Manny Road

The night I found Jesus

Sunday February 7th, 2010

Here’s a brilliant contribution from ‘breezeblock‘ a prolific poster on bwfcforum

I went to the Fulham game by train. I don’t do it very often because it’s quicker to drive and no-one complains about the smell on the M60. The trains were slightly messed up because of some essential repairs in Preston…probably having electricity or running water installed. Met up with Wayne and some of the old BWFC board regulars and had a couple of Australia’s finest auburn blush hops-based beverage served in a delightful polyethylene terephthalate decanter (Fosters in a plastic bottle). Would have been nice to have a pint at half time but the queue at 3.39pm was already fourteen deep and I gave up by 4.53pm when that number was down to seven deep. Not only does the beer taste like sheep dip but you have to suffer a similar queuing process as the animals themselves do.

The game was horrible.

Spurted out of the ground to the station to catch a 4.50pm train that never existed. Watched an express train shoot by and waited some more. The next train only went to Manchester Victoria but we got on regardless. As we pulled away I saw forlorn face at the station gate, a cross between Pat Roach and Donald Sutherland…it was Wayne being manhandled and shackled by the transport police. Or maybe the platform was just full, either version is OK.

The announcer told us anyone going to Piccadilly should get off at Bolton. So we did. Then we found out the train to Piccadilly was another 40 minutes so we jumped onto the next train to Victoria where we waited 20 minutes for a Metrolink tram to Piccadilly that never existed. So we got a taxi and got stuck behind a traffic accident near High Street.

Some time later…

Manchester Piccadilly is a great station, fully refurbished, completely revamped. It has everything the modern day train traveller could ask for. It also has the highest number of football tourists immediately following a game at Old Trafford. Every accent, every dialect, every nationality, every single piece of crappy red merchandise from the MUFC superstore packed into endless throbbing carrier bags all shuffling around the concourse. The next train to Stockport was also the next train to Euston. It was a Virgin train, red on the outside and even redder on the inside. We claimed the last two available seats and watched as the middle-class, middle aged types around us tried to work out what BWFC stood for on my son’s hat. A kid opposite had the full MUFC kit on as well as the hat, scarf, MP3 player, magazine, carry bag. He was a walking advert for kackness. Thankfully the Mental Health Act will support people like him as he goes through his life thinking Old Trafford is in Surrey.

We are now arriving at Stockport…

My Thai bride was picking us up but the train had arrived much earlier than expected so I thought I’d have a crafty beer in the station cafe. We walked along the platform and watched the ‘United’ away day special disappear out towards Cheshire without its pointless and valueless cargo and I prayed I would never have to endure such an ordeal again. Surprisingly Jesus heard those prayers. He must have done, he was standing just a few metres away.

On Saturday the 6th February 2010 on platform 3 at Stockport Station I had an epiphany, a spiritual flash and suddenly the world and its fog of confusion was cut through with a blade of clarity so sharp that I now understood dimensional time properties, advanced nucleosynthesis, proportional cosmological principle theory and also why digital alarm clocks go fast when you keep your finger on the forward button but not so when you want to go back.

Jesus was just as I expected…he had a patchy beard, his hair was dark and limp and it licked at his shoulders, teased his angular jawline, delicately overhanging his Fulham training shirt. It was at this moment I realised that Jesus had some friends with him, disciples if you prefer…and one of them bore an uncanny resemblance to Damien Duff. Jesus was Jonathan Greening and he, along with the full Fulham squad and the entire backroom staff of Fulham FC were holed up in the Pumpkin Cafe Bar at Stockport Station following a delay. Their train hadn’t even made it north yet in order for it to turn around and become south bound and full of folk looking like supreme beings…and Damien Duff.

I explained to the womb-monkey that these were the same people we had watched just a few hours ago. The Fulham physio went for a piss and said hello before realised the scarves we had on were blue and white, not black and white. There were so many people in the cafe we couldn’t get in…I looked across at Jesus and although he smiled it was clear there was no room at the inn.

As we walked down the stairs Roy Hodgson was walking up. Hello Roy, I said, I think you got away with that today…I said smiling.
“What?” he replied.
“Were you happy with that in the end?”
“What, the game or the point?” he asked.
“The point…the game wasn’t much to watch from either side.”
“Do you watch that every week,” he enquired.
“Yep, home and away,” I answered and Roy, now at the top of the stairs and us near the bottom, lifted up his chin and gestured his hand to the roof.
“You must have strong necks to watch that every week.”
“Strong necks and thick skins,” I said before wishing him a safe journey.

Outside the dragon was sitting patiently in the car park and we headed home to an evening of Junior Scrabble and as much Vimto as we could stomach. I thought Roy was quite rude but it’s pointless wishing bad things upon him because no matter where he goes, Jesus goes with him.

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Tags: BBC, BoltonWanderers, bwfc, bwfc.co.uk, Fulham, Jesus, PremierLeague, RoyHodgson, trains

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