The Dumfrieshire derby is new. This only the third meeting between the neighbouring towns Dumfries and Gretna. In fact Gretna is more akin to a village. The one is experiencing dwindling crowds in a partly ramshackled ground and relegation, the other heading to promotion and to Glasgow and Edinburgh and the north to take on the Scottish football power-base. The towns are on the Rabbie Burns tourist trail (where he sewed his seeds ever in search of a Queen, spillt his cup, conjured imperfect perfect lines of poetry). He as she was probably in the crowd in this ghostly Palmerston Park of a winter’s full moon.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I’ll be mine,
And we’ll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary fit,
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.
And there’s a hand my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o thine,
And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne
Preston North End v Sunderland
A fan shares his hot cup of tea with me, hurling it over me, claiming afterwards that I worked for the Sun newspaper. Not for me this auld acquaintance.
Guest blog by Andy McIntosh (an observing fan in the crowd)...
If it was you, sat at the front of the away end during the first half, then I hope I can apologise on behalf of my fellow Sunderland ‘supporter’ for throwing that cup of bovril over you. It was totally uncalled for and hopefully the police arrested the guy who did it – I saw them talking to his friend at half time. I hope you have experienced enough of our club and our supporters to know that that is not what we are all about but unfortunately we have our share of idiots like every other team.
I also hope it does not put you off coming and photographing Sunderland games in the future. I’m a big fan of your work and my favourite picture is the famous one of the Fullwell End that is on the front of your Homes of Football book. There are some great expressions in that shot.
Anyway best of luck with the photography and keep up the good work. Hope you managed more shots than Sunderland did today – think I counted 2!
Guest blog by Chris Clark from The Homes of Football:
I am bemoaning the loss of our spine tingling winters.
Gone are the days where a regular frost would greet you on a winter’s morning. I miss the excitement of waiting for the layers of thick snow on the ground, being able to sledge, build snow-men and throw snow-balls at friends or foe’s. Due to the constant changing climate, the once bone chilling winters are becoming ever milder.
More importantly than the absence of my sledging, is the fact that ‘Irreversible’ global warming is dramatically changing our world today. We are losing animals, fish, birds and plants at a relatively rapid rate. Hibernating animals such as our native hedgehog are effected by the climate change. Baby hedgehogs born out of season in Autumn due to longer Summer’s, have not grown enough to survive the winter hibernation. Elsewhere on the globe a larger mammal, and one of my favourites, is suffering in the same way. The Grizzly Bear is dwindling in numbers. Birds that usually migrate to England for the summer warmth are now staying in countries such as Scandinavia as there is no need for the long journey. The ever changing climates have shaped our world today. I think by acting together and swiftly, we can slow down the rate of change!
‘Autumn Forever’ by Justin Hayward
The summer sun is fading as the year grows old
And darker days are drawing near
The winter winds will be much colder
Now you’re not here
I watch the birds fly south across the autumn sky
And one by one they disappear
I wish that I was flying with them
Now you’re not here
Like the sun through the trees you came to love me
Like a leaf on a breeze you blew away
Through autumn’s golden gown we used to kick our way
You always loved this time of year
Those fallen leaves lie undisturbed now
‘Cause you’re not here
‘Cause you’re not here
‘Cause you’re not here
Like the sun through the trees you came to love me
Like a leaf on a breeze you blew away
A gentle rain falls softly on my weary eyes
As if to hide a lonely tear
My life will be forever autumn
‘Cause you’re not here
‘Cause you’re not here
‘Cause you’re not here
On to Hillsborough – they don’t chuck cups of hot bovril over you there. It’s the FA Cup. Wednesday and Man City supporters are in fine voice, sharing something special and spiritual which is so special I am left in no doubt why I am drawn to this peculiar game. Bananas and all.
Stay in Hathersage, opposite the church and rectory where Robin Hood’s Little John is buried and where my Ava was conceived by the light of some wondow.
This damned recuurent romance with the road!
First the tyre buckled.
Garage.
Then the exhaust fell off.
Garage.
She hadn’t paid her bill for her car breaking down.
Garage.
Then thinking me in the clear and gunning it on my way home – huge storm – the bonnet blew off on the A666.
Recovery.
In the words of Bruce Springsteen “at least the radio worked”.
Then, carried home and reeling in the courtyard in the early hours, the immobiliser went wrong creating a right stink.
The battery had been damaged in the process.
The starting-motor had gone wrong as a consequence.
The passenger window refused to wind up.
SCENES : Meeting up, travelling, the camaraderie, the fish-supper, the match itself, the banquet, the autopsy, the return home.
I walked in the howling wind to the train station at Armathwaite.
A lone guy was stood there saying he had been waiting 2 and a half hours.
The bus replacement service then drove back right past my house (I could have stood at the end of the driveway), (exercise won’t kill you).
From Carlisle I took a train to Gretna.
Brooks Mileson was to pick me up – I arrived early to have a look around the town; he arrived early so he could have a coffee with Lanky who had broken his hip tumbling in the bath and would have to miss this adventure of ‘The Away Mob’ to Partick Thistle in Glasgow.
His mate and Away Mob regular Jack the JCB driver did however make it and sat in the front trying to fathom his mobile phone controls.
Then admitted to forgetting to tell former Gretna chairman Brian to meet in the usual place, the hotel car park at Lockerbie where there was no Brian.
So there was but the three of us in the Jeep.
The anticipated pre-match Away Mob traditional fish supper was thrown into jeopardy by the news from the Chief Exec (in a car ahead) that the M8 was standing traffic.
Without a road map and none of us sure how to work satellite navigation system, we headed off the motorway, through the suburbs – Celtic territory – unrecognisable from olde in parts given urban redevelopment.
With 10 minutes to spare, and still having to find somewhere to park, Brooks found the chip shop, talked to Partick fans likewise awaiting the wrapping of the heraldic “fish-suppers”.
Next door “the 25th best cafe in the UK” with its unique window-display, and warm colours, housed a few fans more delaying their short walk through the storm to the game.
Thoughts that the Gretna team, likewise held up in the traffic, would not be properly prepared for the match were dispelled with 2 almost identical goals in the first 71 seconds.
The home mob of journalists and blazered Thistle officials looking down from the mainstand gasped and sighed and cursed and swore and made furious notes amounting to : looks like another drubbing for Partick at the hands of Gretna.
Then the storm’s heavy rain turned to torrential.
People near the front of the stand moved back several rows.
Then several rows more.
Reporters notes flew away in the wind.
Amidst it all one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
Partick got a goal back when Gretna’s left-back froze in front of goal amidst a sheet of rain.
Captain Chris Innes provided the rock on which to anchor the Anvil lead.
For the second half Gretna would have their turn, with the wind behind them.
To no avail.
At 90 mins the radio would report that Partick managed a draw, despite their bad start.
The radio was mostly concerned with Rangers 5–0 romp under new management.
Wadsworth rang in to say his talent-spotting mission into England (Liverpool and Accrington) was so successful it might herald new faces.
Gretna were heading towards the Premiership with seasoned pros, mostly, in their final flourish.
Brooks devoured the Hamilton on the way home steak buffet with an unbelievable appetite for a man with his trousers hanging off his arse. For him it can’t come quick enough. He wants a result.
On the radio, fans argued the morality of Walter Smith leaving the Scottish job for Rangers ; an English angle surrounded Martin O’Neill, the toast of a few weeks ago, not getting the best out of Aston Villa.
Arriving back in Gretna by 7pm, Brooks dropped JCB-Jack at Gretna, outside Lanky’s house (who was doubtless inside with his long legs up, deep in pain).
Then on to Armathwaite, ignoring my wishes to continue by bus and train and foot through the eye of the storm.
On tv, Sky’s Clare Tomlinson (who has agreed to become my Ava’s godmother) introduced West Ham v Fulham, which was to finish 3–3 in a breathless encounter – the perfect showcase for the English Premier League (indeed neither team are even in the frame to win anything but the players performed like it was a Cup Final and their lives depended on it, falling to their knees at the end of the 95 minutes).
I couldn’t help thinking how impoverished or modest the Scottish football fayre is by comparison.
Seen by all on Match of The Day Scotland.
Except viewers in England.
Over twenty-five million a year at the rear of a career,
Off he jets leaving Europe amid the sneer and jeer.
With Posh in hand, in L.A. he will land
I expect full of ‘old spice hen pecked’ fear
Guest Blog and short ditty by Chris Clark, front of house at The Homes of Football in Ambleside.
Rooky football supporter Rocky Rambo Silvester Stallone (also made “Paradise Alley” which was a good film) got a surprisingly ecstatic reception at Everton’s game v Reading… “That was some experience. The whole day far exceeded my expectations but the cheer when I walked on to the pitch, given that I’m from another country and everything, was just incredible. It was easily the loudest cheer I have ever received”.
Are footballers higher in the pecking order than filmstars? I would say so.
The roll call of animal ‘stars’ seen on the way into work from Armathwaite to Ambleside this morning included a Barn Owl. Swopping across the road near the Lake in the half-light. To no applause.
With the water rising and sadly the repetitive threat of terrorism in cities, Cumbria’s high spots remain a good choice of place to be.
It occurs to me (again and increasingly so) that the young generation, including my Ava, might never know in their lifetime a frosty blue-sky British winter… my favourite of many being that of 1985 into 1986, my first in the Lake District when it snowed and froze on December 27th and melted finally on March 8th.
We need to go to Iceland.
Guest blogger : Chris Clark (no relation as such):
Quite possibly the windiest week I have struggled through to date. I arrived home after a long shift at work, on opening the car door I was shocked by the speed with which it slammed on my leg. The second attempt and the same thing occurred, finally I was out only to loose my grip on the door and let it slip slamming into my trailing leg. This incident though painful was not nearly as bad as the wind that took advertising boards from a football match in Johannesburg careering towards the 22 footballers on field as well as a stand of spectators. Quite a spectacle and luckily unlike my leg no-one was hurt.
These are examples of the now milder, windier, winters and our ever changing climate.
I always thought that Jade Goody (ex Big Brother) was incredibly ugly and I just presumed that she would make up for it with a good nature. But alas for the lass. Not mine.
I remember arriving in a favourite pub in Ambleside with Nisha, my fiancee then, a very beautiful mix of Mauritian, Indian and East African when the landlord’s wife leant up against the bar drawing on a cigarette her lips pursed and her hair up and her lipstick sticking with every chewed word coming to mind, coming right over to Nisha and saying “And what may I ask make are you?”.
To placate Nisha’s outrage I offered : “a very beautiful make, wouldn’t you say?” Can’t remember if we stayed long. But Nisha and the woman’s daughter became friends on a subsequent visit. All’s well.
I remember my big brother going on about “all the foreigners particularly the Poles and illegal immigrants coming over to take our jobs”.
“Not mine” I said bemused… “but we may need their input”.
In the light of all the Romanians about to come over, I recalled Brooks Mileson setting up a charity for Romanian orphans some years ago. “It could be amazing – some of those you helped could now be grown up and arrive in Cumbria to work in hotels and bars and land up serving you unbeknowns?!”
“No, the ones I helped will probably never leave their rooms, they were so damaged” Brooks said.
I watched the Romanian uprising on tv – when I might actually have been there. I thought it was one of the most amazing things to have happened in my lifetime. As sad as it may be for Romanian families and foster parents waving goodbye… I welcome the children of the revolution to enhance our manpower when they arrive in the UK.
The idea that in having a daughter, Ava, I have started an Ava family tree that could have a cast of thousands and go on for hundreds even thousands of years, well beyond my power… is like looking at the stars in the sky and trying to come to terms with it.
This is if Ava has children and that there is not a disease afflicting her nation, as Aids is to Africa, nor a global disaster wiping away just about everyone. Like global warming too much.
At Gretna today, despite the winds howling a gale, 17 couples got married. I was there for the football. Gretna won 4–1.
Watford, the team I love – supported as a boy – are not up to it. In terms of performance on the pitch, Danny Shittu & Tommy Smith & gallant Malkie McKay are not good enough for the company they keep in the Premiership. And the whole point about the Premiership and indeed the other Leagues to which we belong – is to find out more about ourselves and ‘the opposition’ and be judged. That’s what promotion and relegation is all about. It’s a series of tests and for the fans too.
Still, I would love the team to stay up and displace another team that is better.
I’ve always seen Buddhism as ‘spiritual intercourse with everything’.
An interest in everything by giving everything a bit of thought and narrowing the gap between big things and small things so that every living and dying thing takes on some significance.
The ‘most happy person in the World’ according to a newspaper and to scientific tests carried out amongst thousands of people, turns out to be a long-term Buddhist convert called someone or other. The report suggests his happiness might be down to his religion or Buddhist teaching (Budhism possibly isn’t a religion).
What DOES Buddhism teach us?
For starters, a Buddhist friend of mine has been teaching me to let go and, probably listening to my rant about ‘never seeing a proper winter again’ had this to offer : “Things happen for a reason. It’s up to us to make sense of it. And it’s just totally senseless to try holding on to something that is gone. I keep telling you this. Remember the snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place, and you have to look at it and enjoy it before it melts”.
I had a feeling we were also saying goodbye – never to see each other again.
She most definitely should cope.
In Britain we really CAN’T do without the BBC. It’s fundamental, it is education itself , it’s one of the few things we can believe in and defines us as a nation. We need to belong and BBC is as inclusive as they come whilst still having ‘a point of view’.
There are other things that may seem like an institution, but are not, at all. Things like the Daily Mail newspaper. It hangs on to the coat-tails of the BBC and indeed many of the good things in life – takes on the appearance of the host, only to whinge and blah blah blah blah blah blah… I’ve got better things to waste my breath on. Just don’t get sucked up into its grasp and set of ‘values’ my instinct.
(The lady from) National Express came to see me today – she drove – we are afterall a bit tucked away in The Lakes. I had the gallery to show her and the marvellous snowy backdrop in the sunshine – it’s not always like this I had to say “in fact the other day it rained”. The gallery is special : like a big ship beached on the corner of “Lake Road”.
National Express are sponsor-partnering (we both want something from this) my book for March 2008 called “Scenes From a British country summer pop music Festival” (which will have the strap-line “I was there”) – scenes from which are drawn from all over (a list of festivals I have still to go to this third summer is in the News section of this web).
Why are they partnering me for this dance? Because I bring that something extra to what they do. By their own admission they “lack personality” when really they love what they do and “we like people”.
Looking at that list of festivals down the road : WHAT a summer we have ahead. There is something peculiarly beautiful about Britain in summertime and about the people ‘going to the festival’ which really does bring out the best in us and makes for a sincere appreciation of these sceptered isles.
I will show you.
A ceilidh (pronounced kaylee) is confirmed for the barn and farm behind my house at Blaze Fell, to see in the summer, Sunday evening from 7pm 27th May. The band will play from one end with the tables and chairs and the food feast and cider at the other. Inbetween will be glorious dancing.
If sun-kissed, attendees might want to wander up the Blaze to take in the views of the Lakeland Fells and the Pennines and the sun setting over the Solway & Scotland shortly before ‘the last dance’.
The organisers are not sure yet if there will be a theme to the dress sense. Pre-Raphaelite as well as cow girls are particularly welcome. The staging of the ceilidh will coincide with the opening of Charles Lowther’s new horse paddock parade (there will be quite a few horsey types looking for a dance) and will coincide with my beginning a massive outdoor ‘installation’ exhibition to do Cumbria proud.
The thing with a ceilidh – quite magical – is not only the hypnotic music (of Cumbrian band Striding Edge), but everyone gets to dance with everyone… with farm boys and with fathers, with beautiful girls and with smiling grannies-who-have-traded-their-teeth-for-beards. It’s the most humanising experience and one of those things you must experience at least once if not a hundred times in your life.
Contact us if you want to come.
In my view there are five films dying to be made surrounding Cumbria The Lake District. In fact Pandaemonium about the life of Coleridge and The Wordsworths has already been made. Beatrix Potter followed. Surely next will be something about the life of Alfred Wainwright – Blackburn fan, people disliker, Lake District sketcher and lover. Then there must be a film about the Jewish boys harboured here “in the most beautiful place imaginable” rescued from the horrors of concentration camps and the Second World War. Finally what about a film about “the giant with a single goal”, Thomas Clarkson who the Wordsworths were visiting when they discovered “the host of golden daffodils”. Clarkson almost single-handedly brought on the abolition of the slave trade, which cost him his life, and allowed William Wilberforce (and others) to finish the job.
Here in Cumbria/the Lake District we have a chronic shortage of manpower and skills. I am hoping some of the Romanian and Eastern European workforce that is said to be coming over, might find their way up here and be able to do some of the following , as I/we can’t find these people services anywhere :
Cleaning
Gardening
Household repairs
Joinery
Painting
Window-cleaning
... all manual jobs admittedly. However there are other roles I for one am having trouble finding good people.
I love looking on a full moon or a half moon or a starlit night and thinking that people thousands of miles away, or even in the next village, could be gazing on much the same view. And that’s what I like about the world wide web. Take my own site. When I look at Google Analytics (although you can get pretty much up your own arse believing the statistics) I wonder at the person or people crowded around a computer looking at my site in Reykjavik Iceland. Or in Stellenbosch Cape Town South Africa (actually I think I know who that is). In June I intend to be in Iceland and who knows ‘the person who looked at my site’ might pass me in the street or share with me a hot volcanic pool, they not knowing it is me and it was my work they marvelled at and me not knowing them as the magic dot on the screen over Iceland.
Perhaps in actual fact they just bumped across my site on the way to somewhere else. Still, I will be looking at those Analytics tomorrow and the day after or even somedays every hour to see which cities and towns are lighting up with a dot. Or sometimes a big dot (several people hitting on me).
