The Diary

22 March 2008: Boinging Baggies Go Bananas As Points Shared At Charlton!

ALBION MENTAL HEALTH ALERT! In the eventuality of The Fart suddenly buttonholing you before a game, then turning the conversation completely around to include vagrant musings about space communications satellites, the feasibility of having the current space laboratory enlarged further, and/or black holes, red giants, brown dwarfs, and all stations west ? whatever you do, don?t blame him!

Just me for loaning him a little pocket-sized publication, covering all the aforementioned topics in language even the densest of Dingles would easily comprehend. Which is why El Tel was devouring the contents with a certain degree of relish as I got onto our Charlton-bound coach, earlier this morning.

Could be a previously-suppressed interest in astronomy awakening there, I reckon: our hero?s now talking about grabbing his binoculars one cloudless starry night, and seeking out various stellar and planetary landmarks mentioned in my little tome for himself. I?m just delighted he found my book so absorbing, and answering all his questions was fun, too. Could it be that El Tel may yet become Albion?s answer to Patrick Moore? Now there?s a thought to conjure with!

A ?convoy? much reduced in size from normal, today: what with it being the holiday period, and our game being shown live on Sky anyway, most people had voted with their feet. ?Im Indoors included, too: his main role lay in the provision of the necessary ?taxi service? to and from the ground. Can?t blame them in some ways, what with an expensive Wembley semi-final to come, and a possible two more further down the line. Times is hard out there, banks and building societies are rapidly becoming far more select about who gets the big money loans than they were, so a fair number of Baggies will be running on a pretty tight budget, right now.

Setting off around ten minutes later than advertised, no sooner had we reached the Junction 1island near the Hawthorns, a pretty swift change of plan was called for. The reason? One mother of a thrombosed motorway, as seen from the bridge, so Plan B quickly sprang into being instead, a short trip down the M5 itself, joining up with both M42 and M40 south of Brum. A good shout, as it subsequently proved: from then on in, we encountered very little in the way of traffic congestion worth moaning about.

Mind you, not that too many on our vehicle would have known about it. And what went for ours, must have applied to all the rest. Dozing off for a few minutes myself, then reawakening courtesy one of the very few times the driver had to slam on the old anchors in anger, I quickly scanned the interior of our vehicle. Amazing ? by my own rough estimate, I reckoned well over half the occupants had also succumbed to the manifold charms of Morpheus, classical god of sleep, by then.

So much, then, for the media stereotype of the typical football supporter travelling to away fixtures in serious numbers: raucously noisy, foul mouthed with it, boozed up to the gunnels, and heads shaven to convict proportions. On our coach, you could have literally heard a pin drop. Oh dear.

Still, at least the journey southwards was a pretty pleasant one for The Fart and myself. A nice sunny day going for us, albeit a pretty cold and draughty one (on our way to the Hawthorns, the wooden fence both ?Im Indoors and myself spotted right in the very act of being blown down by those blustery gusts of wind, wasn?t a complete figment of our collective imagination, then!).

But more than ample compensation for all that lay in the various sights of imminent spring I managed to spot among the various flora and fauna situated immediately adjacent to the hard shoulder. Birds of all shapes and sizes readying their nests for the almost-imminent flutter of tiny wings: in fact, I even managed to spot several pheasants taking a chance on the weather to embark upon the old ?ooh-la-la!? game themselves. It really is amazing what you can spot from a coach window, sometimes: why not try it for yourselves the next time we have an away trip?

Quite an uneventful trip as far as motorway traffic density went, too. The M40 was an absolute doddle, ditto the usually-notorious M25, occasionally described as ?the biggest car-park in the entire London region?. By far and away the quietest I?d ever known it since the London Orbital (that?s the ?posh? name for it, folkies) first opened for business, back in the early eighties. Following signs for ?The City? all the way ? well, you only had to keep in clear sight the rapidly-growing, very familiar skyline, Canary Wharf, Gherkin and all - the actual journey from motorway turn-off to the Blackwall Tunnel, the ?underwater? method of crossing the Thames, was ridiculously easy-peasy, too.

El Tel (just before our coach vanished into the ever-gaping maw of its entrance): ?Well, I don?t see anyone walking to the ground, just yet??

Me: ?If they were, they?d have to walk on water as well ? that tunnel goes right underneath the river, and out the other side!?

It was with roughly two hours to spare before kick-off that our charabanc, along with all the rest, finally dropped anchor next to a huge shopping mall, with our next destination, ?The Antigallican? ? a pub whose somewhat strange name has roots dating back to the Napoleonic Wars, no doubt (and there was I thinking an ?antigallican? was one of those strange sub-atomic particles one hears about from time to time!) ? just down the same road, and hard by a massive set of traffic lights.

Mind you, that was one pleasure to come: in the meantime, I would be treated to the awesome sight of The Fart preparing to leave our coach. It?s a ritual I see every single time I travel with him: the Almighty Rummage into depths of his bag hitherto unfathomable by Man, the removal of essentials, such as steam radio (not forgetting those all-important spare valves, of course!) and mobile phone, swiftly followed by the addition of scarf, gloves and hat to the list of ?essentials? to go with him to the ground.

Aha! The Great Ceremony Of The Loading Of Coat Pockets With All The Aforementioned Articles can now commence, at long last! At least two further reshuffles then follow before we can both head on out onto the Sarf London pavement with confidence ? but no, hang on a mo. Back inside the vehicle he goes, to eventually re-emerge, Triumph writ large right across his face. What had he forgotten, this time? His butties, for eventual consumption inside the pub. How silly of me not to remember!

Well, at least going into the pub saved me from the ravages of acute pain in the bum-bag region. Guess what? That mall just happened to have a whopping great W.H. Smiths outlet, and after encountering similar before the Coventry Cup game - yes, and after allowing my sharp-honed bibliophile instincts to get the better of me beforehand! ? I didn?t fancy any more self-inflicted financial savagery, thank you very much, so straight into the pub it was, then.

On any other matchday, the place would have been absolutely bulging with newly-arrived Baggies, but even there, the vastly reduced numbers were pretty noticeable. While I?d been visiting the ?facilities?, El Tel managed to find a parking-spot of sorts, on a raised bit of floor on the opposite side of the bar.

Tel stuck his botty on a bit of table I couldn?t quite reach with mine, but that didn?t matter one little bit, as far as I was concerned. First off, there was the arm of one of their sofas parked there, and secondly, there was the alternative of a wedge-like crack, situated ?twixt Tel?s makeshift seat and the table behind me. Result? One very happy Baggie, me!

A typical young person?s watering-hole, I would call it. Very long on powerful alcopops and their like, but very short indeed when it came to actual seating arrangements. But I do happen to know the reason why. Some time ago, brewery boffins researching this very same topic came to the conclusion that those who drink standing up tend to drink considerably more than those who take their medicine sitting down. That?s why you?ll find so many inner-city pubs doing precisely the same thing: it?s all profit, and that?s the bottom line, of course.

So there you had it. A pub, with bar staff going flat-out to cater for the various needs of thirsty Black Country people, and every single one with their own particular take on the ordeal to come. What more could we possibly desire? Even better was our chosen vantage-point: situated well above ground level, it provided more than ample opportunity for spotting familiar faces in the crowd.

Poor Tel. The crowds he could put up with, but as far as the background music was concerned, he simply couldn?t hack it. Having long suspected that his knowledge of pop music only extends as far as Alma Cogan, Pat Boone and Frank Sinatra ? Junior Baggies, ask Granddad! ? it came as no great surprise for me to hear a succession of snarls, of gradually increasing intensity, emanating from the bijou bit of pub he?d occupied, on a temporary basis, in the name of the Queen. Still, he did perk up a little when Barbara Streisland came on, singing the well-known theme song from the film ?The Way We Were?.

Once out of the place, the remainder of the journey was an absolute doddle. And there was I thinking I?d be in for a pretty hard uphill slog ?twixt pub and ground: well, that?s what I?d been told just the other night. All together, now?.. ?W-R-R-ROOOON-N-NG!? And once inside the ground proper, an additional bonus was the fact their stewards telling us today?s game was a ?sit where you want? kind of jobbie. A good opportunity to grab a bit of real-estate offering a decent view, and with as few steps as possible to negotiate, be they upwards or downwards.

It was while I was parking my bum next to El Tel?s that he pointed out one aspect of the modern version of The Valley in particular I simply hadn?t spotted before. By that, I refer to traces of the old ground that still exist today-if you know where to look, of course. Being a Baggie soul who?d visited the old Valley many, many times in the past, it was the work of but a few moments for him to point out these largely-hidden features to me. And from what Tel told me, any game at the old Valley involving our football club invariably ended up becoming something of an ordeal.

Cold, draughty, you name it: as the grey clouds gathered, bringing with them the ever more likely threat of icy wind and rain, it seemed to stir something pretty powerful nestling right inside the massive labyrinth that calls itself Tel?s brain. Back in the late forties and early fifties ? our hero also remembers Alec Jackson playing an absolute blinder there, bad weather or no bad weather - because of the natural bowl-like shape of the underlying surface, and with only one small stand offering any form of shelter for the huge crowds most clubs seemed to have back then, the combined forces of wind and rain used to whip around the old place something awful. Even in those super-macho, stiff-upper lipped, Trevor Howard-style days of yore, players frequently found themselves pleading with trainers for the swift loan of a handy pair of woolly gloves!

I also happened to have a pretty interesting conversation with Supporters? Club head honcho Alan Cleverly just before the game got underway, and all about one particular aspect of the Wembley ticketing arrangements, too, but that?s one I?ll have to keep until later, sadly. But far more important than that was the welcome sight of both sides finally emerging from the players? tunnel ? if nothing else, it sure as hell stopped the racket that called itself ?pre-match entertainment? issuing forth from the overhead speakers, a dead-cert migraine inducer, if ever there was one.

Cheeky sods ? their ?When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin? Along? signature tune is one to which Bristol City have long since claimed exclusive ownership rights! Can such things be copyrighted, I wonder? And if I?m right on this, can I become that West Country club?s new manager, please?

As for the actual composition of the side, as per usual, Mogga had played those cards as close to his chest as humanly possible: a much-changed line-up, some of it forced upon us by the twin curses of injury and suspension. In were Hoefkens and Cesar, along with Pele, Phillips and Ish Miller, with Shelton Martis, Leon Barnett, Do-heon Kim, and Roman Bednar all well and truly out for various reasons.

And so the game got off to an eventual start, albeit a distinctly cold and miserable one, what with the wind-chill factor likely to bring the temperature crashing back down to freezing-point, almost. At least their demon drummer, banging the blasted thing at a rate of knots comparable with that of drummers working the old Roman slave galleys, the ones that surely must have spawned his distant ancestors, going by the evident enthusiasm with which the guy embarked upon his task. And we?d only been in business but a scant couple of minutes, when the home side took advantage of a little bit of inattention on our part to send out a pretty stark message to everyone seated in that away end.

Alby, boots completely failing to cope with the vastly increased slipperiness caused by that short, sharp shower of rain, allowed Charlton a gilt-edged chance to open their own account, courtesy Lita. It all looked completely sewn up for them, but just in the nick of time, Hoefkens popped up from nowhere, exerting enough pressure to finally force their man into making an error, one just enough to see Kiely collect the ball at his feet, and not from the back of his net, as we?d all expected.

Phew. What a let-off from conceding in a matter of seconds, as is our usual wont on such occasions. It wasn?t all that long after that we saw the Big Banana make its away debut. Yes, we?d all thought inflatables had long since gone out of fashion as far as their appearance at games was concerned, but now they reared their ugly heads once more, a big ?un and a little ?un, both of whom were in pretty close proximity to each other.

At least they?d brightened up considerably what had been set to be one of those horrible kinds of encounters, completely governed by abject fear, be they real or imaginary. Best of all were the chants, as spontaneous a species as you?d always want to hear from our people. Within seconds of the more tumescent of the two seeing the light of day, up went the cry, in the away end, of ?Banana, banana?.? Closely followed by the massed assertion to newcomers that ?There?s only one Big Banana?.? And that followed by the wonderful spectacle afforded us when some unsung Black Country genius or other hit upon the wonderful idea of dressing said banana in an Albion shirt! Must have got ?em scratching their heads in the home end, if nothing else.

All joking aside, and being scrupulously honest about everything, a couple of other nasty incursions upon our own territory apart, when the 30 minute mark finally came and went, we?d more or less seemed to have the measure of our opponents, at long last. A smidgen of rock upon which to build a pretty substantial fortress, in fact.

But football ain?t never as simple as that, is it? The maddening thing about it all was the fact we?d conceded courtesy yet another sodding set-piece. The fault, I?d thought, lay, in totality, at the over-sized feet of Kiely, but not so, according to hubby, watching our game on the box. More like Pele not doing what he should be doing: by the time our keeper finally saw the danger ? ?He went down in stages!? was The Fart?s unique take upon the incident - the ball was well on its way over the line.

And the unexpected Charlton strike had yet another knock-on effect we?d much rather it hadn?t. Before the goal, we?d been smacking the ball around with far more confidence than we?d seen, of late. But the goal put the confidence of our people right back to Square One, almost. Now we were struggling with just the basic concept of trying to string two passes together successfully.

Bearing all the above in mind, it came as quite a surprise to see our side pick themselves off the floor again, and in the best possible moment to do it: the minutes immediately before the half-time break. The scorer for the Baggies? Kev Phillips, who else - and this time it was the home side that proved vulnerable to set-pieces. It all started with a free kick to the Baggies, taken quite close to the danger zone, by Jonathan Greening. Gera was the lad who picked up the crumbs left by his hirsute team-mate: one swift application of boot to ball from just outside the 6-yard box, and there it was. One much-needed equaliser, bish, bang, bosh. Oh - and yet another return performance, equally welcome this time, for those wretched bananas.

The best bit, though, came when we all were in the throes of massed celebration of the equaliser. As an exultant El Tel ?boinged? away for all he was worth, he was suddenly hit on the head by an itinerant toilet roll! Blimey, talk about ?retro?: not only do we get to meet sundry inflatables on our little walk down Memory Lane, we also have to keep dodging something that used to cause no end of problems for a furious ground staff around a generation or so ago. What a wonderful way upon which to end the first half.

Come the break, come yet more versions of the much-admired tropical fruit now adorning our end. Oh dear ? I can feel yet another Albion cult activity in the making. As for the music accompanying the entry of both sides into the arena, I had no idea whatsoever of its name. Whatever it does turn out to be, it sure as hell seemed like a sadist?s version of the stuff put out by the Heavenly Choir, to me.

So off we went again, with the home persuasion wanting to see us get really flattened by their favourites, and us trying to avoid that fate with every trick in the book we knew. But it was around the middle of the half I finally realised what had been missing from my life, of late. A real dose of the miseries from one Albion supporter in particular: during a break in play, when our crowd were unusually silent, I suddenly heard it. A plaintive cry, and with considerably more than a smidgen of sheer annoyance about it, too. ?That was a cowin? foul, referee, you bloody idiot!? Well done John Homer, completely dependable when there?s some serious abuse of match officials to be done!

From then on in, we always seemed to be on the verge of taking the lead: in fact, we would have, had our strike not been disallowed for offside by the friendless Mister Friend. Also noticeable was yet another ?retro? feature of this game, our adoption (re-adoption?) of Steam?s classic 1970 hit, ?Na Na, Hey, Hey, (Kiss Him) Goodbye? as a theme tune. Yes, the actual title is written like that, just in case you were wondering.

One of the many given an airing at Bristol Rovers, courtesy their excellent choice of pre-match records, that one being amongst the mix. Strange to see it given something of a belated reprise after all that time. Or is it just the fact I?m getting a bit old, these days? Apropos of the stuff going on out in the sharp end, one Albion player who rose in my estimation quite sharply was Zoltan Gera, the man who could make the ball do just whatever he wanted it to on a good day. Admittedly, I?ve yet to see that precious spheroid break into a recitation culled from various Shakesperean sonnets, but if anyone could make it do the impossible, then Zoltan was yer man to do it. Or, as The Fart was to put it, and in a much cruder manner than I ever could: ?Run his bloody a**e off the whole afternoon?. A fair summary of that gentleman?s skills, I would say, bar for the bit specifying ?afternoon?. ?Twas early evening, by then, of course, but who am I to start picking flies, all of a sudden?

Then, as the game?s ?witching hour? drew nigh, up went our work-rate, right through the roof, it would seem. Attack after Albion attack piled into their flaming goalmouth, but try as we might, we still couldn?t shove a sufficiently efficacious amount of firepower into their box. And to cap it all, just before the end, a typical Gera piledriver, launched forth from the edge of the box, managed to smack against the crossbar with a sickening ?thud?. If only?.

Come the final whistle, we saw our finest all embrace each other in the ?team hug? most sides reserve for the very beginning of an encounter, then walk mob-handed in the direction of our end, Bednar especially urging his mates on to do that very same thing themselves.

Back to those coaches, then, parked as close to the ground as humanly possible, something that completely knocked on the head the rumoured 15 minute walk to meet them by the shopping mall. And believe you me, I wasn?t complaining! But I was certainly tempted to do precisely that, once we?d put a few miles between us and the Docklands area. Nothing to do with football, this one, just the small matter of the TV compilation some idiot had selected for this particular trip. And what didn?t help was the fact I couldn?t get the old iPod to work either.

Giving it up as a bad job, and feeling absolutely murderous as a result, I then tried watching the fare on offer, but so bad was the series, an alleged ?comedy?, even a swift leap through the emergency exit with the coach doing seventy would have constituted a vast improvement upon the situation as it stood. As far as comedic effect was concerned, this one had the equivalent of all ten toenails being pulled out. Very slowly. Without benefit of anaesthetics of any kind whatsoever. Much to my surprise, the BBC were the people responsible for allowing this abomination to hit our screens. Had I been the commissioning person in charge, I would have had the person responsible shot completely out of hand.

Just in case you want to avoid it in future, it?s called ?Gimme, Gimme, Gimme?. Had it been shown to the poor sods inside Guantanamo Bay at any time, even the most sadistically-inclined guards working in the place would have felt morally obliged to dob the US Army in to the War Crimes Commission straightaway. Now for the $64,000 question: are travelling football supporters covered by the Geneva Convention, I ask myself?

We?re off for our first visit to our place in Herefordshire thus far this year, tomorrow, and won?t be back until Friday, so expect to see another gripping installment of this piece hitting your screens late that same evening. So, until then, darleengs ? Ciaou!

And Finally?.. Having nearly finished the Open University course I?m doing at present - well, blitzed, actually, but there is a valid reason, honest! It?s called ?house move imminent? - I?ve now got a pretty shrewd idea of just how many varieties of genetic disease can be inherited by the human race, the thorny question of so-called ?mutations?, how the molecular miracle of DNA ensures the correct copying and passage of genetic material from one generation to the next, and the often controversial issues governing the potential usage of ?gene therapy? to overcome serious conditions like cancer.

And I can also construct a pretty mean argument concerning potential problems thrown up through increased knowledge of what the human genetic ?package? actually tells us, and the various issues this will create for people?s life insurance companies wanting to know far more about their clients genetic history before actually taking them on as a ?risk?. All of that I can talk about with confidence. But I?m still at a complete loss to work out just what it is ? heredity, environment, fairies at the bottom of the garden, or whatever - that makes the Dingle persuasion the obnoxious, foul-mouthed collection of cretins they truly are!

 - Glynis Wright

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