THE FOOTBALL PROGRAMME
I ran into a piece of my past in a place I’d never been. Pressed in a tatty box, in a creaking antique shop, buried under an archway in a river town wrapped in steep hills.
Nottingham Forest vs Crystal Palace, Saturday 27th March, 1971. Kick off 3 pm. A football programme.
An unexpected marvel, I picked it up, opened it tenderly. I wasn’t at the game itself, yet a chunk of that afternoon came into my mind anyway, somehow, transporting me.
There were 5 minutes to go and Forest were 2–1 up, needing a win to ease relegation fears. I was pacing at the end of our garden, hoping we’d hang in there. The sun was strong and warm, bouncing everywhere from new-born leaves. I turned my head. A spring bee was hovering from blossom to blossom on our damson tree, assessing its options. I was 14. I tried to imagine what it’s like to see what a bee sees, to smell what a bee smells, to feel what a bee feels when it brushes deliberately against a stamen.
Footsteps drew my gaze to a path of slabs set in scissored grass beneath a bending washing line, beside the border of shrubs and tulips. My mother would kneel there, on a mat, every Sunday, with her bottle-bottom specs, her hand fork and sensible canvas gloves, restoring order with a vengeance. My father was walking towards me along the path, unsteadily, leaning on his walking stick, trying to pretend he wasn’t.
“David”, he announced. “Storey-Moore just got his hat-trick.” He turned back, awkwardly, his kindness completed.
I was relieved, not elated. That should be enough to make us safe. I went back to study the bee, but it was there no longer.
My thumbs caressed the fading pages of the programme, open at the team sheet. I was so sure that day had vanished, I am astonished to find it exists still.
Why did I find this day? Did it find me? Is every football programme a Tardis for someone? Are all objects essentially portals for the mind?
Time shifts. There are maybe thirty Forest programmes from the late sixties to the early eighties in the cardboard box. I begin to pick each up. December 1974, I’m on a smoky clattering train, vivid blue paisley shirt, cuffs buttoned, fashionable brown boots pinching my toes, the overwrought heater roasting them to sweat. October 1972, I’m in a school classroom, desperately bored, looking down through the window to the street, there’s a girl there, my age, in dark blue tights, skirt and cardigan, quite on her own, waiting at the locked school gate. April 1969, I just got back from my paper-round, eating fried mashed potatoes and bacon with tomato sauce for breakfast. I’m watching Thunderbirds. I’m watching the Avengers. I’m in the kitchen cupboard, stealing the third chocolate digestive of the evening. They’ll never know, will they?
The other programmes offer me grains. Forest players long gone. Jim Barron. Peter Cormack. Ronnie Rees. Henry Newton. Heroes forged from the fantasies of youth. But this one — Forest vs Palace, March 1971 — gifts the whole afternoon to me, as a now slice, a reality. I wonder, could it hold me somehow, blended forever with the sounds of a distant radio, rasping lawn mowers pushed by hand, a white terrier barking madly in the next door garden? If it could, would I choose to stay?
I pick up the Palace programme once more, open it. I’m in the shining garden in a blink, watching my father shake and hobble out of sight. The air’s cosy, insects buzzing, all my family’s in the house, there’s comfort here for sure. But something’s lurking. I have no idea what it is. It makes me anxious.
A moment of silence. No lawn mowers, no barking dog, as if someone somewhere pressed a pause button.
Out of nowhere, ferocious jet planes screech and scream, booming over my head, so close they throw me to the ground. My face stings. I don’t know what to do so I stay where I am, pressed against the grass and soil. The jets flee into the distance, coming back now, as if on elastic. I shut my eyes and wait until they go. I wait some more, tugging at blades of grass, sniffing them. Eventually I push away from the dirt. I sit up and turn toward the house. There’s an open window upstairs. You can see the whole garden from it, over and past a sweet purple lilac. My mother’s leaning on the window ledge. She is crying. I’ve never seen her cry before.
Time shifts. In the shop I look up. There’s a closed circuit camera on the ceiling. Watching me watching me. I dive back into the garden, despite my foreboding.
The game’s over. We won. It’s time for tea. But I don’t want any, whatever my parents say. I sit cross-legged under the damson tree until the daylight departs. The jets are cooling in their hangers, back at the local RAF base. The radio’s off. Grass clippings stacked freshly atop steaming heaps in neighbours’ gardens. The dog in his kennel. The first gnats of summer are jiving over my wavy blond head. Their tiny wings sound a tiny hum. I feel something fall, softly, on my leg. The starlight is dim, but looking down I can see it’s the bee. It’s on its back, a wing missing, the other moving feebly, it’s dying. I wonder what it’s feeling now, what pain is like to a bee, what dying is like.
Darkness grips me. My body is sucked to earth. My head sags forward. I understand what I have been denying forever. There’s nothing anyone can keep, no matter who or what they are. It all goes. This will go. Life will get worse, whatever I do. Life will get better, whatever I do. Life will go on, whatever I do. Life will end, whatever I do. For the first time in my life, I feel absolute incomprehension. Neanderthal terror.
Today, I realise I have lived for a very long time. Today, I am sure of nothing. I buy the programme for a pound and carry it home in the boot of my car.
