Diego Costa as Religious Experience

Each morning at work, as I sit down at my desk and switch on the PC, I’m greeted by Diego Costa. Not quite by the man himself, but by a sticker I stuck to the monitor stand when I started a few months ago. A white silhouette on a royal blue background, his face screwed into a victorious scowl and arms pumping, having just scored the final goal in Chelsea’s 6-3 victory at Goodison Park back in 2014. The words “I go into battle. You come with me” are stamped defiantly around the image. He’s there despite my Brazilian co-worker pointedly telling me that he’s “not too popular” in Brazil these days.

He’s there because I have felt that my fortunes have been tied to Diego for some time now. I first saw him play for Chelsea in a pre-season friendly against Real Sociedad. He scored a striker’s goal with less than a minute on the clock and ran past me in the Shed, arms outstretched. My mouth was agape having spent previous years watching Torres, as much as I had loved him, struggle to recreate form he’d shown for Liverpool. A striker who scores goals!?

At the time, I had just moved to London-proper. Away from the suburban commuter town of my childhood and into the bright lights. The excitement of a new job, new flat and new friends was coupled with the excitement of now being just an Overground train away from Stamford Bridge. Going along every other Saturday and, almost without fail, Diego would score. Oh how he scored. He smashed in a hat trick against Swansea and had seven goals in four league games.

In those heady days Chelsea fans desperately grasped for a song. Something to suitably praise this new unstoppable force. Nothing seems to have stuck, though. We’re left with perhaps the thing that suits the man best: a relentless mantra of Diego, Diego, Diego. It urges him on and winds people up just like the man himself. 

Costa was there for the bad times too. Each tweaked hamstring, run of bad form or FA disciplinary charge seemed to coincide with my own missed targets, miserable Mondays and lack of cash. In last year’s comparably glum disaster of a season, there were few positives. Our main striker struggled for form just as the rest of the team did, and people began to deride his temperament as an unnecessary burden. He’d apparently “never settled”, didn’t show “passion for the club” and was one of the “rats” that brought an end to Mourinho’s reign. Sour grapes, we never wanted him anyway. Wasn’t Proper Chels. Threw bibs about when he didn’t get his own way.

How sweet it was then to see him score in the last minute against Man U last year. The celebration too. No knee slide, no dance moves, just an outpouring of emotion. Looking at the slow-motion replay of his mad face I later realised what he looked like: a fan. If he was in the stands, you’d say he was giving it limbs. In a moment of symmetry, the first teammate to him was our embodiment of old school Chelsea. John Terry. Their passion was the same.  

But Diego didn’t come through Harlington like JT. At a time when equivalent players were already honing their skills in gleaming academies, Diego was still in a Brazilian backwater with no grass pitches and no official football team. He played street football where “other neighbourhoods would turn up to play having had a few drinks and it could get violent”. It wasn’t until he was 16 that he began any sort of professionally organised football. In the tournament where he won his big break, he wasn’t going to play, insisting instead on working for his uncle. Only when his uncle offered to pay him for the day regardless did he attend. When Sporting Braga offered him the chance to play in Europe the next year, he told his mother “if you don’t let me go, I’ll run away anyway”. So through impossible odds, we have him at Stamford Bridge, scoring vital goals and terrifying all before him. A man who has fought for everything in his 27 years and exactly the person to fight for us in a new era. Seeing as our home ground was hardly a fortress last year, Diego would probably be the scariest thing about playing Chelsea right now. 

2016/17 on its way; emails ping back and forth and office banter picks up in my new office. A suspicious amount comes my way seeing as I support a mid-table side with an apparently wantaway striker who’s past his best. Diego gets under your skin. In a race for beard stroking rationality across Chelsea blogs, people have demanded that his temper is reined in. Diet Diego. With the incoming Conte, a fantastic man now famed for making death threats on the touchline, I’m not sure this will be the case. I really do hope he stays though. I hope his hamstrings stay strong. Above all, I hope he continues to wind up the Arsenal fans in my office.

@JJReid13

Peckham

Kim has got a British passport. She can also claim South African citizenship and was born in Korea. She spent her childhood attending international schools throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. She’s ended up living in Peckham, down the road from me, while working in journalism. I think it’s romantic in a way. She could be anywhere in the world but she’s here in South London. 

You’d know she’s got a British passport because she’s currently waving it at the bouncer, breathlessly pleading to be let into the venue. She’s also five foot nothing, so it doesn’t take much to get her this drunk. In her globalised American lexicon, she’ll say that she’s “pre-gamed” too hard at her house before stumbling onto Rye Lane. A whirling Tasmanian devil in high heels, leaving destruction in her wake. She relents, then sways from side to side behind me as I negotiate with the bouncer as apologetically as I can.

“Get her some chips and she can come in”. Chips, wonderful chips. Chips cure all. 

It’s one of those nights that almost doesn’t happen, and everything thereafter feels like a bonus. We’re at Canavan’s Pool Club at the top of Rye Lane. Its entrance is squeezed between the old iron mongers and a chiropodist. It’s a proper venue, a world away from the cocktail menus and supposedly Good Honest Burgers that have started to pop up in Peckham, even more so than before in the last twelve months.

The young crowd slowly sways up toward Rye Lane, a mass of Moschino and Reebok Classics. They seem to pass by and it makes us anxious, afraid that we’ll miss the best bits of the evening, so we hurry along too, wolfing down the suggested chips from Rooster Hut.

With dollar signs inked onto the back of our hands by the woman at the desk, we make our way in. Immediately we’re struck by an authenticity that would blow the mind of Time Out clutching tourist. Signs handwritten in highlighter pen telling you not to put your drinks on the DJ booth and exposed wires dangle from the ceiling. Downstairs, toilets are filth, looking like something out of a childhood scout hut rather than a cutting edge venue. A few centimetres of mystery liquid pool on the floor and leave the cubicles damp to the point where you think the stalls themselves might collapse, tear away from its foundations like soggy cardboard. 

I come back upstairs and big geezers with shaven heads and gold teeth loiter half way to the pool tables. Scary demeanours give way to false, overly friendly ones as soon as you stare too long. “Yeah, of course! Let me give you my work number” one winks and nudges, handing over a brick of a Nokia. Its screen hums out bright green light over us.

Kim, maybe slightly more sober now, manages to introduce me to Gianluca, who’s Italian. He would be with a name like that. Turns out he went to many of the same international schools as her, but speaks with what sounds like a New York accent. He wears a leather jacket and he’s one of the only people I’ve ever seen in person to look good in one. I spit out a reel of words which includes references to pizza, my barber who shares his name, and AFC Fiorentina. He smiles back politely and it’s enough of a connection. We proceed to have a great night.

The overriding feeling of the evening in Canavan’s is that there’s a community here. The mix of people seems far more diverse than other clubs, even those in Peckham. It’s inclusive of class, creed or colour. Accepting of all, just as long as you want to dance or play pool between midnight and 4 in the morning. I can’t lie, I’m totally sozzled; but I’ve put my can down on the baize three times before the bouncer raises his voice with any aggression. And then we leave, all smiles, almost embracing the bouncers who wouldn’t let us in a few hours earlier.

You see, I love Peckham, I really do. To some, Peckham is still a byword for the undesirable side of London. The one that people are vaguely aware exists, but don’t know all too much about. For those who’ve never got on a Number 12, they must assume that Rye Lane more closely resembles Syria than the rest of London. “Moths are like butterflies, but from Peckham” read a recent tweet. Read certain lifestyle blogs about the bars on Rye Lane and they’ll use terms like assault on the senses, refer to a scruffiness that they seem to be glad is rapidly disappearing. 

Certainly, in parts, the pavement is a carpet of chicken bones, bleached plastic hangs in ribbons from the trees and every dog’s a Staffie. Literally turn the corner though, and you’re in a leafy boulevard full of Persian restaurants and yummy mummies pushing prams. There’s no tube either, so it feels almost like a village rather than such a big town in Zone 2. You’ve got the largest Nigerian community in the UK. You have seemingly thousands of art students with thought-provoking haircuts riding their fixies to either UAL or Goldsmiths. Numbers of the white working class remain also; old London families swept into new builds. St. George’s Crosses and Millwall flags hanging stubbornly outside while so many of their peers have retreated away down the Old Kent Road. You can walk a few streets though, and you’re amongst the gated communities of Dulwich. There’s another culture, another way of looking at things around every corner here.

The morning after and I’m feeling empty and restless. It’s like my skull is made of egg shells and might crack into quarters, then tiny pieces, then dust at any time. The day is mostly spent in bed. I have a fish finger sandwich in order to cheer myself up, but as it starts to get dark I’ve still not eaten anything properly. Like I do far too often, I leave the flat and stumble to the bastion of south London cuisine, Morley’s Fried Chicken.

I ask for a number 18, but my attention is taken more by a woman sat at the till. She’s not buying anything, just talking to the young man serving. She laments that her friends are being evicted. They couldn’t pay their rent she says.

Another pang of guilt hits me, almost as hard as the hangover. Even though I hardly live in a luxury apartment – my rent is £500 a month- I am part of the new wave of occupants into Peckham. I can’t trace my family back to dock workers at Surrey Quays, nor do I speak Yoruba. I’m not even one of the art students; I catch a Thameslink train each morning to work a 9-5. Relatively middle class. A blow-in. For all the community spirit I experienced last night, I still hope people ask “where do you live?” rather than “where are you from?”.

“But still” she sighs “you’ve got to keep moving forward”. She says it in such a non-committal way; I’m not sure if she will, or even if she intends to do so.

“Not necessarily keep moving forward” offers the man behind the till. “But you have to evolve. Adapt to the environment as it changes around you.”

I chew barbeque wings and wonder if that’s a perfect analogy for Peckham in 2016. This weekend has been subdued. My first since having learned the news that high-end estate agents Foxtons will be opening a branch just yards away from Canavan’s on Rye Lane. Franchise coffee outlets lurk in the background, waiting to pounce and replace the unique stores throughout the town centre. 

The first place a lot of people new to Peckham want to visit is Frank’s, the bar on top of the multi-storey car park. Even that has changed since last summer though. Whereas you used to have to lead unsuspecting visitors through a gate swinging off its hinges to the dimly lit back entrance last time round, the front stairwell is now painted, brazenly, entirely bright pink, providing the background for Facebook profile pictures London-wide. Nothing demonstrates the change in Peckham more than the fact that the multi-storey where GMG and Giggs’ Black Gang used to film their music videos is now home to an art space and Campari bar. It’ll host an event on behalf of Proms later this month. 

When Margaret Thatcher bought her house just off the South Circular, it was to help demonstrate that Barratt Developments could be upmarket, even in somewhere as unfashionable as South East London. Today, the property is worth well over £2million. Even sites as sacred to the community as Bussey Building are not immune from the wandering eyes of property developers. The obvious is that Peckham is in fact, trendy. Young professionals will throw themselves at the chance to live a stone’s throw from Bussey and Canavan's and John The fucking Unicorn.

The commuters blowing into the 'new Dalston' will strive for convenience. While regularity on the Overland and the Thameslink would be a godsend, how will Peckham Afro Foods Ltd react when City workers demand the same coffee order back home as at the office? Whereas the existing communities have blended and created something truly unique in Peckham, young people can no longer afford their parents’ rents and mortgages. The community is due to be replaced with temporary, transient one without the same emotional investment. There for a few years then back to the Home Counties when things get tough or it’s time to bring up children. The recent BBC documentary Last Whites of the East End showed us how the white working class was leaving inner London for pastures new, and in doing so, raised the issue of White Flight to a wider audience. As rents continue to rise, seemingly undeterred by Brexit or other factors, they may not be alone. The worry is that Irish, West Indian, Nigerian and Polish Flights might soon be as a big an issue, and who knows what will be left. I urge you to see Peckham, in its current incarnation, while you can. But you have to evolve.

@JJReid13

Chelsea Ranger

Hoisted up onto the table. Mike and Raf push me above the crowd easier and quicker than I thought they would. I thought that they’d struggle, that I’d have more time to think. But I turn and only now do I realise just how high I am. Feeling naked, the full length of my body visible above the crowd, faces turned to me expectantly. Wait for the clamour to die down, a mischievous smile growing on my lips because I’ve wanted to do this for a while. 

Go for it.

“I wanna be a Chelsea ranger!”

My voice comes out hoarse, like someone else’s, tearing up my throat on the way out. The pub chants the line back to me as one and I know the stupid grin on my face will be belying the aggression that the song needs to be sung with. I unravel through the lines quicker than I should. I’m swinging my arm back and forth so fast it must be a blur as I chant the line about chasing Tottenham supporters up and down the street. It’s partly nerves and partly because I can see a bouncer out the corner of my eye making his way over to my perch on top the table. 

The Pensioner is a sweaty pub. Especially with perhaps a hundred steaming Chelsea packed in, bellowing out their songs. I didn’t like it when it first appeared. So near the ground, on the site of the old Black Bull, but now with a name with even clearer connotations to the Club, it seemed almost too conventional, too obvious. Besides, I usually much prefer to have a booze and a chat than a sing-song before most games. I was never one for the SoBar. A May bank holiday Monday match against Spurs to stop them winning the league though? This counts as special circumstances. 

When I first arrived I had a Meantime London Lager. It’s something different, slightly darker, rather than the same lager you’ve had a hundred times before. It doesn’t last long though. The heat and the noise of the Pensioner means I switch to Heineken as quick as I can, bought in tandem with Matt, one after the other. Lighter, colder, easier to throw down your throat and replace the fluids.

Chants start up, they surge through the crowd with a domino effect until you find the person that you were deep in conversation with suddenly shouting lyrics instead and you’ve no choice but to join in. But then it’s like a song I don’t recognise and I realise something’s amiss. There’s no tune, it’s just an animal roar, an outpouring of aggression. My head whips round and it seems to take me half a second longer than anyone else to realise what’s happening. 

Then the flags and the blinds over the windows are ripped up, almost off their bindings, and the outside of the Fulham road is revealed with the huge Tottenham mob outside, a police horse reeling back and forth between us and them. I find myself up against the window, banging the glass with an open palm again and again, only realising some time later how much it should hurt, my hand bright red and throbbing. 

“North London cunts!” I’m shouting over and over, face screwed up. We’d made our den in the pub. A little private slice of where we came from, what we were about, what made us unique. Our pub, our jokes, our songs. And then came this mob from Tottenham, dressing ever so slightly different, different backgrounds, different ways of looking at things. Chelsea against Tottenham. King’s Road and the Tottenham High Road. Surrey versus Hertfordshire.  The hate and the spite bubbling over.

A couple of pints earlier and I might not have cared. Laughed it off. They’re just like us though really, aren’t they? White and blue instead of blue and white. But I don’t, I bang at the window and glare at my opposite number. The door to my right slams open and some of the older heads spill out onto the road, wanting to test the mettle of the police and the yids at closer range. You can hear the police Alsatians above the general chaos, their barks at a different pitch to the angry shouts of football fans. And then just like that, they’ve been escorted along the road and into the ground. Another song starts up, and it’s like they were never there.

___

“Just one more. I’ll just have one more” I promise, wheeling away, jogging a path through the slow lurch of the crowd, up to the Fin and another pint. A draw that felt like a win and then some. I don’t want the night to end. Buying multiple pints on card because I’ve run out of cash and drinking them too quickly.

It’s only on the train back, after I’ve changed at Clapham, that a pang of guilt hits me and crawls all over my skin. I’ve acted like an idiot all day and got away with it. Just like Chelsea playing awful all season and still keeping our record against Spurs. I’m home and dry, completely scot free. Got carried away and in my paranoid mind I think that surely it’s only a matter of time until I’m punched or banned or nicked. I’m sure karma will catch up with me one day, but hopefully not for a while.

@JJReid13