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Whilst GTST condone neither gun-running nor the vandalisation of property, we just had to include this barking mad but nevertheless cracking article by an anonymous author, first published in issue 11 of Sing When We're Fishing in 1990.
Running guns for Colonel Gaddafi, it has to be said, has its problems. Nevertheless, the opportunities that the job gives one in the way of travel have been both enormous and stimulating – it’s not every day that you can go up and scrawl on a bamboo hut deep in the Amazon the coveted words “Up The Mariners” – nor for that matter etch “We took the Donny End” on to a tourist sign on Tierra del Fuego. Permit me to explain. Ever since I saw “Pontoon” sprayed confidently in spindly black letters on a wall of the City Ground, Nottingham way back in 1969, I have understood the pleasure that is to be derived from the illegal extension of one’s own territory. Catholics and Marxists have been particularly active in this field, feeling the evangelical urge to spread their gospel as far and as wide as possible, with mixed results. Football fans, rather like their political and religious counterparts, also like to do this, for like any good Christian, the football fan cannot rest until he has notified the world of the existence of his own particular team and the name of its followers. It’s a bit of a sacred duty, and though some of us have gone to greater lengths to carry it out than others, I’m sure that everyone has their own little tale to tell.
Anyway, there it was, scrawled bold and brassy in spidery black as I walked past with my dad to see Forest play Man Utd with Best, Charlton, Law and the rest of the football glitterati. I wanted to stop everyone and say, “Look! That’s my team. That’s Grimsby Town!” though I knew that I would be ignored, swept along by the smell of fame and event in the evening air, a pale little voice in the floodlit night. It must have been back then, as a kid, that I resolved to do something about the state of being insignificant. It’s tough you see, spending almost all your time away from your loved ones. I’ve spent most of the last ten years working out how many hours I was in advance or behind of GMT, then switching on the crackly World Service in the most unlikely and Godforsaken of places only for the signal to fade at the vital moment; “Grim…bluhh…one”. Rather touchingly really, Mike Baker’s woe in SWWF9 regarding the pains of travelling to and from London every week to see the Mariners struck a chord. Try Easter Island, a dot in the middle of the Pacific, attempting to work out exactly what time the results were going to come on. Tsk! London Supporters indeed. But the wanderer has his pleasures… For example, if you were to locate the second hotel on the right as you’re struggling up the steep cobbled street called “Calle de las Brujas” (Street of the Witches) in La Paz, Bolivia, and proceed past the reception desk to the bogs, one would find on the back of the door, as one sat down to recover one’s flagging oxygen levels, the words “Bob Cumming eats Nazis”. It was in this very hotel, a couple of weeks before I arrived there, that Klaus Barbie was finally arrested and deported to France for crimes against humanity. Bob’s only crime against humanity was playing for Lincoln, but even the great among us make mistakes. Indeed, in the course of my wanderings, I once made the mistake of going to New Delhi, a fate worse than Skegness. In order to amuse myself after paying off yet another snake charmer, I visited the Red Fort of the Moghul era, armed with my trusty felt-tip. Behind a particularly tasteful reception room I scribbled, “Matt Tees is God” and left future historians to chew over that one. Tierra del Fuego is not a very nice place, even when you’re being paid as much as I am. On the Chilean side, a little town called Porvenir shivers on the edge of the icy Magellan Straits, built and populated by Yugoslavian refugees after the war. As you get off the ferry, a little sign wistfully announces that Belgrade is exactly 10,326 miles to the east as the crow flies. It also tells you the distance to other places, such as London, New York, Moscow etc, so I thought it only appropriate to add a bit of information to the back of the sign. If anyone has been mad enough to visit the place since 1985, they might just notice, in trusty black felt-tip (preserved by the low temperatures) the words, “We took the Donny End”. This refers to the habit of Pontoonites, little chanted nowadays, where one would gather at one end of the Old Show Ground an hour before kick-off, wait for sufficient numbers to gather, then stampede madly across the pitch to the opposite “Donny End” towards a huddle of a couple of dozen sneering Scunthorpe fans. Only the toughs and the sprinters got through the slithering “Scuffers” as they were called in those distant days. Sigh. The joys of youth. One day, when an English-Slav bilingual from Grimsby visits the island, he or she will be able to furnish a lucid explanation. If you think that this is sickening country dropping then you’re probably right, but at least it’s in a good cause. I’ve even done it at foreign footy grounds, and some biggies at that. At the Maracana in Rio, I had to bribe the doorman to let me in for a look because it was Sunday and they weren’t doing tours. I paid him a backhander and nipped out into the gigantic empty grey bowl, trying to imagine what it was like full of 120,000 firework-throwing Latins. Whatever, I’ll wager that few of them know what “Town hate Yorkies” means. Similarly, I imagine that few of the Basque-speaking supporters of Real Sociedad can work out the message behind “Cockers for England” unless they’re particularly well versed in the delights of Division Four. You’ll find this one (scribbled very recently) right behind the goal at the seaside end of the Atocha Stadium, at the top of the board that is advertising Hertz hire cars. I could go on – the shelter hut at 9000 feet on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey (Up The Mariners); round the back of Sydney Opera House (Bring Back Wilkie!); the bog in Singapore Duty-free lounge (Stuart Brace the King); and my own personal favourite, on the wall behind the tailor’s shop on Masirah Island in the Indian Ocean (Mike Lyons is a dickhead). I might get home for the start of the season, depending on what the Colonel wants me to do this month. He’s actually quite keen on football and thinks Charles Ekberg is one of the best soccer journalists he’s ever read. Still, if he ever finds “We took Lincoln with all lads singing” on the back of his tent I can kiss goodbye to the promotion celebrations, not to mention my right hand. See you in Division Three, or as they say in these here parts, “Insh’allah!” |
