Perspective
The Navigator’s somewhere exotic, or more probably scouring the shelves in Foyles at 107 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0DT in his own unique way of celebrating a Big Birthday, whatever that means. In comes The Photographer and Nureyev’s more than a little concerned at the thought of a further bout of CO2 poisoning followed by a half marathon round the Compton Abdale lay-by, but there’s more chance of methane contamination, judging by the word on the street - or the back of the bus at any rate.
Either way, the window’s down, The Photographer’s take on the ‘What did The Romans do for us?’ Life of Brian sketch being drowned out by the eerie silence of the M4 road works, which themselves take up five and a half miles, sixty three and a half thousand big red cones and not a single fluorescent jacket, pick axe or road roller in sight.
It’s Reading Services for the first time this season and the place is undergoing a revamp that’s moving about as quickly as the recently negotiated motorway improvements, though the server behind the breakfast bar is the same as five years ago – or at least his demeanour is.
Margaret and Lacoste join the long Gregg’s queue, eight others take up position in the BK Delicatessen line, while Muzzy satisfies himself with a self-indulgent wander through WHS on his Larry Lonely.
Father Walters is in residence, safe in the knowledge that not since the 2012/13 season have GPSFA players been even occasional visitors to Costa, but his personal reverie is rudely interrupted, not by the team, but by the manager and The Photographer who realise very quickly that if they join him at his strategically located table, the players will need a particularly acute sense of smell to have any chance of successfully sniffing them out.
The Photographer belies his official status as Assistant Navigator by refusing to attempt any of the Mind Games in The Times (or anything else the broadsheet has to offer – news, for instance) and as a result locates the road underlined in the big black book with a swagger and a wink that suggests he feels promotion to the main job is just around the corner. It’s not, but thankfully the ground is.
The team sheets are in and GPSFA has five players on it – with beautiful black boots that is. Big Sam, The Weatherman, Nureyev and Muzzy are today joined by Margaret Albert Pargeter, who’s nicked his brother’s perfectly designed footwear in a successful attempt to gain an extra ‘attitude’ mark which he immediately loses as he still hasn’t learnt how to tie the laces. Different boots, different design, different outlook, same old problem.
Billy wins the toss and elects (on instruction) to play up the slope against the wind in the first half. Muzzy goes close after a good run down the right, but Kenny is called into action to make a decent save with his big strong feet before Guest takes advantage of some indecisive defending to put the home side ahead ten minutes before the break.
Second half and with both the elements and the incline in their favour Gloucester unsurprisingly enjoy the majority of possession and territorial advantage, Nureyev playing in The Colonel five minutes after the restart, but his effort drifts just wide of the far post. Exactly a hundred and eighty three seconds later, Scarface gets away down the right and his inch perfect cross is converted by The Colonel for the equaliser.
It’s pretty much all Gloucester now, but The Weatherman, Margaret and Big Sam are a disciplined back line and while giving the Woking front runners few to no opportunities to shine, they also ensure the team has the shape to continue playing properly, while the wing backs both overlap on occasions to provide extra options going forward.
Nureyev is having a fine game in central midfield and thunders a great effort off the bar and sees his free kick saved by the home team’s keeper, before playing in The Colonel who is just inches wide once more. Scarface heads over from a Billy corner while left and right crosses from Lacoste and Scarface (again) are well defended by a resilient and well organised Woking team.
There are no further goals and we have to settle for a share of the spoils on a day that our hosts have organised excellently – four matches on two pitches featuring close to a hundred players; refreshments for all, young officials given an opportunity and taking it with aplomb, an appreciative crowd and Father Walters proving to be an excellent ball boy as, taking his very life in his hands, sprinted down the grass bank to go where few men have even considered going before to rescue the object of all our desires from the mangrove-like nature reserve, with The Lens click-clicking throughout in the forlorn hope that he might get a classic snap of a Tottenham Hotspur supporter splashing frantically around in a last-ditch attempt to escape a tadpole-infested expanse of by-and-large stagnant water.
The drive back home is interspersed with four notable and palindromically-timed events. 3.03pm – Whitehawk take an early lead; 3.23pm – Joe Parker equalises for Gloucester City; 3.53pm – the ninety ninth visit of the season to date to Membury Services for a more-than-one-way comfort break and 4.54pm – full time in Brighton. It’s been a day of 1-1s; one we’re pleased with and one we’re probably not quite as happy about.
Sunday afternoon. Manchester City have just beaten a pretty lacklustre Arsenal in the League Cup Final or whatever it’s called nowadays. Some people are celebrating in the stand where we sat on our stadium tour just nine days ago, while others are halfway down Wembley Way, looking for a short cut to somewhere they can sit and forget.
And a cerebrally-challenged Jamie Redknapp sits in the TV studio opining that ‘Pep Guardiola’s an amazing human being’ (sic) – ‘because he’s got this group of players to perform like this.’
Not the nurses, doctors, firefighters or charity workers in war-torn landscapes, who do amazing things on a day-to-day basis, or Mother Theresa, Florence Nightingale, Dorrigo Evans, Gladys Alyward of ‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ fame, Jesus of Nazareth, Robert Falcon Scott, Martin Luther King or even John Boy Walton, who could all genuinely claim to be ‘amazing people’, but who have little or nothing to do with twenty-odd players charging around a piece of grass in pursuit of a ball. Pep’s amazing because he’s currently a ‘successful’ football coach? Life. The Universe. Everything. Perspective?
Gloucester: Kenny; The Weatherman, Margaret Albert Pargeter, Big Sam; Lisa, Billy, Nureyev, Lacoste; Dr Souss; Scarface, The Colonel.
Either way, the window’s down, The Photographer’s take on the ‘What did The Romans do for us?’ Life of Brian sketch being drowned out by the eerie silence of the M4 road works, which themselves take up five and a half miles, sixty three and a half thousand big red cones and not a single fluorescent jacket, pick axe or road roller in sight.
It’s Reading Services for the first time this season and the place is undergoing a revamp that’s moving about as quickly as the recently negotiated motorway improvements, though the server behind the breakfast bar is the same as five years ago – or at least his demeanour is.
Margaret and Lacoste join the long Gregg’s queue, eight others take up position in the BK Delicatessen line, while Muzzy satisfies himself with a self-indulgent wander through WHS on his Larry Lonely.
Father Walters is in residence, safe in the knowledge that not since the 2012/13 season have GPSFA players been even occasional visitors to Costa, but his personal reverie is rudely interrupted, not by the team, but by the manager and The Photographer who realise very quickly that if they join him at his strategically located table, the players will need a particularly acute sense of smell to have any chance of successfully sniffing them out.
The Photographer belies his official status as Assistant Navigator by refusing to attempt any of the Mind Games in The Times (or anything else the broadsheet has to offer – news, for instance) and as a result locates the road underlined in the big black book with a swagger and a wink that suggests he feels promotion to the main job is just around the corner. It’s not, but thankfully the ground is.
The team sheets are in and GPSFA has five players on it – with beautiful black boots that is. Big Sam, The Weatherman, Nureyev and Muzzy are today joined by Margaret Albert Pargeter, who’s nicked his brother’s perfectly designed footwear in a successful attempt to gain an extra ‘attitude’ mark which he immediately loses as he still hasn’t learnt how to tie the laces. Different boots, different design, different outlook, same old problem.
Billy wins the toss and elects (on instruction) to play up the slope against the wind in the first half. Muzzy goes close after a good run down the right, but Kenny is called into action to make a decent save with his big strong feet before Guest takes advantage of some indecisive defending to put the home side ahead ten minutes before the break.
Second half and with both the elements and the incline in their favour Gloucester unsurprisingly enjoy the majority of possession and territorial advantage, Nureyev playing in The Colonel five minutes after the restart, but his effort drifts just wide of the far post. Exactly a hundred and eighty three seconds later, Scarface gets away down the right and his inch perfect cross is converted by The Colonel for the equaliser.
It’s pretty much all Gloucester now, but The Weatherman, Margaret and Big Sam are a disciplined back line and while giving the Woking front runners few to no opportunities to shine, they also ensure the team has the shape to continue playing properly, while the wing backs both overlap on occasions to provide extra options going forward.
Nureyev is having a fine game in central midfield and thunders a great effort off the bar and sees his free kick saved by the home team’s keeper, before playing in The Colonel who is just inches wide once more. Scarface heads over from a Billy corner while left and right crosses from Lacoste and Scarface (again) are well defended by a resilient and well organised Woking team.
There are no further goals and we have to settle for a share of the spoils on a day that our hosts have organised excellently – four matches on two pitches featuring close to a hundred players; refreshments for all, young officials given an opportunity and taking it with aplomb, an appreciative crowd and Father Walters proving to be an excellent ball boy as, taking his very life in his hands, sprinted down the grass bank to go where few men have even considered going before to rescue the object of all our desires from the mangrove-like nature reserve, with The Lens click-clicking throughout in the forlorn hope that he might get a classic snap of a Tottenham Hotspur supporter splashing frantically around in a last-ditch attempt to escape a tadpole-infested expanse of by-and-large stagnant water.
The drive back home is interspersed with four notable and palindromically-timed events. 3.03pm – Whitehawk take an early lead; 3.23pm – Joe Parker equalises for Gloucester City; 3.53pm – the ninety ninth visit of the season to date to Membury Services for a more-than-one-way comfort break and 4.54pm – full time in Brighton. It’s been a day of 1-1s; one we’re pleased with and one we’re probably not quite as happy about.
Sunday afternoon. Manchester City have just beaten a pretty lacklustre Arsenal in the League Cup Final or whatever it’s called nowadays. Some people are celebrating in the stand where we sat on our stadium tour just nine days ago, while others are halfway down Wembley Way, looking for a short cut to somewhere they can sit and forget.
And a cerebrally-challenged Jamie Redknapp sits in the TV studio opining that ‘Pep Guardiola’s an amazing human being’ (sic) – ‘because he’s got this group of players to perform like this.’
Not the nurses, doctors, firefighters or charity workers in war-torn landscapes, who do amazing things on a day-to-day basis, or Mother Theresa, Florence Nightingale, Dorrigo Evans, Gladys Alyward of ‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ fame, Jesus of Nazareth, Robert Falcon Scott, Martin Luther King or even John Boy Walton, who could all genuinely claim to be ‘amazing people’, but who have little or nothing to do with twenty-odd players charging around a piece of grass in pursuit of a ball. Pep’s amazing because he’s currently a ‘successful’ football coach? Life. The Universe. Everything. Perspective?
Gloucester: Kenny; The Weatherman, Margaret Albert Pargeter, Big Sam; Lisa, Billy, Nureyev, Lacoste; Dr Souss; Scarface, The Colonel.
