I like November, it feels like the start of the proper season. Night games with the lights on as you arrive, wearing a proper coat, watching your breath freeze; it all feels right somehow. And with the dark nights at last, we thought it would be a relief and a chance to get some peace and quiet, but no chance. The night time wrecking crew continue to invade the cemetery, with a recent enthusiasm for smashing bottles proving a nuisance both inside here, and over the fence on the pitch. Ozo has been on the phone to the forces of law and order but not a lot happens. A decent spell of bad weather is what we need now, to drive them back indoors. Generally speaking I'm all in favour of this global warming but sometimes...
It's still all change I notice on the pitch for the first team, there's new faces every match, and some strange ones amongst them, but the five games at home this month have produced 17 goals, so at least it's entertaining. Bit of movement going forward as well, and a few more faces in to see the games. Nice new coats for the off field staff I see, but how come every under 18 sub and Ozo's boy has got one and the Secretary hasn't? I only ask...
Usual motley crew on a Sunday morning, hung over, seedy and much the worse for wear; and the ones who aren't playing are even worse. Got me thinking about all day drinking, not that it does me much good, and fondly remembering long before it, when Sunday dinner time was the best session of the week; game on the morning to clear your head, everybody changed and the ground empty two minutes after the ref blew his whistle, and then, in the next two hours you had to fit in a domino handicap, three blind cards, a game of pool, killer, watching young women, or anyway women, taking their clothes off in the concert room, the Kershaws prawn man flogging his dodgy wares, eight pints, toxic saveloys off the bar that you knew you would still be able to taste on Wednesday so you resisted until after the fourth pint when somehow they looked lush, long arguments over who scored our fourth and who's fault their fifth was, post mortems over goings on in Annabels the night before, including highly enhanced descriptions of the quality of the females concerned (no mobile phone photo evidence in them days m'lud), and futile promises to "up the training regime" this week. Then out on your ear by twenty past two because "the staff wants thez dinners an'all yer naa" No wonder you needed a lie down on the afternoon. Happy days. Now on a Sunday morn half of them look like they have come straight from the night club, and no one is in a hurry after the game because nowadays Sunday afternoon starts with the match on Sky at four o'clock. It's a bloody disgrace.