This tree has a noble aspect. I like its seeming formality and the way the guys disport themselves below it in various ways. I like the little cloud fluff that it seems to have caught in the top branches. Pictured in Stockwood Park, Luton — a town which makes a classy debut on the blog (though see also tomorrow).
In a week when the ‘big clubs’ either took the piss by calling a massive bluff, or finally over-reached themselves with their hubris, it seems apposite to put up a picture of some actual football: you know, the sort where there’s still competition, intimacy, and interest. Plus, a nice background at Brighouse Sports FC of the West Yorkshire League D2 (they’re the ones in yellow, and won 4-0). I find it ‘Super’, anyway.
I decided yesterday’s photo was a misrepresentation, so here is a definite example of a crowd. And if people hadn’t wanted to be there, they wouldn’t have been there.
Before anyone gets too obstreperous I will observe this is a long zoom taken down almost the full length of the football pitch. The vertical white posts are each about two meters apart. As we saw when all this kicked off a year ago, it’s quite possible to use a camera to create the impression of crowding where none exists. But it was still good to see at least 70 people at this match (an entertaining game at Eagley FC in Bolton). In any case, the sooner we start to feel close to one another again, the better.
Football is for me a way of exploring the world, including parts of it that lie near my home but which I’ve never previously had cause to visit. So tonight — my first-ever trip to Dewsbury, a largish town lying between Huddersfield and Leeds. The town centre shocked me somewhat: a post-Brexit, post-Covid vision of dereliction, 90% of the old retail units either abandoned altogether or shuttered up until next week, at least (but it all looks more permanently damaged than that). But across the river to the south, some signs of life in the cold winds. It’s only from below that true recovery ever stems.
Now here’s a fairly unique combination: witnessed on the edge of Burnley this afternoon. But as I typed the title of this post, it struck me that it sounded like one of those ‘what 3 words’ geolocation things. So I tried it, and magnificently, “goalie.pylon.llama” does correspond to a 3 x 3m square of land on South Island, New Zealand, to the west of the town of Greymouth — as this page proves. There could be a whole new game in this.
And yes, football’s back. In some ways, anyway.
I put up this photo because I love the backdrop of the houses on Calder Holmes Park. A proper football landscape if ever there was one. I put this up also because of how it wound up certain people when I posted it on a Facebook group earlier. One of the most iniquitous things about the year that we have lived through is how it has wiped out the idea that any ‘ordinary people’ might be able to make their own judgments about what is healthy and safe, and what is not. Well, lockdown lovers everywhere — yes, there are certain people who are back out there, living their lives.
Whomever made an effort to build this small square of concrete and stick a basketball hoop at one end of it obviously had lofty ambitions for the health of the youth of Dodd Naze estate. Now it stands forlorn and forgotten: no more than a third of a mile from my house as the crow flies yet until today I had no idea it was there. But that also means it hasn’t featured on here before, and as the second half of the blog’s tenth year opens with us still in (nominal) lockdown; new scenes are precious.
I still proceed with my favoured Saturdays as best I can. Sowerby Bridge FC offer me the chance to still witness an entertaining afternoon’s sport, and despite this being the first ground I’ve seen with power lines extending over the pitch, as seen here. The December gloom was deep and grey, but while this sort of thing can still happen then there remains some light in the world.
Saturday is football day. Bingley Town, in red-and-black, won this match 2-1 over FC Sporting Keighley. But this will be the last one for a while — for me, for them — as, with all the resistance of a wet herring being gutted on a fishmonger’s slab, we are heading back into “lockdown” from Thursday. I use the quotes to suggest that it’s not really lockdown at all, seeing as many things will of course remain open, so actually it’s the selective targeting of a few sectors of the economy that are seen as expendable, and a general excuse to push house arrest as a desirable state of affairs. But we have been sold the long con in any case.
RIP Sean Connery too, who has made the blog in times past; and I stand by what I said about him on that page.
I can see no reason at all for this rather odd sight of spectators at today’s football match turning their back on Newcastle United women’s no. 21, Maisie Cole. Except that there was a game on the other pitch below. Mind you, as the game between Newcastle and Brighouse was 0-0, they didn’t miss much.
Being 42 