À la recherche du temps Spitting

Prelude.....

Yesterday I drove to Sheffield to see the Wednesday part of the city play Wolves. I had parked 2 streets from the ground and not enjoying the climax of the game – we were 2-1 down – I bounded down the stadium steps…..only to hear a mighty roar of Keee-ohhhh, Keee-ohhhh! Score 2-2. I do hate missing a crucial goal. Grrrr!

(Meanwhile, our local Great Bickering disUnited lost 14-0 to Wetwang Railway – our Manager blamed the pitch. We’ll score yet this season. Come'on you disUnited!)

Today is Mothering Sunday and SC’s folks came for lunch to share our roasted organic ox. Yummee! The beast came from our splendid organic butcher-farm shop. Am I allowed to advertise on a blog?! What the bejezzers! Everyone should shop at Mike and Pam's Farm Shop - no antibiotics, no growth hormones, fab service!

Late in the afternoon I caught up with my blog and decided to check out some other blogs. I noticed that some had video clips. neat!

I went off and rummaged ni the last of our packing boxes. 20 minutes later I emerged with just the thing – a videotape from June 1984 but…would it still play okay and could I transfer it? I called up SC and the girls and played them something they’d been longing to see for years……the first sketch I ever had on TV, for Spitting Image. We watched and laughed – actually the girls didn’t – at sketches almost 25 old.

Now comes the tricky job of transferring the video to computer. My first attempt with various multicoloured leads was an abject failure but I will not be beaten by technology. Watch this video space.

A Gold and Black day

When I was 7 my mad (certifiable!?) uncle David took me to my first football match. We went to Stamford Bridge, a mile or so along from our flat in Brompton Road, to see Chelsea. If he ever thought that I might become embued in the spirit of the boys in blue-and-white he was quickly mistaken. The Wolves boys in gold-and-black were far more eye-catching, in the late England captain Billy Wright they had the paramount British sporting ambassador and it probably helped that they were the football champions of England, Europe and the world!

Yestreday I made one of my 3 or 4 visits a season to Wolverhampton. "Did your team win?", asked SC. "Yes, 'my team' won". And with great glee, "We hammered Leeds". Conversations between us about football remain perfunctory and without any perceptable passion. Come'on you Wolves!

Meanwhile, our local team, Great Bickering disUnited lost 17-0 to Dishforththwaite Palace, with 'our' brave goalie Josiah Brassbotham the hero once again. Come'on you disUnited!


......Tears for Souvenirs - 31 March 2001

The week before we left London was full of emotional goodbyes - including my last working dinner at the BBC with my writing patner Nick - culminating in an All-Welcome Farewell Party on our final weekend.

On a sunny spring day we opened the house to neighbours, friends, children, relatives, school staff, shopkeepers and gatecrashers. It was a day of hugs, kisses, reminiscences, laughter, surprise appearances, tears, more hugs and more kisses and more tears.

When I ventured forth from safe Fulham to SC's house in down-market, south-of-the-river (sipt!), next-to-Tooting, Balham I never thought it would have turned out to be the friendly, villagey community 8 years later that I was sad to leave.

IS, then nearly 4, commented on the move, "This feels wrong".
Did we really know what we were moving to?