to the far touchline in the second half, most of the play mysteriously switches to the other flank and Milton is born-again in every respect after he’s found the top of the net with a crisp left-foot finish. And then the moment the world and its dog has been waiting so long for; Hine unselfishly squares the ball across the box and Simmo, despite suffering from an attack of acute vertigo due to being so high up the pitch, pink-foots home the first proper goal of his entire life. The inverted banana suddenly becomes a medieval platter and Curtis’s grin threatens to spread to his right side, if only for a fleeting second or so. Nice Noah Bennett and Nice Theo Bevan are straight into the celebratory pack, while Nice Ollie Beaumont is just behind, despite one of his two inner demons whispering, ‘It could have been you,’ continuously in his right ear, while the second one offers, ‘Buy some pink boots and you too might score,’ in the other. ‘Don’t you ever wear pink boots!’ orders Coach Wilson, sensing the mental struggle going on within, before qualifying it with, ‘Real Croatians don’t wear pink!’ whatever that means.
‘I did a cross’ (sic) when I was six and it dropped into the top corner, but that wasn’t a proper goal,’ explains Simmo to Bianca from Sky Sports immediately after the final whistle, ‘and when our team scored an own goal a couple of years back, the manager gave it to me, even though I was sitting on the subs bench at the time, so that doesn’t really count.’ ‘Wonderful,’ says Bianca, ‘and how does this all make you feel?’ ‘A bit uncomfortable to be honest,’ replies Simmo, ‘because you’ve got right into my space. I know the forecast says it’s going to rain soon, but you really don’t need to be under my shelter.’
There’s no post-match grub today, so we descend on Exeter services for the second time this weekend for a bit of lunch and some. Brockbank leads the way once more by demolishing an entire cheese & tomato pizza followed by some sort of whipped dessert, which appears on the Burger King collection board as number 1053 ‘Cooking’. Bennett is completely mystified by the idea that they put what can only be described as ice cream without the ice in the BK oven and orders one for himself, just to check it out. Ansermoz is busy forcing yet another Whopper down his throat with a gusto that says, ‘Clean sheet,’ though the truth of the matter is that it would have been far harder to let one in today than not. Bevan, Curtis and Milton meanwhile descend on the ‘grabber’ machine around the corner and are thrilled to win a fluorescent yellow banana, a garish orange fish of indeterminate breed and a bright purple barbie girl that has One-of-our-Own grinning from ear to ear over. Cheater.
There’s a new chant as we sidle northbound past Sedgemoor, scene of a seventeenth century battle and the revelation that, ‘Charlie loves Nicola, Charlie loves Nicola’ (repeat 20 times). Thankfully no-one dislikes the lino enough to add the song’s final line, ‘But Nicola doesn’t…..’ (repeat 20 times), so we’ll include it here instead.
The timing’s perfect as we roll up at GL2 dead on half four, exactly thirty two hours and thirty minutes after leaving. It feels like thirty two and a half days, but all in a good way. Mother Bevan is horrified as One of Her Own steps off the bus and presents her with a very orange fish as a present, while Mother Hine would have been horrified that Sweet Caroline (Junior) would rather play football with JC than come home and sit in front of the fire with his new pyjamas on. Sensibly, she’s sent Father Hine along instead, as he’s far more adept at prizing the pair of left-footers apart.
Mother Croose has also declined the delights of GL2, electing to spend her last few minutes of freedom with a double whisky ‘for medicinal purposes’, before forcing a smile and quickly counting the number of days left before the London tour, just as the errant linesman strolls through the door. ‘Thirty two,’ he announces, anticipating his mother’s furtive calculations, before holding his bright yellow flag aloft and disappearing into the kitchen to examine the edible contents of the fridge.
‘But….but,’ stammers Pink Boots, as Mother Simpson says, ‘I don’t believe you,’ for the thirty-second time, ‘and if you keep on telling me these ridiculous stories, you’ll be going to bed at six thirty, with or without pyjamas.’ ‘Okay,’ says Simmo, in one final attempt to appease his mother. ‘I got up at six o’clock this morning, swam the Tamar, shook the water off my hair shelter and flooded the entire ground floor of the Duke of Cornwall’s own hotel,’ he explains. ‘That’s more like it,’ says NS. ‘You know it’s always better to tell the truth.’
Gloucester A (bowling scores in brackets): Stavrou Junior (77); Croatia Testudine (90), Pink Alert (114), Half-Smile (83); Caramel Sundae (89), One of our Own (102), Lazarus (97), Sweet Caroline (80); Triple A-plus-Two (81); Born Again (79), Lino (77).
