Saturday 10th April 2021, 2.05pm (day 3,516)
That’s a big lens. Perhaps he’s compensating for something.
The other photographer
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: football
Recovery begins in Dewsbury?
Wednesday 7th April 2021, 7.20pm (day 3,513)
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.
Goalie, pylon, llama
Saturday 3rd April 2021, 3.10pm (day 3,509)
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.
Back in training (healthy)
Monday 1st March 2021, 4.45pm (day 3,476)
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.
Watching the game
Tuesday 15th December 2020, 7.05pm (day 3,400)
Bojo the Clown has decreed that it’s OK to get some local entertainment at football grounds that expand beyond just being a pitch in a park somewhere. This gentleman, like the other 85 or so in attendance at Steeton v Brighouse on this Tuesday evening, ponders why the provision of tea, snacks, hell, even maybe a pint of beer or two, would have exposed us all to mass infection in a way that keeping the snack bar closed did not (we assume). Answers on a postcard to 10 Downing Street.
Sowerby Bridge FC
Saturday 12th December 2020, 2.20pm (day 3,397)
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.
Football support, but not as we know it
Saturday 28th November 2020, 1.20pm (day 3,383)
Saturdays are football days…. still just about. But while we might potentially have been in attendance at Morecambe FC today for their FA Cup tie with Solihull, this is declared ‘unsafe’ by Our Glorious Leaders at this present time, so like the other interested hundreds we had to make do with TV. The local mug and, in the background, Clare’s scarf offered totems of support. But it’s unreal, fake somehow. The trouble is that no one in ‘authority’ really gives a toss.
The last real Saturday for a while
Saturday 31st October 2020, 3.35pm (day 3,355)
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.
Turning their backs
Sunday 25th October 2020, 2.20pm (day 3,349)
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.
Asserting a right
Tuesday 20th October 2020, 7.15pm (day 3,344)
Going to see a football match is such a simple, harmless thing, and no one is compelled to do it. Our Glorious Leader and some associated bureaucrats, desperate to deflect blame away from the fact they’ve all been promoted above their level of competence, are desperate to take this pleasure away. Region is being played off against region, town against town, neighbour against neighbour even, and simple, harmless things are suddenly not so simple any more. What a farce all this has been, and a no-deal Brexit still to come.
This is about half an hour before kick off at Atherton Collieries’ very fine little ground, by the way. The hosts were smiling at the end — the scoreboard read 5-0 by full time.
Being 42 