Wolverhampton
Wanderers 4 Newcastle United 0. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your
life. If you haven’t chucked your hand in with that shower of excrement up
Barrack Road, then you’ve definitely forfeited the right to make any form of
protest about the owner or the latest shabby clown to have accepted 30 pieces
of silver and the title of Head Coach. That unprincipled oaf, who looks like he
subsists on a diet of half a dozen large portions of fishcake and chips a day,
has walked out on yet another club, showing he’ll do anything for money,
including changing his name from Steyve Brewse, when on Wearside, to Thteeeef
Bwooooooth now he’s on the Sports Direct payroll. Fair play to Rafa Benitez
mind; he stuck to his principles, holding out for £8m a year in wages and not a
penny less for steering NUFC to a finish 3 places lower than the year before,
so when that 25% pay rise wasn’t forthcoming, he nicked off. Bwooooooth is
probably doing the job for £20 a week more than he’d get on Universal Credit,
plus an all you can eat session at the nearest foodbank.
However,
let’s kill one urban myth dead at the outset. Bwooooooth may well have been
born in Corbridge, but he isn’t from there. He was a Walker (pronounced
Waaaaalka) lad by nature and nurture. Back when Thteeeef was a mere twinkle in
the Just Eat app’s eye, Newcastle’s
main maternity hospital was the venerable Princess Mary on the Jesmond side of
the Moor. It couldn’t cope with the
demands of the famously fecund Baby Boomer generation, so the city’s health
chiefs, long before the RVI’s Maternity Unit came into being, decided on a
policy of dispersing les dames enceintées
from Throckley to Pottery Bank and up as far as Annitsford or Blakelaw to
lying-in wards across Northumberland. As post natal care basically consisted of
a week’s sequestration from the rest of the family in those less enlightened
times, it didn’t matter whether new mothers were being shouted at in monochrome
by hefty ward sisters in Jemond, Berwick, Morpeth or Corbridge. Hence
Bwooooooth has a Hexhamshire birth certificate, a boxer’s sneck, no principles
and an insatiable hunger for fried potatoes.
There is
absolutely no need to demolish his supposed credentials as a top flight boss;
his own CV does that quite effectively. He’s here, either because Lee Charnley
is even more of a walking disaster area than had been imagined, if that is
indeed possible, or because Ashley has effectively decided to troll the fans by
appointing the joke who combines all the worst aspects of Pards, Juan Cava and
McClexit. Of course, he’ll fail. It’s a job second only to leader of the Tory
Party in terms of the potential for live-action, slow-motion public implosion
of a kind last seen when R. Budd Dwyer chewed the barrel of his own snub nose
on live TV. Don’t delude yourself; Bwooooooth isn’t coming home to Newcastle.
He’s another anachronistic pachyderm, using SJP as a sporting cementerio des elefantes, where chancers
go to die, rich and laughing.
But going
back always presents problems. Honestly, I’m telling you, I couldn’t get to sleep
for worrying this time last week, as Saturday 13th July loomed
across my horizon like a set of Damoclesean steak knives. The question where to spend the day was
causing me a degree of anxiety that any social life should never do. On the one
hand there was the opportunity to attend the Durham Big Meeting, where the
inspirational Laura Pidcock, the obnoxiously combative Len McLuskey and the
frankly shambolic Jeremy Corbyn were the keynote speakers. Every time I’ve been
over the last few years, it has been a purifying experience, from where I came
away re-energised for the Class Struggle. Ignoring the fact I’m not really
politically active any longer, despite Labour Party and CWU membership, I know
I could have tagged along with Ben and Lucy until they began their quest for
refreshments, at which point Benfield’s hastily arranged friendly away to
Chester le Street, would have been the second part of my day’s entertainment. We won that one 5-2 and, by all accounts, the
Gala was a tremendous occasion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sort a lift back
afterwards and so took myself back to the place that is the source of so much
pain, anguish, fear and self-loathing; Felling.
Every time
I’ve been back in Felling since I escaped, it has caused an unpleasant attack
of the jitters. Whether it was justified or not, padding the streets of NE10
always leaves me feeling vulnerable, exposed and fearful of an attack. It’s
never happened yet; indeed, I’ve never even come into contact with people I was
aware of back during the tattered wreck of years that was my childhood. For the last 2 years, I’ve been unable to
attend Felling against Tynemouth, so I decided it was time for me to visit this
one, especially as there was a lift on offer.
Enormous fun
it was too. Felling won the toss, put us in and time crawled under heavy skies
on a still day until the rains finally came with Tynemouth 10-1 after 10
overs. Lunch was taken early, and I set
off exploring, up Watermill Lane and down Split Crow Road to where Felling
Square used to be. It’s a car park for ASDA now, but it’s in better shape than
the High Street, where even the takeaways have gone bust. That ecoli incident
that did for Myers’ Butchers and half their punters seems to have taken the
last bit of metaphorical as well as literal life out of the place. It’s worse
than any East Durham or South Northumberland former pit village you could
mention. It’s grim beyond description. It’s hell without the handcart. I was
glad to escape back down towards Heworth for the cricket, where things got
almost exciting, as we advanced to 89-3 from 28 overs, at which point it began
blamming it down and the umpires called the game off.
The lift
home and escape from Felling unscathed justified my choice I reckon, as heading
to Durham could well have put me in close proximity to Gray O’Connell,
authoress of the scurrilous autobiography
The Prostitute of Felling that
seeks to justify thefts from her dead aunt’s estate and the abandonment of her
widowed mother for the crime of regurgitating a rosti in the Tyneside Cinema. I’ve not read this 90-page
screed of dog excrement yet, but I will. Forensically. I’ll go back to it over
and over, ready to point out all inaccuracies and lies. Keep your eyes peeled
folks…
Finally, one
wonderful instance of going back was a trip to Leeds for Ben’s MA graduation.
Seeing him with his Lucy, so happy, confident and ready to take on life, was
undoubtedly the proudest day of my life. Let’s hope Saturday can be as friendly
and not imbarrathin.
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