Time! It's after two! I must get to the ground then, how my mind has been taken off. Now, how to get to the ground, yes, always take a taxi in a strange city, no, not that again, in any case I have not seen any taxis here, except at the station, and that's a long way away, but I did see buses with boards up for the ground at the Council House square, yes, and I ought to be able to find my way back there, yes, down there, through this alley, or crack, as some would call it, a paved alleyway, wet, it must have rained while I was having lunch, slightly, or they have washed it down, no, what irrelevant absurdities I find myself thinking, just, the pavement is wet, I must take appropriate care not to slip as I descend, past shoppers, still at it, this is their great day, of course, wives and daughters arm-in-arm after camiknickers, matching, no doubt, twinsets, similar gallivanting. Radio shop, now no doubt called television shops, the half-dozen sets going, different programmes, show-jumping and swimming, those apologies for sport on television, while the only sport most people want to watch is soccer, the only real sport, the best, the pathetic ends they go to on Saturday afternoons to cover up the fact that they are not showing football. Downhill, this must lead to the square, I remember this big furnishers, yes, it lies directly the other side, a whole block, follow it round, follow it round, to the front. These curved windows were modern, now seem dated, but there are no reflections, still, they take up space, a four-feet-wide strip round the perimeter of your showroom, that much out of your floor area, selling floor area, too. Can we afford it? Not that the sort of stuff they stock needs selling, anyway, it is that kind which is so presented that it appears to offer a complete range of choice, indeed, I should not be surprised if there were to be notices inside claiming something to that effect, if not for the whole country perhaps for the biggest range, most complete choice in the Midlands, certainly in this city: so that almost all couples coming here for their bedroom suite, their sofa and easy chairs, their carpets and kitchen cabinets, will feel that what they see does indeed represent all that there is to choose from, and therefore limit the area of their own choosing merely to colour and price and simple availability. Then they wonder at the ordinariness, the sameness, the dissatisfaction they vaguely feel, the resentment at each instalment payment, for thirty months or more a weekly reminder of the moment of non-choice. I am too cynical. And, besides, how do I know any of those things? I do not. Yes, turning the corner, across the square, a queue, not too long, moving all the time, too, they have it well organized, a queue too of buses and trolleys, as well, good, perhaps I shall have the trolley ride I promised myself this morning, if it so happens that I am at the head of the queue when a trolley is there, dare I wait for one, would the people behind complain at my delaying, why should they, one person would arrive there sooner in my posited place, could I face such anger, would it be worth it, the trouble, the possible embarrassment? Buy a paper, yes, football paper. City will have to pull out all the stops today to beat United, with their star-studded forward line containing no less than three internationals, but provided City's Furse has his shooting-boots on it may well be that the local lads will show last year's League runners-up a thing or two before their own loyal crowd at Home Park this afternoon. Yes indeed. Thank Christ I don't have to write that sort of preliminary speculative meaningless crap. Just my own kind of crap. Any team changes, that's the important thing, no, doesn't say here, United's team picks itself provided no one's injured, and there were no reports of unfitness in midweek. No lead of any kind here, I shall have to rely on the match to spark something off, or not spark something off, as the case may be. It begins to rain, rain like an extension of the air, wet air, not falling as drops, in material terms, that is, in drops one would call drops, but a fine air mist of wetness, of rain, that makes me blink, that just depresses me one stage further, that does not soak, or give me cause to feel abandoned. Does it? These men on their way to football, they are the same in any city, seem so, generalizations are useless, on their way to any match, their raincoats, their favours, in some cases, the real fan does not need to show his favour by favours, but by his fervour, and so on, the feeling in the heart, for his team, the one team.
No, it does not matter, I'll take the bus, as it comes, failed to get that trolley by twenty places, at least, never mind, forgo the trolley, the next two are buses, as it happens, as far as I can see, there might be a miracle, a trolley might come next, or a surprise, but no, I do not believe in that kind of miracle, or surprise, any longer, it is simply not, and does it matter, here's the bus, at least I'll be out of the rain, on the bus, for as long as it takes, how long does it take, and this way I get an inside seat, near the window, the seats are different from London buses, of course, and the sound the engine makes, earthier, the shudder of the diesel throughout the whole frame. Fourpence to the ground, the conductor with a roll of fourpenny tickets, little square tickets they have on these buses, in this city, keep it, yes, when anyone wants anything other than a fourpenny it puts him out, the conductor, a Pakistani, in this city, quite throws him, for who could not be wanting to go to football, these are Football Specials, it says so on the front. A widening of the street, a public place, trolleybus wires for a false ceiling, traffic islands with public flowerbeds, men walking in that set, purposeful way they have when going to a match, so we must be near, it's within walking distance then, now, not a very long journey, could have walked it, yes, could have seen more, to remind me.
Across the bridge to the ground, the buses stop this side, for some reason, anti-congestion, perhaps, we flow across the bridge towards the ground, our pace hurried, urgent, for some reason, our flow, tide, mass, as we go past the buttresses of the birdge, in the eddy of each one a seller, of programmes, of favours, of newspapers. There the towers! You see them so often now, of recent years they have come to mean a football ground on the skyline, the floodlight towers, stark scaffolds, lightholders, functional, a new feature since my father's time, then there were no floodlit matches, all games took place in daylight, the winter Saturday afternoon kickoffs used to be at two-fifteen, which meant an early lunch for us, or no lunch if he was working Saturday mornings, taking sandwiches to the match and eating them there. Ah, the inevitable comic gauntlet I have to run outside grounds, the photos of my colleagues, on their billboards, the top pop ones even having a man to hold them aloft on a pole, their smooth grins and crinkly hair, why is it most of them, or a significant proportion, seem to look alike, the Heavy Mob, armed to the teeth with Colour and Mixed Metaphors, ready to defend their principles to the death as long as they do not conflict with their financial interests, the well-paid pseuds who write their reports from prepared telling phrases, and make the football fit whatever it is they imagine their readers want them to say. At least working for a so-called posh paper I don't have the embarrassment of seeing my face up there, or my name, either, outside the ground, though in other respects the posh papers are as bad as the wet ones, or even worse, in their unenlightened treatment of those who work for them, the standards, which mere readers do not know about, cannot know of. Or am I envious of these household names, the Heavy Mob? Christ no, no, it is only the money they take I'm envious of, and I know how they earn that, the bastards, the Heavy Mob. When shall I see a ground all of a piece, a new ground, all the English grounds I've seen are so piecemeal, are never designed as a whole, except Wembley, and in most ways that's an even worse disaster than this one, which seems to have four sides developed at random, at different times, yet there has been, is, an enormous amount of money in football, thousands of pounds a game, hundreds of thousands a season, the number of people who go, and the players don't get it, were very badly treated until very recently, still are in some respects, it must have been the directors, the owners, who just siphoned off all the money but for what they had to leave to keep the things running, and even though they have to give the players something nearer their due, now, they still don't have to spend money on buildings, they see, the swine, still have these corrugated iron sheds and charge extra for that, let the men on the terraces, their chief supporters, the sixpences of the masses, stand out in all weathers, and they do, the stupid bastards! Yet these buildings show them up for what they are, the directors and profiteers of the clubs, there is yet honesty in this: the buildings proclaim that they are cheapjacks, charlatans, who might as if pack their bags overnight and leave, because in the buildings they would be leaving behind them the very minimum that could possibly be left, which would, which does, corrode, disintegrate, rot to pieces every few years. So this ground, the usual mess of badly-shuttered concrete badly finished, the scruffy collection of huts which are the turnstiles, fletton-backed stand beyond them, the unpleasantness of this brick in such a circumstance, ah, why waste anything of me with these things that disgust me, where's the Press entrance, let's get on with the bloody job.