Celery and Concrete Cows

We score and I spill along the aisle, punching the air again and again, my voice hoarse as I try to raise it above the crowd. I needed that. Coming to my senses I shrink sheepishly back to my seat, knowing that I overdid it slightly. “You know it’s only MK Dons yeah mate?”

It’s weird though. Even when they equalise, there’s no hatred. We try to wind them up, but we can’t. What’s the fun when no one fights back? The only one giving us anything, standing up with a goading grin, the only one who isn’t sat down sharing a packet of pick and mix with their kids? He actually turns out to be Chelsea in the home end. He’s escorted up the aisle, around to join us and our V-signs turn into cheers.

You can’t wind them up, because they just don’t care. We used to sing “you should have gone to the pictures” at other fans, taking the mickey out of some hard, loyal fan base like Pompey, belittling their support, making it out to be something so frivolous that it’s on par with a trip to the cinema or an afternoon at the shops with the missus. But with MK, that’s exactly the case. They turn up early and queue outside the club entrance to watch our superstars get off the coach. A Football League club in their town is the chance to experience what they’ve seen on telly for real. Clamber for autographs. Bubbling down and then spiking in a shrieking noise each time as Fabregas or Oscar or Willian spring off the coach. Boo Costa like a pantomime villain. Replica shirts for a club that didn’t exist ten years ago and you wonder who they supported before. 

But somehow the day still got me riled up. I write this because I had a whole tree of celery taken off me at the turnstiles. The steward ums and ahs, mumbling that his pre-match briefing had included something about celery. When in doubt, call over your Miss Trunchbull of a supervisor. In the end they take the whole lot. Even the leafy sprig of it tucked boozily behind my ear. 

“Why are you trying to take celery into a football ground anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

The ordeal puts me in a bad mood, maybe that’s why I cheered the goal like I did.

As we head back home, singing the celery song that was unfairly ripped away from me earlier, I almost feel sorry for them. Milton Keynes don’t have any bizarre rituals. No MK equivalent of celery. They can grasp for an identity all they want: call one end of their catalogue stadium the Cowshed or cling to the Dons moniker, but it’s not real. It’s not Chelsea. Maybe it’s because of the decade we’ve had of being asked where we were when we were sh*t, but Chelsea crave an identity. There’s a huge desire for a singing Shed, a giant Blue Flag that says Pride of London on it, CPO shares in abundance and making sure Chelsea Football Club remains at Stamford Bridge. It’s all part of it. It’s all tied up in those two words Proper Chels.

More so than missing out on Europe this year, I worry that we’ll lose what makes Chelsea ours. We might half fill Wembley next year or it might not happen at all. We might end up in an identikit stadium, faces you don’t recognise all around you, speakers pumping out music after goals in place of atmosphere and a team of mercenaries. Players who don’t clap you at the end of a game will half-heartedly play possession football in a cup game against lower-league opposition that makes you wonder why you still go. But just as the rest of the crowd is leaving on 80 minutes, and you’re about to give up hope, a flash of green will whip through your peripheral vision, and a lump of celery will whistle past your ear. 

Whatever happens, we’ll always have celery.

 

@JJReid13

Living in the moment

A grey Thames, sloshing high up on the banks, under a grey sky. The rain drops rifle into the river, coming in steady, splashing back up with the dirty river water until the whole thing looks like it’s bubbling, like it’s alive. Crack open the Stella and slurp up the excess froth that tries to escape. The train chugs through the dirty black and brown of Elephant, like the colours of the tube lines that go through it, and into South, with flashes of green, rolling away from the houses and up the hills. Up to Forest Hill, down the other side to Penge. Transmitters stretching up to the clouds. They’ll be sending images of the game all over the capital, the country, the world today. But I’ll be there in person, down the front, yards from the players, rain on my face and soaking through my shoes. A part of it.

I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and how he said that’s there’s nothing quite like actually being there when you’re on a bike. In the moment, with tarmac flying below you, no windscreen, no one relaying information.

You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. Actually being there, as opposed to behind a screen. 

I won’t have any instant replays or ad breaks or have a pundit telling me what to think. Just me and football. I’ve paid £40 to stand in the rain and watch my football team play another. The price leaves a sour taste, but there’s something beautiful in the simplicity of it.  

The train grinds into Thornton Heath and I finish my can hastily, the bubbles shooting up my nose as if going straight up into my brain. But it’s not just the lager, it’s the excitement, anticipation sending static shooting all over my body. I watch the light on the ticket machine flick from amber to green, barriers thumping open. Run past this set of lights while they’re red so you can get to that set of lights while they’re still green. Suck my legs up to get over that kerb and not under the van as it whistles past. Faster than I’ve moved all week after Christmas. To the ‘Spoons opposite the station. Only just through the doors and it’s rammed, packed, Old Bill not letting anyone else in. Ten deep at the bar, buy two pints per person to save yourself the trip next time. Just a sea of greys and blues and blacks. Just pin badges, familiar faces and our songs identify the pub as Chelsea. Mustard.

____

I’m wearing the big Fjällräven jacket. The one that’s a bit too Bear Grylls for football, and I know will get the piss taken out of me. I don’t mind though, because it’s bucketing down on the walk from the pub to the ground. Seeing Jay bent double in a paper thin Harrington, saturated before we get to the end of the road. The alcohol dulls the cold and heightens the exhilaration of walking through unfamiliar streets, singing songs, locals all staring at us. Laughing about how we all did the same thing the year before and will probably do the same again next year. Queue to get in and list the things to moan about. You decided to wear suede shoes. They’ve run out of programmes. Take the piss out of Croydon while you’re on their patch. All Chelsea together. Have a beer on the concourse, chat about your Christmas and your New Year. Just enough small talk to be polite. Talking nonsense, things you won’t remember the following day after a beer anyway. The song builds and you can’t hold it anymore, with a smile growing on your face, because this is what it’s all about. Throwing your head back and joining the roar. Who’s that team you call the Chelsea?

____

When Willian crashes in one of the goals of the season, it’s as if all the blood is sucked out of my head. Everything disappears. Frustrations, worries, sanity. I’ve lost Jay and the others too; God only knows where they’ve disappeared to. I’m sprinting down the aisle, fighting past bodies as they fall, jumping on top of strangers as we reach the front. Limbs all over the shop. Bruised shins and hoisting myself up, balancing on the backs of the plastic seats. I can swear I see Oscar look at me, and the Brazilian multimillionaire and I share a moment, his expression the exact same as mine. For all his money and sponsorship deals and talent, for a moment we’re on the same wavelength. Screaming back at each other; a roaring, beaming smile because Chelsea have just made the game safe. 

I search the internet for footage of me, looking to see my beige jacket bouncing up and down on Match of the Day. There’s nothing though. Just the memories of those who were there, who’ll sing the John Obi Mikel song for weeks to come. Good. I hate people who live their lives behind a screen, recording moments like that to relive over and over. It’s something the television cameras and the Youtube fan channels and Twitter will never properly encapsulate anyway. What it’s like to be Chelsea when the opposition’s net ripples and those sparks fly in your brain and you get let everything go. When all hell breaks loose. Enjoy it to the full, and then it’s over. We go on, searching for the next one. We’ll need a few more this season.

@JJReid13

Not In Service

The Hateful Eight drags on and by the time it’s finished I’ve missed the last train.

The laughter, the drinks and the evening melt away and it’s just me again. On my own. I’m stood at New Cross and watching as bus after bus goes by with Not In Service piercing the dark, the numbers on their fronts not mattering at this time of night. A whole fleet of them parked up in the depot round the corner, not a single one willing to take me home. The cold bites and makes my work trousers feel paper thin, wind whipping by.

I get on the wrong bus. Due to the last of the alcohol or something else, I’m not sure. So desperate to get out of the cold, away from the bus stop and toward something different.

Everything’s slightly unalike, like a parallel dimension. The bus has got grey poles instead of yellow, or yellow instead of grey. Just as it’s about to continue on the right road, it lurches round a corner at an obtuse angle like buses do, dragging itself through streets and up the hill faster than you can get up or say something or ring the bell or anything at all.

I’m off and I’m shouting swearwords and immediately feeling the guilt pang in case I’ve woken anyone up. Hood flung up and walking through the streets so fast I might trip over my own feet. But it’s no good. All alone with a drink inside you and your thoughts turn to her. Eyes screwed shut, hands plunged deep into pockets to lock out the cold. Get out of my head. Walking through the streets that she showed you in the first place.

It’s 1AM in Nunhead. Try to take a deep breath but can’t. Swelling in your throat and you can’t breathe in deeper than a couple of inches. Because it’s all on top of you, the weight of it all, and it’s dragging you down.

She came to represent these streets. Beautiful and mysterious and dangerous and fantastic. An adventure. Able to take the piss out of you and make you feel stupid and still leave you with a smile on your face. To let you in on a secret and show you things you never thought possible. Offering an opportunity to let yourself become something new. A secret, clandestine ideal just a bus ride from the cold, steely centre. South London.

Stand there with eyes swivelling, looking around in a wild desperation as traffic lights change for no one and foxes crash through the bins. And as shit as it sounds you just want her to be happy and you’ve no way of helping that because she wants nothing to do with you. You let yourself down and you hate yourself because of it. You want to cut that cowardly bit out of yourself and throw it away, kick the fuck out of it, until it’s spewing blood and spitting out lumps of teeth like in the Tarantino film you’ve just seen. Compromise: punch a lamppost like a div and cut your knuckles.

Jog on. By the end you’re rushing, pushing to the front door and scrambling with your key in the lock, wanting to get into bed and close your eyes put an end to the day. Set your alarm for a few hours’ time and hope tomorrow will be better, hope that your brain will decide to interpret what you put in front of it in a more positive light.

“Alright mate? You look a bit long in the boat”

“Just tired mate. ‘Night”

@JJReid13

Rootless Cosmopolitans

Porto went on general sale. This is atrocious considering how big a game it was. Fair enough Christmas games against Sunderland and West Brom don’t inspire a delirium of excitement, but a must win game against the best side in the group? Our season hanging on it? As if to highlight the severity I feel, Rich jokes in the pub beforehand that it could be the last Champions League game at this incarnation of Stamford Bridge. I take a deep glug of my pint and think about this. It’s not a very funny joke. Lose this and we’ll see plenty more games on general sale, along with those burgundy Europa League hoardings slapped up round our ground, and that doesn’t bear thinking about.

I’ve always loved European games though. They’re some of the earliest I can remember, an envelope full of tickets for the group stages in 1999. I can just remember flashes: Lazio’s yellow away kit, the Galatasaray keeper sent off for handling outside his area, Vialli with the keys to the Ferrari. That year, Arsenal were playing their ties at Wembley, already too big for their boots. They’d crash out in the group stage. Supposed minnows Chelsea would go on to take Barcelona to extra time in the Quarter Finals. 

The buzz against Porto is partly from the crowd of people that are packed in. I’d half expected to be sat next to some Portuguese, having made friends with Ukrainians for the visit of Dynamo. But no, from the gate I spy Barbour jackets and shaven heads on our row. These are proper Chels. Not worn down by the drudgery of watching the team struggle every other Saturday this season either, they watch and cheer and sing with a fresh enthusiasm. So what if they get the words to the Willian song ever so slightly wrong? Bodies tumble forward over the seats as Willian smashes the ball in at the near post, voices cracking as they scream in celebration.

Chelsea won of course. Matic was impervious in midfield, Hazard showed flashes of magic and it was suddenly apparent that the defence was comprised of the same players as last year, rather than imposters from the local pub team. So that’s it. Once again, we’re all going on a European tour. Who’s to say how many more we’ll have though? How many great stories do we have left in us? 

My dad brought me back a clearly bootleg programme from a 2004 game played in Porto, where it doesn’t seem that match day programmes are as much of a tradition. Bizarrely, near enough the exact same programme appeared a few months later in Munich, the opposition’s name changed. The content seemed to have been hastily bludgeoned together by entrepreneurial set of Portuguese/ German brothers with an eye for a quick Euro, but alas, an imperfect command of English. We still laugh about the Chelsea number 19 being named as Sott Parker. However, the undisputed highlight was the club profiles, which declared that Chelsea had “always been a team of rootless cosmopolitans”. I believe they were trying to capture the glamour, the international flavour of Abramovic’s first few years as Chelsea owner, but something was lost in translation. 

It’s not a million miles away though. Chelsea, or at least my Chelsea, epitomises that European glamour. Sexy football, geezers with silly haircuts and great goals in the San Siro. I remember queuing for the tube at Fulham Broadway after one of those 1999 European games when I was young, when the stranger next to me pointed out a low flying plane. “There you go, Frank Leboeuf, flying back to France!” I almost believed him as well. Leboeuf is a film star now, which sort of sums up what I’m trying to say. 

Where’s the fun of being an Arsenal anyway? Trudging your way to fourth every year to play Dortmund every year and go out in the last 16 every year. In order to make the revenue necessary to just about do it the year after. Wouldn’t you rather have a club in turmoil, finish bottom half in the league, and trade it all in for one last heady, glorious day in Milan in May? Anyone who’s remotely sensible has already written off our hopes for the top four this season. So perhaps this is our European swansong, just as 2012 was supposed to be. We are rootless cosmopolitans, and we’re going to Milan.

@JJReid13