Work and reality loom and TLF finally has to emerge from the festive comfort blanket of after eight wrappers, the bumper Radio Times and no rules re alcohol and chocolate consumption. Time to reacquaint myself with the keyboard, sadly realising that those hil-ar-ious footballing bon mots that came to me at various moments of festive excess were not captured for rambling posterity. Still, there’s bound to something lurking around the corners of the TLF brain, a bit like those xmas tree needles that you will still be finding in May.
Why Fi!?
As is traditional the TLFs christmas in Dorset (yes. I am making christmas into a verb. If you can ‘medal, you can ‘christmas’). It’s hard to beat the experience, cosy accommodation, excess of most things including bonhomie and some hard core, late night Trivial Pursuit. The only downside of course is the Boxing Day footballing void. No one in the house cares about football and everything you read about poor phone signal and unreliable Wi-Fi in remote, rural areas is true. TLF, stuck in an FFZ, with limited communications. Mind you with Lesta facing Manchester City, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. News of the Mighty Saints victory against THS, following an early kick off was communicated by WhatsApp and suitable glee. Best thing after that was to not push one’s footballing luck but turn off all electronic devices and pretend there was NO MORE football.
I’d spent a futile proportion of Xmas day trying to explain to the children of our hosts the concept of deferred gratification as a distraction from the growingly fractious cries of, “can we open our presents NOWWWWW?”. The kids didn’t buy it on xmas day and to be honest by 4.30pm on boxing day, neither did I; TLF needed to know what was happening at Filbert Way. Phone on, the Wi-Fi is showing some Xmas cheer and more to the point, Lesta were 2-1 up. Against Manchester City!! Eight minutes remained. That was a lot of pacing (about 560 steps according to Fit Bit). And of course, worrying that my impetuous refusal to wait until full time would jinx the Foxes. No, but it might jinx the signal. The phone stops updating, the iPad stops banging out Radio 5 Live. It’s all gone a bit wrong and more importantly very silent.
After listening to some sulking, swearing and no small amount of gibbering at the indignity and unfairness of it all, Mr TLF, genius that he is, introduced me to the concept of the car radio. TLF slips off into the cold evening and as I get into the car, the Wi-Fi shows it has a sense of humour and returns in time for TLF to see that all is well. I whoop and tell everyone my good fortune. They do their best to look pleased, in a festive kind of a way, but they don’t convince anyone. TLF however doesn’t really care, the rare sight of boxing day wins for both cities. Thanks Santa.
Bah humbug
Finally, on 29 December, TLF got some festive football. Knowing full well that after surprise victories against Chelsea and Manchester City, a home game against a Cardiff City that had not won away this season, would only go in one, utterly predictable and tedious direction, TLF kept expectations low. What a wise TLF. Christmas was clearly over.
A slightly dull shade of grey
First footballing action of 2019 saw TLF at Clarence Park to watch the resurgent Mighty Saints. Armed with After Eights (even I have had enough now), it was good to be back amongst the brethren after a December absence and a little gentle ribbing for being AWOL for a whole month was no more than TLF deserved. The consistent party line was that I had missed some absolute crackers over the festive season. Initially I suspected a bit of seasonal based punning, but no they really were just informing TLF that she had missed some great games and excellent performances. Hopes were high then for a continuation of the cracker theme (things going for a bang etc etc) as St Albans faced Oxford City, also on a pretty good run of form and above Saints on goal difference alone.
One look at Oxford’s change kit and I should have known. Possibly inspired by 80s band Visage, they were very un-resplendent in a fading grey outfit, suggesting that either someone left a black sock in the team kit white wash or they were trying to channel their inner John Major. If the kit was deeply uninspiring, then the game even more so with not a lot to entertain us as we shivered on the terraces. Fortunately, if you haven’t seen people since before Xmas there are festive post mortems (standard of cooking, homemade crackers or otherwise etc) to keep you entertained plus Hat Boys second half chips, which required a good deal of TLF quality testing. Fortunately, there was, in the 86th minute, a well-worked winning goal for the Mighty Saints. It would have been eve more fortunate if it had been an 85th minute well-worked goal, (Hatboy’s goalden goal ticket number on this occasion) but you can’t have everything. Another win and 3 more points are always a good distraction from what has gone before and TLF went home happy.
Good job too after the FA Cup embarrassment that was Lesta City the following day. A drab one-nil against a grey team is preferable to red faces any day.
Back-in-the-swing-of-it-Fox