Cod Almighty | Diary
More than a feeling
21 November 2016
Your most humbly Deviant of Diarists welcomes you to today's lecture: a meditation on the persistence of memory. Is it fact or feeling? Is it real? Is it safe?
20 November 1984. 21 March 1987. 19 November 2016. Three arbitrary dates that mean everything to some, and nothing to most in the barely connected worlds of Plymouth and Town.
Thirty-two years ago yesterday, when Dave Booth got Town to play, this old diarist spent over six hours on a train from Plymouth, arrived late and watched Wilkie's wondernod from behind a pillar in the Everton end. I remember Bonnyman chipping from the right. The long de-permed and unmoustached Toll Bar Tyro waxes lyrical about an outswinger from the left. Drinkell was a sub, not a starter. I also remember dropping Wilkie at deep square leg in 1978 and it wasn't my fault – sneaky Mr Waller made David Kerr bowl before we'd all got in position. Mere detail? Never mind the facts – those present remember the feeling of being had.
In his Mariners memoirs Sir John McDermott remembers a hat-trick for the man he marked one dark day down in Devon during a five-goal drubbing. No-one scored a hat-trick, and the goals were scored by players parked elsewhere on the pitch. I remember, I was wanting to stand behind a pillar, but the away end was a wide, open-aired terrace of tears and tantrums that day. Was Summerfield's dad playing in green? Was Nicky Law mugging in his blond bubble perm? I remember counting 45 free-standing fans on that concrete boulevard of broken dreams, but not who played for Argyle. Is that important? Never mind – the fact is I remember, just 29 years later, the feeling of watching that chronicle of relegation foretold.
Poor old Lord Macca of Right-Backs and his false memory: a remembrance of a traumatic experience that is objectively incorrect but that he strongly believes. Hey, that's Mike Lyons for you, kids. It's the way we were.
What will Town's tremendous triple-hundred trippers remember of last Saturday in 2048? Will they remember the excellence of captain Josh Gosling, the persistence of Zak! attacks or Tombola's cameo flash dancing? Everyone's cock-a-hoop at the Bignot revolution in the head. A revolution in the head don't count for nothing, you've gotta move that pass. Those passes are moving now and Town are moving on up. It was time to break free, wasn't it?
What a feeling, Bogle's believing with Bignot! Omar has long memories of the Short One and feels the need to share his pain. In a blisteringly unsubtle post-match interview, the galloping goal machine lays out his lack of love for the previous regime of tough love. The condensed read is illuminating on the past, present and future:
FREEDOM, express yourself, weight off shoulders, no pressure, information and work on stopping the opposition, added tactical awareness, the team has identity.
No word cloud of doubts there: Omar thinks the Shrewsbury Slinker was more a retardant than a catalyst. Believe in the Bogle and the Bogle will make you believe that the impossible is possible.
Possibly tomorrow? Do you remember the feeling of winning at home? The details we can forget, but the last home win was Town's last real midweek game – 27 September 2016 in a land that time has now forgotten. If Omar's looking for omens, that's a stitch to clutch. A-ha, but that was in the pre-Marcus period, the neo-negative era. Everything is possible, everything is beautiful, in its own way.
So don't forget tomorrow and bring that away day feeling for Marvellous Marcus. Go ahead, make his day.