Cod Almighty | Diary

If Nicky Barmby is the answer, what is the question?

27 May 2020

Miss Guest Diary writes: For a football fan this time of year always feels a little melancholy: the season is over, the FA Cup Final has been watched and the empty days stretch ahead until the first pre-season game in July. This void is usually punctuated by the fixture list coming out in June and every other year by an international tournament. But not this year.

The re-showing of Euro 96 on the ITV Hub has gone some way to filling the international void, though I hadn't remembered just how dull some of the early games were. We are still on the group games and, with a couple of honourable exceptions, even games which start well seem to peter out in the second half.

I tried watching some of the Bundesliga football yesterday but it's awful. It improves a little with the TV sound muted because then you can't hear the random shouts echoing round the empty stadium. With the intensity generated by a partisan crowd absent, the players seemed merely to be going through the motions. I won't be bothering with that again. Will it be the same for Premier League games where I can recognise the players and do at least have a little emotion invested in who wins or loses?

It's probably something to do with my age, but the longer this lockdown continues the more I seem to be dwelling in the past. At odd moments in the day I find random memories from old Town games will simply pop into my head. Not of the football – I'm really bad at remembering what actually happened in a game – but of the day itself. Anyone who lives in Lincolnshire will be familiar with what I always call tractor time – the need to leave lots of extra time for a car journey in case you get stuck behind a tractor on a narrow road. Well, on football away days my other half takes the usual 'tractor' time and doubles it, so we have spent many an hour in towns and cities around the country occupying ourselves pre-match.

If we are meeting up with friends then we do the usual thing of going to a pub but, as non-drinkers, if we are alone we find other ways to spend the time. Museums and galleries are a favourite. The season just gone we spent a happy couple of hours at The New Art Gallery in Walsall – itself a beautiful modern space but don't look out of the windows as it's plonked in a very ugly part of town. Previous seasons have seen us at the museum and gallery in Swindon (which has a collection of knitted Swindon notables!), the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge and The Baltic in Gateshead. The latter will be forever etched in our memory because while there we heard the game had been called off due to a frozen pitch when it was actually raining outside.

Eating is another good way to take up the time and I have fond memories of a little French bistro in Macclesfield, a lovely gastro pub on the road to Cheltenham and a surprisingly good Christmas dinner at the Asda cafe on the way to Port Vale. The trip to Borehamwood where we had agreed to meet up with a, rather posh, ex-colleague for lunch before the game didn't go so well. There turned out to be no restaurants open and we ended up lunching in the Wimpy Bar.

Recalling the Wimpy Bar has opened up another nostalgic can of worms. Having lunch with my brother at the local Wimpy once a week during the summer holidays was a big treat when I was about 12 years old. Now this whole lockdown is starting to feel like the school holidays: fine at first but after a while you just want to get back to see your mates.

I just want to get back to see Town, and all my footballing mates. Don't you?