The Diary

24 December 2006: Pilgrims Nearly Progress At Our Expense.

I really will have to cut down on thinking about all things Baggie, all the time. It?s doing my humdrum day-to-day existence no good whatsoever. You can get a pretty good indication of the magnitude of the problem I?m having, right now, from my more or less instantaneous mental response to a chalked notice I saw on a board displayed right outside a butcher?s shop ? no, not the Bluenose flavoured one ? earlier today. ?BOOK YOUR TURKEY? was the seasonal message it conveyed to the buying public, a goodly number of whom were slowly drifting past the display window and peering intently at the meaty goodies contained within, which was fair enough, considering only one more shopping day remains until the Big Blow-Out.

The real problem was my imagination, which was busily visualising something totally different: how does a member of the whistling fraternity, notebook in hand, and holding a yellow card aloft for the benefit of a prize gobbler, with several more stood around, all trying to raise their beaks above the prevalent babble of confusion, grab you?

And I can just as easily imagine the exchanges, too: ?Aw, come off it, ref, I know I went in a bit late on the chicken hanging up in that chiller room at the back just now, but it wasn?t deliberate, mate, honest! Go on, give us a break ? you book me now, and that?ll be my fifth one this season. I?ll get suspended, and right before we play the Bantams in a local derby, as well?. Oh, come on, mate, be a sport, I won?t do it again, honest?.?

(Ref licks his pencil very hard, starts writing, then pauses momentarily to stare intently at the miscreant stood in front of him.) ?Sorry, no can do. That?s the third bad tackle I?ve seen you put in this half, so I?ve got no choice. You?re in me book, Sunny Jim, ?an that?s that. What for? WHAT FOR? It?s for serious fowl play, pal, so think yourself lucky I haven?t given you a straight red?.?

See what I mean? Yep, you really know you?ve got it bad once it gets to the stage when you start visualising long-deceased well-plucked gobblers having it out with the local equivalent of Graham Poll. Not only that, try to share such strange, surreal visions with your nearest and dearest, and your best efforts to do so are thwarted instantaneously, almost, by the recipient of such glad tidings going like the clappers in the direction of the nearest phone ? THAT?S when you know you?ve really got problems. That, and hearing the words ?psychiatrist?, and ?restraint?, rapidly followed by the phrase ?long-term medication? mentioned, out of what they fondly think is ?earshot?.

Once they?ve finally managed to get through to the other end, that is. And there?s someone stationed there to take calls from the public, which isn?t always the case, given the somewhat parlous state of the NHS, these days. Our football club really does have a lot to answer for, when it comes to mental health, and all stations west. Just how many have our lot sent quietly bonkers, this term? Or not-so-quietly, even? Go on, try it: first one to stick their undercrackers on their heads and go ?Wibble!? is a cissy. OK? When the coppers come, just tell them ?Tony Mowbray made me do it?.? I?m sure they?ll understand.

Mind you, never mind all those stuck at home, sweating on what few crumbs of comfort Sky?s saturation coverage of events can bring: what happened at Home Park earlier today couldn?t have done the mental health of some of our more stalwart away travel regulars any good whatsoever, either. Two goals down as the interval drew nigh, and our lads seemingly dead, dead, dead, only for our moribund lot to perk up in miraculous fashion, once more, as what few precious seconds remaining ticked inexorably down to the ref?s whistle loudly proclaiming the end of the opening 45? I bet the shell-like ears of at least some of our finest were burning something rotten as the half progressed.

It would seem that the very thought of having to regain the relative warmth and security of the changing-room with naught to show for his labours, save a paucity of human kindness stemming from both his playing comrades and those supporters daft enough to make the long trip south-west, must have stirred from deep slumber something pretty primeval lurking within the innermost depths of Kev Phillips?s fertile brain: either that, or the all-pervasive smell of Ginsters? Cornish Pasties, an infamous West Country culinary standby since the days Judge Jeffries was but a junior brief, and sold within the ground on matchdays, was the guilty party. Whatever it was, it must have been pretty efficacious, because no sooner had I told ?Im Indoors, working on our PC upstairs at the time, that we?d pulled one back, then returned to our living-room sofa once more for a further ?dose? of the ?medicine?, bugger me down dead, we?d somehow nicked an equalizer as well, and right on the sodding half-time whistle, too.

Talk about a ?get out of jail? card: this one was massive, really, really massive. One certainly capable of spiriting even the late Al Capone right out of Alcatraz, and with consummate ease, too. And, by the same token, giving our own upwardly-mobile credentials a bit of much-needed titivation, albeit a small one. What did disturb me about the entire episode, mind, was the overall uselessness of our defence, especially during those opening salvoes: I kid you not, even my mum?s old colander provides a much more substantial barrier than the one we had at our disposal today. It?s particularly galling to subsequently discover that the first Plymouth goal was basically down to Curtis Davies and Paul Robinson going in for the same ball, and neither managing to quite clear the danger, thereby giving Plymouth?s Hayles a gift of a chance to take the lead, after rounding Houlty with relative ease. You do wonder whether those two recently joined a Trappist religious order, then neglected to tell anyone at the club. Ever tried talking to each other lately, you pair? If BT can say ?It?s good to talk?, and mean it, then why not our football team?

Their second? That came in the run-up to the break, when the lad Capaldi ? shouldn?t he be in a recording studio somewhere, churning out pop music, or something? ? whacked over a nasty free-kick that found Nalis lurking in close proximity to the target area, and completely unmarked, too. Again. Did their entire attack have a collective personal hygiene problem, or something, meaning our defenders could only go near them with the aid of a gilded pomander to neutralise the more noxious of those awful niffs? It was simplicity itself for the Plymouth lad to administer the old coup de grace after that bit of complete nonsense, of course, but plain bloody maddening if you just happened to be a Baggies supporter, and operating in what must have genuinely felt like scores of light-years away from your own Solar System.

It?s also pretty vexing to discover that Our Little Kev could quite easily have landed both a hat-trick and the three points, all nicely wrapped up in a dinky little bow, his own chance for lasting Black Country glory coming just four minutes from the end: yet again, another one-on-one with the opposition keeper got well and truly stuffed up, the end result being the gain of not three, but just the one solitary point. So could Hartson, and so could Curtis Davies, on the rebound from the Hartson effort, which their keeper stopped, but couldn?t hold on to. And Koumas. And that, my friends, is the fundamental difference between a side that?s dead serious about gaining promotion, and one merely playing at it. The former is absolutely ruthless about taking apart sides, sending ?em away with their tails firmly stuck between their legs every time they play, while the latter simply gawps in open disbelief every single time the opposition overruns their half-soaked rearguard. Or passes up perfectly good scoring chances. Yer pays yer money, and takes yer choice.

Thoughts? Once more, it?s our away form that?s letting us down so badly, and grievously so at times: had the standard of our play been somewhat more robust on the road, we?d have more than likely ended up with far more in the way of points by way of reword by now. Thanks to our perpetual poor showing in this area, we?ll not be sitting atop the promotion places over the festive season, sadly. As for Clem getting his marching orders for a second bookable offence deep into injury time, only 45 minutes after first coming on, that?s going to mean an automatic one-match ban, isn?t it? Stupid boy.

Oh, well. Time to put the multitudinous cares and woes of supporting an underachieving football team well behind me, and turn my attention to the forthcoming Yuletide, I suppose. Back tomorrow evening with a crafty shufti at our next opponents, high-flying Preston, currently in the runners-up spot, and looking hot to regain the top-flight status they relinquished all those years ago, and while their most famous ?old boy?, Tom Finney, is still alive and kicking, too. Will Santa deliver us a timely pressie, in the form of three lovely points come Boxing Day, I wonder?

And Finally?? The other night, ?Im Indoors was watching a film being shown on the box, one called ?Starship Troopers?, in fact. For the benefit of those who have never come across it, it?s an extremely violent, ?blood ?n? guts orientated film version of the late 1950?s Robert Heinlein science fiction book of the same name: hugely controversial at the time, it split the sci-fi reading fraternity right down the middle. While the director of the film went most certainly down the ?satire? route (really biting stuff, in places), no-one could ever quite make up their mind whether Heinlein was simply taking the rip out of the US military for a laugh (he was an ex-Naval officer himself, and it really shows in the book), but doing it in such a devious way as to completely evade the unwelcome attentions of the House Un-American Activities Commission. Just about everyone and their cat was being accused of having clandestine communist leanings at that time, and those on the Committee weren?t always the sharpest tools in the box. Others opined that the guy simply wrote it to see precisely how much of a stink he could stir up in the sci-fi community. Not that anyone can ask him any more, mind: he died around 7 or 8 years ago.

But I digress slightly. Anyway, there was His Nibs avidly watching this film ? yes, I do have the book version in the house, by the way ? and it comes to the bit where the platoon of future super-soldiers is examining the bodies of colonists murdered by aliens called ?Bugs? on a place called ?Planet P?.

Corporal to lieutenant: ?I think you should come and see this, sir?.?

Lieutenant moves towards where a body is slumped over some sort of communications equipment, then lifts up the head of the corpse the corporal is pointing at. It has a dodgy-looking hole neatly bored right into the skull, from the outer surface inwards, and through the hair. At that point, the platoon sergeant also joins the group. Lieutenant, to sergeant, turning the head of the corpse so the other one can see: ?What do you make of this?.....?

Sergeant, face gradually assuming the features of increasing horror, the longer he has to look at the corpse: ?They?ve sucked his brains out?..?

Me, to ?Im Indoors: ?I don?t know why they?re all getting so worked up about THAT: happens all the time in Wolverhampton???

 - Glynis Wright

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