City Hobgoblins

Issue #5 of "Push," the greatest literary magazine in the world has just been published. Get it for £2.50 inc P&P via PayPal from joe.england64@gmail.com but hurry as there's only 120 available. My article in this one is about The Fall, a group I've written about before http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/that-man-loves-you.html but not as well as I've done in "Push," in my opinion. Here are my words, but do make sure you buy the magazine to read the other excellent stuff in there...

For many, many years, The Fall used to be my favourite band in the world, ever, of all time. From the first time I’d heard them in late 1978, when my cousin John  played me “It’s The New Thing,” their second single, right through to a shambolic, non-performance at the Sage in October 2004, I spent over 25 years in love with the band. I bought every single release of theirs, attended every gig I could and proselytised them in print. These days, of course, I realise Teenage Fanclub are the best band in the world and The Wedding Present are the second best. However, back in November last year, The Fall played Newcastle and I took my son Ben to see them.  I think he was expecting to hear “Winter,” “Touch Sensitive” and “Theme From Sparta FC.” He didn’t. What happened was The Fall (MES in particular I mean) finally showed up 45 minutes late and played an hour’s set in which I recognised 4 songs (“Strychnine,” “Psykick Dancehall,” “Printhead” and “White Lightning”), but they were really rather tremendous. MES looks as well as ever (cough!) and the bairn drunkenly told me it was one of the best gigs he’d ever been to. Of course this was before we went to see Neil Young, which he claimed has changed his life; and that made me think of a similar night over 30 years ago.

Wise-ass American film critics probably would call it a 'rite of passage'. We linguistically sober Brits would refer to it as all part of growing up! I'm talking about my first ever Fall gig. It happened on 28 June 1980, 14 years and 364 days before my son was born, at the Newcastle New Tyne Theatre. Tickets cost £2.00 and beer was 43p a pint. I was a month away from my 16th birthday and was on something of a high, having just completed my O Levels and secured an enticing job in an electrical components factory. This particular night was a Saturday and I was still coming to terms with having £25 to spend in my pocket.

The gig was being promoted by a wonderful organisation called Anti Pop that had done the Au Pairs and Delta 5 the week before and, wait for it, Pink Military Stand Alone (remember them?) the previous night. The New Tyne Theatre was not new at all, but an aged musical hall that had done time as the Stoll 'erotic' cinema before lying dormant, like its former customers presumably, for many years. It's still doing service as a theatre and infrequent musical venue; in fact, I’m off to see Christy Moore there in October. The best thing about the New Tyne was that all the seating was as it had been; so me and about 10 mates (we styled ourselves as FPX; the Felling Punks) commandeered one of the Royal Boxes, complete with velvet drapes and opera glasses, in order to get a better view.

First on were local band Flesh, both of whom worked in the local Virgin Records store and were absolute shite. They released a record once: a cover of 'My Boy Lollipop' in the manner of Suicide. This 33 years ago, remember. Next to read the boards were Clicks, a band memorable only for having ex-Penetration guitarist Garry Chaplin as leader; they had played one gig the previous April as Iron Curtain and used Munch's 'The Scream' for their posters and t-shirts; Joy Division crossed with the Velvets. I friended Gary on Facebook last year and reminded him of the gig; he described it as an “unpalatable” experience. Perhaps this doesn't seem to be much of a night to remember so far but Cabaret Voltaire, in their atonal electric Dadaist phase, were on immediately before The Fall and achieved an enormously polarised reaction. I thought they were brilliant; the rest of the audience bombarded them with glasses, jeers and phlegm. To be truly innovative, you must be prepared to endure the opprobrium of those less tolerant than yourself I mused, and then went for a pint.

When The Fall hit the stage, I had the horns of a dilemma to sit on; should I remain in the Royal Box with a perfect view, or should I venture to the front in search of a better atmosphere? There was no problem with sound quality, it was diabolical everywhere, but it was important for me to find the right spot to spend the second most important night of my life thus far. Downstairs, I discovered the closest I could get to the stage was about 50 feet away. Contrast this with The Fall's next appearance at Newcastle in October 1981, when I spent the gig sat on the stage at the dismally naff Hofbrauhaus Bierkellar; this was in the days when finding a place for non-mainstream bands to play was almost impossible.

The reason for being kept at a distance was the roped off orchestra pit area that hailed back to the theatre’s Music Hall days. Faced with this huge gap, I returned back upstairs. Sadly, unlike Royal Variety Command performances, all performers and audience didn't turn to applaud us and throw red roses at the end.

Years later, I sourced a bootleg of the gig from a Fall website and listening to it again, what strikes me is just how long a gig it was. This digitised version of recording made on a smuggled mono cassette recorder reinforced fading memories of how wonderful 'Impression of J. Temperance' and 'New Puritan' sounded  Perhaps it was the waft of Evo-Stik from the UK Subs fans in the bogs or just the sheer excitement I felt, who knows? It certainly affected my mental equilibrium, because most of the evening passed in a blur. As was their wont at the time, The Fall slipped in eight unreleased songs out of a 16-song set. I spent a lot of time inventing possible titles for the newies, such as, and how I cringe now, “Totally Wild.”

The only downer was at the end. As the gig would finish after the last bus and I hadn't a clue about taxis at that age, my dad had arranged to pick me up. Horror upon horror for me and my cousin, as my dad and uncle were waiting directly outside and proceeded to drone on for the 15-minute journey home about how dreadful punk fashions were and how the music is just noise. I’m an older man now than they were then and I rest contented knowing I can still appreciate Godspeed You! Black Emperor, even if my son thinks the Quebecois nonet are just an awful racket.

The Fall’s set at Newcastle New Tyne Theatre, 28.06.80

The N.W.R.A. / 2nd Dark Age / Impression of J. Temperance / City Hobgoblins / Totally Wired/ Muzorewi's Daughter / Fiery Jack / Gramme Friday / Printhead / English Scheme / New Face in Hell / Choc-Stock / Diceman / New Puritan 

Straky Do Toho*

On 17th July 2005, I was in the small central Slovak town of Dubnica nad Vahom watching Newcastle United win 3-1 in a first leg Inter Toto Cup game. It was a good day; I wrote about it for Stand AMF magazine's summer special, which doesn't appear to have materialised. Probably because they spent a lot of effort organising the "Ale Music Football" night in Liverpool on 6th July, which I didn't make as it clashed with my Ben's family celebration for his 18th birthday. I was quite pleased with the article, so I've decided to post it here -:

I’ve no concrete evidence to back my assertion up, but I reckon most football managers are fairly right wing. Long gone are the days when Jack Charlton would lend his official Newcastle United Rover to striking miners from Ashington, so they could go picketing in Nottinghamshire. Admittedly he’s not a self-proclaimed Fascist like the clown on Wearside, but Alan Pardew must be on the extreme fringes of the Tory Party or even UKIP; how else can we explain his rampant Euroscepticism? Not content with ending Newcastle United’s involvement in the Europa League at the quarter final stage in early April, Pardew has adopted a Little Englander position that seemingly refuses to countenance fording Offa’s Dyke to play the likes of Cardiff or Swansea.

As a bairn in the early 70s, the FA Cup final on the first Saturday in May marked the end of the domestic football season. Back then, all I could do to feed my obsession until August was affect an interest in supporting Cumberland United of South Australia Division 1, who I discovered on my dad’s pools coupon. These days there are international tournaments every June and pre-season round robins on Channel 5 from the start of July onwards. However, for truly competitive summer club football, the Inter Toto Cup had it all. It was the last trophy Newcastle won, in 2006 courtesy of Livorno beating  Auxerre (the structure was a mite complicated…), though my favourite engagement with the competition was the year before.

Under the appalling Souness, we’d lost a UEFA Cup quarter final, an FA Cup semi-final and finished thirteenth in the League.  Bizarrely, we actually qualified for the Inter Toto Cup; mainly because England was awarded a Fair Play place and none of the eligible clubs above us were interested in taking it. Given a bye to the third round, I was ecstatic when we drew ZTS Dubnica. While many people would query the appeal of a mid-July weekend in an industrial city in the Vah region of Western Slovakia, having spent 2 of the best years of my life living and working in Bratislava either side of the millennium, I was elated to be going back to my adopted home country, with my team.

Interest levels in this trip were low among my associates; frankly, this wasn’t Barcelona, Bruges or Benfica. Indeed the grand total of 83 Newcastle fans eventually made the trip, including the heroic Glenn Wallace who travelled, as he does to every Euro away, by train. Opting to fly from Manchester to Bratislava, I pitched up in the Slovak capital Friday afternoon, 48 hours before kick-off. It was fair to say I was the advance party, as there wasn’t another Geordie in town, though there was a Mackem; my former work colleague Steve, who put me up but steadfastly refused to go to the game.

We took Friday night easy, with loads of leisurely beers in the Stary Mesto (Old Town). Unlike England’s difficult away in October 2002, there didn’t seem to be anything brewing. Saturday was different though; I took myself out for a noon constitutional down by the Danube, just as the bus from Budapest Airport arrived, disgorging about 60 thirsty Geordies who’d been on the dawn Easyjet. A day on the piss ensued, involving several of us doorstepping then NUFC chairman Freddy Shepherd as he sat down to eat with assorted lackeys in Bratislava’s poshest restaurant. From nowhere Northumbria Constabulary coppers emerged from the shadows and ushered us away; they even bought half a dozen of us a beer in The Dubliner before the self-preservation klaxon told me it was time to split.

Match day saw about 30 of us on the noon train to Dubnica; the rest had opted for the much cheaper and far slower bus. As we executive travellers sat in the restaurant car sucking on 500ml bottles of Pilsner Urquell while nibbling on restorative cheese and salami for less than a quid a plateful, I reckon we’d the better deal. In Dubnica, the first person we saw was Glenn Wallace, who described his Saturday night as the only English speaker in Dubnica as “like finally being famous.” We soon learned what he meant as locals, in assorted Champions’ League replica tops, bought us beer and shook our hands; in 30 degree heat, this was a happy and hot special occasion.

The game itself happened in slow motion; Michael Chopra scored after 5 minutes, then there was an own goal, before they pulled one back. James Milner grabbed a third in a quarter speed second half; I drank 6 beers during the game, while my mate Davey Faichen fell asleep at half time and snoozed on the terraces until we took him up for the train at full time.

We enjoyed a leisurely trundle back to Bratislava, then a crazy drunken night in The Dubliner with a load of Dutch tennis fans, in town for a Davis Cup tie versus Slovakia. They’d lost, but what the hell. I’m no specialist on Euro aways, having only done Eindhoven (twice) before Dubnica, but Slovakia was a fine, fine weekend; 8 years later, those who were there still speak warmly of it.

One brief cameo provided the best advert for summer football and the Inter Toto Cup in particular I could ever imagine, while I mooched around the three quarters deserted  train on the way back to Bratislava. Somewhere just south of Trencin, as the sun slowly set over the Bílé Karpaty Mountains, one of the Prudhoe Mags, happy, sunburned and half cut, was on the phone to his girlfriend. The noise of the rattler drowned out his voice as I weaved down the corridor, but as I passed him,  he ended the call with a smile and a heartfelt I love you too pet. A thousand miles from home, semi-surrounded by a few knots of tired, contented and gently boozed NUFC fans, I knew just how he felt; I loved all of humanity that warm Sunday evening.

* Straky Do Toho = Come On The Magpies, po Slovensko....

S.T.I.*

On Saturday 13th July 2013, I won't be at a game. Considering in 2012/2013, I only missed seeing football on August 11th (my birthday and I was at Cork v Galway in the All Ireland hurling semi final) and May 12th (UCU IBL inaugural conference in Manchester), this is a surprising announcement. Except it's not; I'm going to carry the UCU northern region banner at The Big Meeting and attend a much smaller meeting of SPGB members and supporters, then hit the beer tent. In all seriousness, the time has come to make a stand; the situation in this country and this whole rotten capitalist system need to be confronted. The revolution has to start somewhere and today my as well be that point as any. However, pre season friendlies go ahead all over, especially the South Tyneside Summer Cup, a 6 team tournament at Hebburn Town. Here are a couple of short pieces I've written for the programme today -:

Hebburn Reyrolle F.C.

As a result of my club Heaton Stannington’s retention of the Northern Alliance Premier Division title, the club has been promoted to Northern League Division 2, which when combined with the usual resignations and renamings that go on each close season, means that the Alliance has accepted 5 new teams for 2013/2014. Alongside Newbiggin and West Allotment Reserves, other new faces include the returning Chopwell, a Gateshead Leam Rangers side that will be of a supposed parallel standard to their Wearside League outfit and Whitburn Athletic (the one near Souter Point, not the one halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh).

While in the past there have been such seemingly anomalous members of the Alliance such as the East 

Durham trio Peterlee Newtown, Murton and Easington Colliery, these latter 3 neophytic outfits s that are joining Swalwell in Division 2, alongside Birtley St. Joseph’s and Gateshead Redheugh 1957 in Division 1, will combine with Gateshead Rutherford and Hebburn Reyrolle in creating the largest presence of clubs in the South Tyneside and Gateshead area in recent memory.  However, it must be acknowledged that both Rutherford and Reyrolle hung on to their Premier Division status in somewhat fortuitous circumstances; finishing well adrift from the rest in the bottom two places, the duo were spared the ignominy of relegation because of the resignations of both Amble united and Harraby Catholic Club.

Hebburn Reyrolle are a club with a proud history as they were formed as long ago as 1923, originally going under the name of Reyrolle Staff F.C. The club played their football mainly in the North East Amateur League until they were accepted in to the Northern Football Alliance in 1992, where the 3 three seasons have been of particular interest.

Having won the 2010 Stan Seymour League Cup Final by defeating Heddon 3-1, but losing to Percy Main in the same season’s Combination Cup Final, Reyrolle set the bar even higher during the 2010/11 season, when they completed a historic treble under the management of Mark Collingwood and his assistant Simon Johnson as they won the Division One Title, The Combination Cup and The Durham County Trophy. In 2011/2012, they retained the Durham Trophy when they defeated Coundon & Leaholme after extra time.  Were it not for a crucial home defeat by Percy Main on May Day 2012, Reyrolle could well have pipped Heaton Stannington to the Premier Division title; such glory seemed far away during the campaign just ended.

In fairness, 2012/2013’s disastrous season for Reyrolle did include some excellent results, including thrashing Percy Main Amateurs 4-1, and it was a campaign made exceedingly difficult by the decampment of manager Mark Collingwood and many of his players to Seaham Red Star. It is indeed a tribute to Reyrolle that they showed such stoicism in the face of adversity and made it through to the end of the season, from which time they’ve managed to regroup. This season will see the club under the stewardship of newly installed manager Aiden Finnigan, who is the father of former Newcastle United reserve and current striker for Dundee Carl Finnigan and hopes are high of a Reyrolle renaissance.

Free Ticket Mag

I have a real problem with individual sports; the arrogance, monomania and narcissism of the preening solo superstar, whether they are Tom Daley, Jensen Button or Chris Hoy, both grates and nauseates. Highest on my list of sporting hates is anything involving motorised vehicles, horses or above all, for ideological reasons, golf. Back in the good old days pre Glasnost and Perestroika, those countries lucky enough to be part of the Warsaw Pact banned the existence of golf courses on account of the shameful waste of good farming land occasioned by the maintenance of greens and fairways; a decision I was in total agreement with. Even worse than individual sports are the shameful ways those gaggles of rampant egotists are herded together by some fake collectivist ideal; Team GB, the Ryder Cup and, least convincingly, the Davis Cup doubles. The individual sportsman loves only himself and his bank account; not his team.

However, please allow me to be a hypocrite; despite a trip to a gloriously sun-drenched Jesmond for day 1 of Northumberland (461-9 dec) v Bedfordshire (97-2) preventing me from watching Andy Murray’s triumph at Wimbledon (or Wmbldn as Harry Carpenter insisted on calling it), I welcome his victory, solely because he is a supporter of Scotland’s greatest football team; Hibernian. For that we can forgive him anything, though I’m still struggling to forgive Hibs for losing 3-0 in the Scotch Cup Final to Celtic at the end of May. I attended this game, my debut appearance at the wonderful Hampden Park, and enjoyed myself despite the score. That said, I would struggle to say the game offered value for money at a cost of £35 for a ticket. Indeed, I came away from Mount Florida firmly resolved that I would do all I could to ensure I will not pay a penny piece to watch a game of football in 2013/2014. Hence you’ll excuse me for not attending this tournament.

Last season I attended 14 Newcastle games; all the Sunday Premier League games and the Europa League home games, only enjoying 2 of them; Bordeaux and Southampton. This cost me around £300. While I managed to watch Northern Alliance games with my former club Percy Main Amateurs without having to pay to view, those in the Northern League cost between £4 and £6 per match; it adds up after 60 games a season. Thankfully, following my big money transfer to Heaton Stannington, I will be able to watch The Stan’s games for nothing, and I fully intend to see every competitive game we play, but my other attendances may be limited. So far I’ve taken in Whickham 7 Benfield 0 and Chemfica 1 Whickham 1; both free to watch, both very enjoyable and both pointing the way forward in these straitened economic times.

*S.T.I. = South Tyneside Invective

In My Own Write

One of the biggest ironies about my big money transfer to Heaton Stannington is that my first book "Village Voice," the story of Percy Main's 2009/2010 season has just been published in iBook & Kindle formats, by those awfully nice people at Zapa Books (http://www.zapaebooks.com/noticias/29/village-voice-now-available-at-the-ibookstore-and-on-kindle/). Proofreading it before publication I was struck by two things; firstly I couldn't differentiate between "into" and "in to" and secondly, it wasn't a bad read at all.

Punchdrunk and delirious in pre publication frenzy, my commissioning editor at Zapa suggested that we could do a free ebook of this blog at some point. Post publication, he's gone very quiet about this, though I will have a chance to quiz him about in when he arrives on Tyneside for his annual visit this week. Taking his words of encouragement seriuously, I penned this introduction, which I'd like to share with you now -:

My life involves a number of interests that can easily be regarded as verging on obsessions; football (primarily Newcastle United, but also all levels of the professional and especially the amateur game as a volunteer, spectator, supporter and alleged player), music (from angular, uncompromising post-punk to enduringly, classic and seemingly mainly Scottish, guitar based indie to folk and folk rock, both Irish and English), Ireland (the history, culture, politics, music, sport and indeed every aspect of life in the entire 32 counties), literature and books in general (from Cormac McCarthy to William Butler Yeats and all points in between), not to mention Real Ale and ultra-left wing politics, though the commissioning editor for this volume would prefer I described myself as a cynical, petit-bourgeois, quasi-Stalinist, dilettante rather than a Marxist. These interests coalesce and combine when I willingly succumb to the primary, motivating urge in my life; the need to write. This need is beyond the intellectual; it is primal and something I find myself uncontrollably drawn towards and driven by. Every single day, there are thoughts, phrases, concepts and ideas I simply have to explore and exploit by writing them down.

This urge isn’t new. From the early 1980s onwards, I wrote poetry, lyrics, short fiction, as well as reviews, interviews and opinion pieces on music and football for an immense range of publications that ranged from national newspapers and magazines, to long forgotten fanzines than lasted barely a tomato season, let alone a football one. As I approached my mid-30s at the turn of the Millennium, several things occurred to me; firstly, the internet had caused an incredible contraction in the number of printed titles where I could have my work published. Basically, why would anyone choose to pay to read someone else’s opinions when they could publish their own in seconds? In practical terms, this technological revolution meant I found myself mainly writing for Newcastle United fanzines The Mag, from 1989-2004, and Toon Talk (formerly Players Inc), from 2005 to the present, as well as the Percy Main Amateurs match programme from 2007 to 2013. Currently, I am about to embark on an exciting (for me at least) new venture as editor for the Heaton Stannington programme for the 2013/2014 season; it may not be brilliantly designed, but all the apostrophes will be in the correct places.

Secondly, and thankfully I was completely wrong in this, the music scene appeared to have begun a slow death. For a number of years, I still listened to and watched live music, without ever imagining I’d write about it again; happily, I am rediscovering the pleasure of turning sounds in to words. Thirdly, my talent for writing fiction had deserted me; like Wendy scanning the night skies for Peter Pan, I fruitlessly hoped it would return. Sadly, it hasn’t in any meaningful way, though 2013 has seen 5 of my poems and one short story published in issues 2, 3 and 4 of the brilliant new literary fanzine Push. Rather like the continued existence of niche markets such as Real Ale and vinyl records, small bands of devoted followers are keeping a range of new and established fanzines going, with every sign of a grassroots renaissance in the offing, proving those who announced the death of the printed word to be far from accurate. I have also been commissioned to write pieces for the new Barnsley fanzine West Stand Bogs and the long established Wigan Athletic publication Mudhutter, showing that the fanzine renaissance is palpable; the best examples being the general zine Stand AMF, where I’ve seen my work appear and FC United of Manchester’s A Fine Lung, which sets the bar for all other fanzines in the quality of its writing.

However, the internet has proved to be the ultimate punk rock tool for writers everywhere; in the blogosphere it’s always late 1976, as everyone, regardless of their ability or lack of it, is as valid a voice as anyone else when it comes to publishing on line. This has been the case for quite a while; the platforms for publication have just become a little more sophisticated. Back, in 2002, I discovered the possibilities afforded by domestic broadband internet for the first time, which almost immediately resulted in my writing striking out in a whole new direction. Exploiting the speed and reliability of my connection, I became involved in a baffling array of on-line communities, signing up with new ones, seemingly on a daily basis, as my interests caused me to range around the web. These “messageboards,” especially those dedicated to particular bands, introduced me to the concept of writing briefer, more personalised, generally succinct and highly opinionated review and comment pieces, but for  far more informed and interested audiences than the general readership of those magazines I’d written for in the past. Aesthetically, the on-line results weren’t as pleasing as seeing your name on a glossy A4 double-page spread in a quality publication available in WH Smiths up and down the country, but the feedback was potentially immediate, mainly genuine and unfailingly honest. Crucially, it was, and is, also interactive. Through the on-line forums of Teenage Fanclub, The Wedding Present, Christy Moore and Fairport Convention, I’ve made virtual and real friendships with cyber penpals from around the world, enjoying pre and post gig beers with many of them. This is the nature of friendship in the contemporary world and I’ve mainly had positive experiences of it.

However, this new world of music mates mailing you compilation CDs and putting you on the guest list in Bristol or Leeds wasn’t uniformly pleasant; The Fall’s messageboard was the virtual equivalent of a belligerent taxi queue on Christmas Eve, where bile, vitriol and personal abuse seemed to be not only tolerated, but compulsory. Sadly, that level of profane invective appears to be the rule rather than the exception with most football boards. Indeed my club Newcastle United has one messageboard, which I’ll not name, that spews all manner of unchecked hate speak 24/7, where new participants endure a kind of ultra-Darwinian initiation ceremony, involving abuse, scorn and incessant ridicule that must skirt the borders of illegality. No doubt our rivals Sunderland have the same kind of vile sub-culture; indeed, I’d imagine such a depressing scenario is repeated at every football club, as it seems only general non-league forums, typical of the more civilised nature of the grassroots game, attract reasoned debate, despite the preponderance of groundhoppers, who tend to muddy the waters in that particular gene pool. Worse still are the soi-disant football Brains Trust egoists  that frequent the on-line sections of broadsheet papers and supposed independent football monthlies, where Polyversity Media Studies and Sociology drop outs assume dominant roles in a self-elected, self-perpetuating cyber Republique des Lettres and make smug, shallow, unfailingly inaccurate pronouncements about every aspect of a sport they never bother going to see. Certainly their activities have turned me right against Huddersfield and Ipswich Town over the last few years.

My life has been marked by a series of milestones, the dates of which I still remember; 1^st January 1973 saw my first trip to St. James’ Park, while 24^th December 1976 was the first time I heard (I Belong to the) Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Void-Oids. Perhaps one of the most liberating dates in my life was 24^th February 2007 when I made my final contribution to a football messageboard, after I’d involved myself in a particularly mindless, internecine debate on the quality of Glenn Roeder’s stewardship of Newcastle United. What particularly irked me about attempting to discuss football on with ill-informed, faceless, abusive trolls was not the fact that followers of the same team could end up as implacable on-line enemies, whereby inflammatory rhetoric, vile threats and deeply wounding personal accusations would be the order of the day, all day, every day, but the paucity of actual, stimulating intellectual debate. Nowhere more is the truism that some people prefer simple lies to the complicated truth more evident than on the internet. I found the whole experience infuriating and dispiriting by turns and decided not to waste any more of my time on it. Unsurprisingly, my writing has changed, deepened and, dare I say, improved immeasurably since that point. Consequently, I disowned everything I posted on-line, as well as everything I wrote for one particular publication between 1999 and 2006 and then concentrated my efforts on focussing my creative urge in to becoming a proper writer.

Also, in 2007, I became involved with Percy Main Amateurs football club, initially as a programme contributor, then in the role I’ve recently vacated for the Heaton Stannington programme job, of Assistant Secretary. This set in action a series of events that resulted in me writing my first book Village Voice, which chronicled Percy Main’s promotion and cup winning season of 2009/2010. It’s self-published, but then again so were The Songs of Innocence and Experience and Spiral Scratch. What writing a book taught me was the need for discipline and rigorous self-criticism, when embarking on a writing project that extended over a longer period of time.

My writing, as far as it has changed over the years, has gone from the broad-brush, sweeping generalisations and vehement denouncements of my 20s, to a style that is hopefully more nuanced, consisting of a detailed exploration of the minutiae of any debate. Often, I start writing about a particular issue without knowing what I fully think or believe to be “the truth,” which can only emerge after upwards of 4,000 words and a week’s intellectual wrangling, relentless rewriting and ruthless editing. It may be pushing things to call my preferred prose style Socratic Dialogue, but I find this kind of on-going debate to the most effective way of communicating my ideas. My relationship with writing involves considerable amounts of reflection on events that matter to me, whether they are sporting, cultural or political, and to fill the void created when I completed Village Voice in June 2010, I began the Payaso de Mierda blog, almost by accident, as a way of recording my responses to the world around me.

If anyone asks me to name the worst thing about modern football, I’d unhesitatingly say referee Howard Webb. Born and brought up in Rotherham, in the heart of Yorkshire mining country, Webb was a month short of his 13^th birthday when the Battle of Orgreave took place; no doubt influenced by those images, he later joined the South Yorkshire Police, whose culpability in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster continues to emerge, rising to the rank of sergeant. His nonsensical decision to disallow a perfectly valid headed goal by Mark Viduka against Fulham in May 2009 contributed to Newcastle United’s relegation, but that is a minor (‘scuse the pun) transgression when compared to those listed in the sentence before. In July 2010, my cousin John (whose idea this book was) and I were in the centre of Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque Country; a slightly surreal, though undeniably idyllic location from which to watch Spain win the World Cup final on a giant screen. Webb was the referee that night and his abject performance caused many a member of the surprisingly partisan (if not patriotic) crowd to relentlessly berate his decisions, often using the phrase Payaso de Mierda. The literal English translation of Payaso de Mierda is shitty clown, which appealed to me instantly, mainly because of the lack of cultural significance or even any real meaning in English, and was the only viable title for the blog that I established, at John’s suggestion, on my return home. Ironically, my first article was about a trip to see Linlithgow Rose v Musselburgh Athletic in the East of Scotland Cup Final at Bathgate Thistle’s Creamery Park.

Since July 2010, I’ve posted over 170 articles on Payaso de Mierda on subjects as diverse as:  football, music, Ireland, literature and books in general, not to mention Real Ale and ultra-left wing politics. While about a quarter of the posts are articles that were written for or occasionally commissioned by other publications, the pattern I sought to establish from the outset was a regular, ideally weekly, lengthy comment piece on one of my major obsessions, related both to current events and what I’d been doing with my leisure time. Basically, Payaso de Mierda is both a recycling bin to store and a soap box from which to proclaim my opinions.

From my reading of other Blogs, predominantly about football, a major, repeated flaw seemed to be the predictable opinions, mundane style and discernible lack of editorial and quality control; people (I hesitate to say writers) seem to upload their thoughts without bothering to afford any article even the most cursory proofread it in most instances, which I think is both lazy and arrogant. However, even worse, it pays no respect to the audience, for surely if you publish something, your expectation is that somebody is going to read it and, ideally, respond in some way. While there are some great Newcastle United blogs such as Leazes Terrace, The Shite Seats and the brilliantly iconoclastic tt9m, the vast majority were cursed with appalling grammatical errors, but also many missed opportunities to elaborate on interesting points, or to eliminate potential ambiguities, which is real bugbear of mine. I always pride myself on the length of time it takes me to write my blog; a tortuous process of thinking (generally while cycling), note taking and making (often in bed), writing, editing and constant revision is my method. It seems to work, I may modestly say. Weekly posts are announced on Twitter (https://twitter.com/PayasoDeMierda) and, much to my immense personal gratitude, the feedback I receive is generally positive. However, I value negative comments as well, as only through constructive criticism can I improve. Mind, I know that even if my posts remained unread, I would still write; the creative urge will never go away.

So, here is a volume of my selected works, organised in thematic rather than strictly chronological terms. While being aware that the amorphous nature of many of the pieces means that boundaries may blur, I’ve grouped them around the subjects of Newcastle United, Ireland, music and football in general. Looking back on these pieces now, all of which I’ve provided a contextualising introductory paragraph for, it strikes me that I haven’t always got things right. If you’ll forgive me the indulgence of proofreading them for grammatical and factual errors, as well as a nervous sweep for anything vaguely libellous or just plain cruel, I’ve not materially changed anything in the text, as I felt the integrity of each piece would be better served by remaining in the form it was published. Every one of these pieces was created at a particular point in time and reflects my thinking at the moment of publication. While temporal distance has provided experience and perspective, to incorporate revised thinking would be to negate the creative urge that brought the articles in to being. Obviously, I’m aware this means I’ve included points and opinions which are inaccurate, poorly expressed, deliberately provocative, mad or just plain wrong; I’ll leave it up to you to work out which bits these are.

If you’d like to keep up to date with the blog, the address is http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/ while my Twitter contact is https://twitter.com/PayasoDeMierda and I can be contacted by email at iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk Hope to hear from you soon.