Pitchside!

This is now an edited version of the original blog… you can read the full one by downloading my Football Neutral 2013/14 season review on Kindle.  Well over 300 pages of daftness. Less than £2! Thanks!

…Northern Line to London Bridge, Jubilee Line to West Ham, District Line to Dagenham East.  Londoners don’t half complain about the tube, but I bloody love it.  You can hear the tutting and sighing when the locals have to wait 3 minutes for a train, but where I live we only have two buses a week, and they stop in the middle of  nowhere and you have to ride a sheep to your final destination.

I was having to concede defeat in the whole coat-wearing saga, as I was now so hot it was making me feel faint.  I took it off and stood by a window vent on the District Line train, trying desperately to suck in a bit of cool air.  Then laughed to myself a bit, because when I went to games with my Dad as a kid he was obsessed with me wearing a coat, and I would do whatever I could to not wear one.

We’d leave for games and he’d do a check on how many layers I was wearing, and the only way I could ever avoid having to wear a coat over my City shirt (at the time it would have been a bright white Diadora managers jacket that was just hideous) was to wear two t-shirts, then a long sleeved t-shirt, then a jumper, then a fleece then my City shirt stretched over the top.  I’d struggle to get through doors.  And this was for pre-season friendlies in July.

I could see two Exeter fans in the same carriage as me as the tube got closer to the east end.  One was wearing an Exeter shirt, the other just a scarf.  As we approached Upton Park they both hid their stuff – shirt chap put on a hoodie and scarf boy tucked it away.  They talked about West Ham in hushed tones, shuffling nervously in their seats.  I can only presume – as they were only young lads – that they have been raised on a diet of Danny Dyer films and TV shows and think that the areas around the Boleyn Ground is a dangerous war zone where all away fans are taken to one side and beaten with socks full of snooker balls.

I went to a City vs West Ham game once where I went to the game on the tube, wearing a blue retro shirt, surrounded by West Ham fans and not a thing was said apart from one chap wishing me good luck.

At another station, three more Exeter fans got on the carriage.  I knew they were Exeter fans because despite not wearing colours or acknowledging their fellow two fans on the train, they had the accent and then proceeded to try and act tough by putting their feet up on chairs (THE HORROR!) and swearing.  A couple of tough looking Polish chaps got on the tube and the next stop and they immediately started behaving.  I’d get more annoyed about them, but they could only have been 18, once again there’s the potential Danny Dyer influence and more to the point, I used to act like that in my youth.  I was a proper prick…

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