Anniversaries
The Groundsman’s been trawling the internet this week and has discovered Vitamin B12 deficiency, a diagnosis which has resulted in him being laid low for both the current and the foreseeable. Further research reveals that this condition often comes with an assortment of rather unpalatable symptoms directly associated with and connected to the alimentary canal, details of which must remain under wraps due to the potential diversity of constitutional strength of the regular four-strong readership of this column.
Following the Chairman’s recent Of-Stead inspection of the Longlevens facilities, the WCs were categorised as only ‘Satisfactory’, an assessment which suggests that the longer B12-deficient personnel remain absent, the better it’ll be for supporters of all ages, genders and scarf denominations. 2018 is the seventieth anniversary of Aneurin Bevan’s founding of the NHS, but if we carry on like this, it’ll be gone in seventy one.
It’s a filthy morning in GL2, but that hasn’t prevented the set-up gang once again appearing before dawn and the stadium’s erected in ever-straightening lines, with parallel and perpendicular fast becoming the norm as Coach Stalley’s yellow Theseus-like trail of polyester and polypropylene is followed to a tee.
The enthusiasm of the gathering crowd is tested to the limit by the icy precipitation that unsurprisingly The Weatherman has failed to forecast and there are accoutrement changes at both ends of the assemblage. Mother of The Colonel has gone back to basics by donning the first of her twenty seven almost identical hats and seems far happier as a result, while Mother Sargeant flaunts a pair of original Christian Louboutin pink wellies, which impresses the only two people who glimpse the rather indistinct red-soled-shoe logo that appears just below the rim of each. The bright green homemade ‘Look closely’ stick-on arrows immediately help increase the number of envious onlookers however, seconds before they apply a random piece of sticking plaster to the ‘P for Primark’ insignia on their own rather less fashionable, yet far cheaper but equally effective brand of water resistant footwear.
The Shining Armour is manning the programme box once again to great effect and Mrs Of-Stead is in the cookhouse, being regaled by The Chef of the many and varied advantages of consuming deep-fried food at least three times a day. Billy arrives fresh from treading the boards at the local theatre where he’s spent the previous evening rapping and ballet-shoeing everything in sight, while Nureyev arrives with a hobble and a limp, which suggests that the only wrapping he’ll be involved in today is one that involves copious amounts of highly absorbent cotton wool.
The Yellows extend their winning run to six games on a pitch that is analogous with both Bath and water and in a desperate attempt to pass on the secrets of success to the B&Ys, Coach Wixey has lemon-freshed their kit and the results are immediately obvious.
Scarface, Lisa, Billy and Lacoste dominate the midfield and twelve minutes in Billy drives home a well struck opener from just outside the box. Scarface’s textbook volley almost makes it two shortly afterwards, but for all the possession, we only have the single goal to show for a very promising first half.
With the wind in their favour after the jelly baby decapitation break, Wycombe fancy their chances and rightly so. Margaret, Big Sam and The Weatherman however are in no mood to surrender a tackle, never mind anything else and the redoubtable Kenny has only one save of note to make as he pulls one out for the camera, only to find The Lens is pointing in the opposite direction.
‘Market forces,’ explains The Photographer afterwards. ‘South London Girls have never been to Longlevens before and they’ve brought four supporters up with them. My earlier survey reveals that all bar one of the Wycombe fans bought a photo last time they came, so I’ve four times as much chance of shifting a print or even two by looking the other way for the next hour and a bit.’ It’s a mathematical proof of which Pythagoras, on the 2,587th anniversary of his birth, bless his hypotenused cotton socks and square-rooted undergarments, would have been undeniably proud.
The Colonel puts us two up with a great individual effort that Margaret will doubtless claim to have assisted and the same player makes it three via a Billy corner and the inside of the left hand post. Thankfully Margaret is nowhere to be seen on this occasion, so there’ll be no post-match statistical debate about this one. Lacoste is enjoying his best game for a while, driving down the left with a verve that suggests his recent bout of somnambulism is now nothing more than a semi-distant memory. On the other flank Scarface is also in full flow, Warhorse-like in his application and threatening the left side of the Wycombe defence with both a succession of fine passes and a clutch of dangerous runs and crosses.
Lisa uses the laces of his uber-fashionable black boots to knock home the fourth shortly before the final whistle and even Coach Wilson musters a smile that suggests either absolute contentment in both the performance and result or the onset of Vitamin B12 deficiency, depending on your point of view.
On the adjacent pitch the Girls’ Squad is involved in a humdinger of a Southern Counties Cup tie with South London, which is only settled after seventy minutes of unrelenting action and a nerve-shredding penalty shoot-out. It’s strange to consider that this year is the 100th anniversary of women being allowed to vote, a decision ultimately brought about by the protestations of the Emily Twins, a groundswell of public opinion and a fervent desire to make things better. This game, and the fact that two of our players have women’s names, are just two tiny shreds of evidence that show how far we’ve come in a relatively short space of time.
Adibayor leaves a layer in the changing room hoping that Coach Wixey will find it, collect it and wash it, but the potential rescuer is only laundering yellow shirts today and another item goes missing from the miscreant’s ever-diminishing wardrobe. Eleven more to go.
There’s a different sort of laundering going on in the afternoon, as money comes to the fore in the season’s second visit to the Sainsbury’s tills and another session of collecting both cash and compliments in equal measure over the three-hour stretch is almost identical in total to the previous sojourn beneath the big orange sign.
Coach Harris does an Adibayor and buys the players drinks with somebody else’s money, checking out through the self service till in a premeditated manoeuvre that successfully avoids him putting anything of note in a bucket that’s manned by a yellow tie and a dinner plate smile; Coach Wilson on the other hand uses the more traditional checkout procedure, but waits until the teams have disappeared before exiting at twenty past five with two bagloads of seasonal vegetables and the realisation that this is the 119th (day) anniversary of our last 4-0 victory over Wycombe.
Gloucester City score a ninety-first minute winner at Welling United, but there are no records of this ever happening anywhere before, so there is no anniversary to celebrate, only the complete and utter smugness of the cherry on the icing of a highly successful day in all respects. Unless you’re a groundsman with B12 deficiency that is.
Early Monday morning and we pull into the Waitrose car park as it’s free and only a short limp to a bacon roll and black Americano at BTP. There’s a woman slouched against the tailgate of her car, reading the back page of the Daily Mirror and smoking a pipe. Her husband struggles to steer a wheel-locked trolley containing four badly packed ‘Bags for Life’ in the general direction of the grey Citroen Espace that he has owned for a year but hasn’t yet been allowed to drive. It’s another small shred of evidence that shows just how far we’ve come in such a relatively short space of time.
Gloucester A: Kenny; The Weatherman, Margaret Albert Pargeter, Big Bad Sam; Warhorse, Lisa, Billy, Lacoste; Adibayor; The Colonel. Physiotherapist: Nureyev.
Following the Chairman’s recent Of-Stead inspection of the Longlevens facilities, the WCs were categorised as only ‘Satisfactory’, an assessment which suggests that the longer B12-deficient personnel remain absent, the better it’ll be for supporters of all ages, genders and scarf denominations. 2018 is the seventieth anniversary of Aneurin Bevan’s founding of the NHS, but if we carry on like this, it’ll be gone in seventy one.
It’s a filthy morning in GL2, but that hasn’t prevented the set-up gang once again appearing before dawn and the stadium’s erected in ever-straightening lines, with parallel and perpendicular fast becoming the norm as Coach Stalley’s yellow Theseus-like trail of polyester and polypropylene is followed to a tee.
The enthusiasm of the gathering crowd is tested to the limit by the icy precipitation that unsurprisingly The Weatherman has failed to forecast and there are accoutrement changes at both ends of the assemblage. Mother of The Colonel has gone back to basics by donning the first of her twenty seven almost identical hats and seems far happier as a result, while Mother Sargeant flaunts a pair of original Christian Louboutin pink wellies, which impresses the only two people who glimpse the rather indistinct red-soled-shoe logo that appears just below the rim of each. The bright green homemade ‘Look closely’ stick-on arrows immediately help increase the number of envious onlookers however, seconds before they apply a random piece of sticking plaster to the ‘P for Primark’ insignia on their own rather less fashionable, yet far cheaper but equally effective brand of water resistant footwear.
The Shining Armour is manning the programme box once again to great effect and Mrs Of-Stead is in the cookhouse, being regaled by The Chef of the many and varied advantages of consuming deep-fried food at least three times a day. Billy arrives fresh from treading the boards at the local theatre where he’s spent the previous evening rapping and ballet-shoeing everything in sight, while Nureyev arrives with a hobble and a limp, which suggests that the only wrapping he’ll be involved in today is one that involves copious amounts of highly absorbent cotton wool.
The Yellows extend their winning run to six games on a pitch that is analogous with both Bath and water and in a desperate attempt to pass on the secrets of success to the B&Ys, Coach Wixey has lemon-freshed their kit and the results are immediately obvious.
Scarface, Lisa, Billy and Lacoste dominate the midfield and twelve minutes in Billy drives home a well struck opener from just outside the box. Scarface’s textbook volley almost makes it two shortly afterwards, but for all the possession, we only have the single goal to show for a very promising first half.
With the wind in their favour after the jelly baby decapitation break, Wycombe fancy their chances and rightly so. Margaret, Big Sam and The Weatherman however are in no mood to surrender a tackle, never mind anything else and the redoubtable Kenny has only one save of note to make as he pulls one out for the camera, only to find The Lens is pointing in the opposite direction.
‘Market forces,’ explains The Photographer afterwards. ‘South London Girls have never been to Longlevens before and they’ve brought four supporters up with them. My earlier survey reveals that all bar one of the Wycombe fans bought a photo last time they came, so I’ve four times as much chance of shifting a print or even two by looking the other way for the next hour and a bit.’ It’s a mathematical proof of which Pythagoras, on the 2,587th anniversary of his birth, bless his hypotenused cotton socks and square-rooted undergarments, would have been undeniably proud.
The Colonel puts us two up with a great individual effort that Margaret will doubtless claim to have assisted and the same player makes it three via a Billy corner and the inside of the left hand post. Thankfully Margaret is nowhere to be seen on this occasion, so there’ll be no post-match statistical debate about this one. Lacoste is enjoying his best game for a while, driving down the left with a verve that suggests his recent bout of somnambulism is now nothing more than a semi-distant memory. On the other flank Scarface is also in full flow, Warhorse-like in his application and threatening the left side of the Wycombe defence with both a succession of fine passes and a clutch of dangerous runs and crosses.
Lisa uses the laces of his uber-fashionable black boots to knock home the fourth shortly before the final whistle and even Coach Wilson musters a smile that suggests either absolute contentment in both the performance and result or the onset of Vitamin B12 deficiency, depending on your point of view.
On the adjacent pitch the Girls’ Squad is involved in a humdinger of a Southern Counties Cup tie with South London, which is only settled after seventy minutes of unrelenting action and a nerve-shredding penalty shoot-out. It’s strange to consider that this year is the 100th anniversary of women being allowed to vote, a decision ultimately brought about by the protestations of the Emily Twins, a groundswell of public opinion and a fervent desire to make things better. This game, and the fact that two of our players have women’s names, are just two tiny shreds of evidence that show how far we’ve come in a relatively short space of time.
Adibayor leaves a layer in the changing room hoping that Coach Wixey will find it, collect it and wash it, but the potential rescuer is only laundering yellow shirts today and another item goes missing from the miscreant’s ever-diminishing wardrobe. Eleven more to go.
There’s a different sort of laundering going on in the afternoon, as money comes to the fore in the season’s second visit to the Sainsbury’s tills and another session of collecting both cash and compliments in equal measure over the three-hour stretch is almost identical in total to the previous sojourn beneath the big orange sign.
Coach Harris does an Adibayor and buys the players drinks with somebody else’s money, checking out through the self service till in a premeditated manoeuvre that successfully avoids him putting anything of note in a bucket that’s manned by a yellow tie and a dinner plate smile; Coach Wilson on the other hand uses the more traditional checkout procedure, but waits until the teams have disappeared before exiting at twenty past five with two bagloads of seasonal vegetables and the realisation that this is the 119th (day) anniversary of our last 4-0 victory over Wycombe.
Gloucester City score a ninety-first minute winner at Welling United, but there are no records of this ever happening anywhere before, so there is no anniversary to celebrate, only the complete and utter smugness of the cherry on the icing of a highly successful day in all respects. Unless you’re a groundsman with B12 deficiency that is.
Early Monday morning and we pull into the Waitrose car park as it’s free and only a short limp to a bacon roll and black Americano at BTP. There’s a woman slouched against the tailgate of her car, reading the back page of the Daily Mirror and smoking a pipe. Her husband struggles to steer a wheel-locked trolley containing four badly packed ‘Bags for Life’ in the general direction of the grey Citroen Espace that he has owned for a year but hasn’t yet been allowed to drive. It’s another small shred of evidence that shows just how far we’ve come in such a relatively short space of time.
Gloucester A: Kenny; The Weatherman, Margaret Albert Pargeter, Big Bad Sam; Warhorse, Lisa, Billy, Lacoste; Adibayor; The Colonel. Physiotherapist: Nureyev.
