These are a few of my favourite things...

... of 2005, that is...
Enough with the long-windedness, here are some 'gimme five' lists...

Favourite albums:
Gorillaz, Demon Days
Josh Rouse, Nashville
Laura Cantrell, Humming By The Flowered Vine
Paul McCartney, Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous

Nearly-favourite albums:
Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cold Roses
Martha Wainwright, Martha Wainwright
The Rakes, Capture/Release
Luke Haines/The Auteurs/Baader Meinhof, Luke Haines Is Dead

Favourite reads:
Anna Funder, Stasiland
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Untold Story
John Dickie, Cosa Nostra
Tom Shone, Blockbuster
Tom Perrotta, Little Children

Favourite films:
Crash
Silver City
The Producers
Batman Begins
Million Dollar Baby

Favourite first-time discoveries, years late:
P G Wodehouse
Amy Allison
Derek and Clive
Shameless
The 'Rat Pack'

Favourite moments:
Jacques Rogge saying that magic syllable 'Lon-' on July 6
Going to York for a ten-year anniversary sentimentalifest with university friends
That catch by Geraint Jones, off Steve Harmison, on the Sunday morning at Edgbaston
Going from pure despair, to pure fear, to pure ecstasy as Pietersen pulled us through on the final day at Lord's
My brother's weird and wonderful Chinese wedding

Unfavourite disappointments:
Rufus Wainwright, Want Two
Jonathan Coe, The Closed Circle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The West End production of High Society
The second half of the North London derby in November

Favourite things to look forward to in 2006:
New series of The Sopranos
A UK tour by Sir Macca... hopefully
The Johnny Cash biopic
The home leg of Lyndon and Jessie's wedding
The Ashes in Australia

I thought: 'Funny'...

Haven't watched very much television this Christmas - except for the inevitable Simpsons-a-thons, which will no doubt send me out onto the streets a pie-eyed, carnage-causing drink-driver - but I did see the repeat of last year's Not Only But Always, the drama-doc about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Rhys Ifans and Aidan McArdle were excellent in the lead roles, it's true - Ifans looked uncannily like Cook, especially the glassy-eyed, superior stare and the all-conquering drawl.
But I was a little disappointed, even more so on second viewing, by how unconvincing - and, indeed, pointless - the brief reconstructions of sketches were. And especially how, for two such brilliantly hilarious people, Terry Johnson's screenplay paid very little attention to their humour, much more on angsty soap operatics: oh-so-predictable crackerjack cliches about Cook the bitter'n'twisted, wasted talent; Moore the safe, soft, sell-out 'straight man'. All entirely unworthy of them both.
Frankly, the film got off to a bad start with the scene showing a drunken Cook, in his final years, calling an early-hours LBC phone-in show as 'Sven from Swiss Cottage', and sounding not witty and satirical but dull, embarrassing and sad - and the radio host awkwardly treating him as such.
Not true at all. 'Sven from Swiss Cottage' was a superbly sharp creation and improvisation, expertly played and downplayed by Cook, with his despairing references to his lost wife Yuta, his attempts to woo Ingeborg from the dry cleaner's, and how big-screen footage about fishing helps curb football hooliganism in Norway.
So the film, beautifully-shot and acted though it is, played a more helpful role by sending me back to my Pete'n'Dud recordings.
'Cos they give me the 'orn...

And so that was Christmas...

… and what have I done?

Well, much the same as most times, I suppose. With the odd little tweak and twist here and there to mark the passing of the years. Which is how I like it. Times change, but much still stays the comforting same, the ghost of Christmas past keeping a light touch on his Christmas present colleague, thanks to age-old family rituals.
For example: ever since I was a baby, we have been going to Finchley Memorial Hospital first thing on Christmas Day morning to sing carols to the patients, with the ‘Friends’ of the hospital. My mum and dad actually started doing this the first Christmas they were in London, which was seven months before I was born, so this year was their 30th visit. As a kid, with much shorter legs than now, I remember feeling the tour of the wards and corridors lasted FOR EVER. But now it seems over almost before it’s even begun, finding ourselves strolling into the canteen at the end of the journey, for mince pies and cans of Fanta, at an alarmingly early moment. Comparatively so, anyway. ‘What, no more wards?’
Of course, this no doubt has much to do with my longer legs and sturdier sense of patience these days – and greater enjoyment, especially as I now take my guitar along to accompany the straggling carollers, to bolster my dad’s playing – my youngest brother Christy also joined the musicians this time, eyebrow-furrowedly peering at each change of chord grasped at by myself.
Also, the hospital is sadly shrinking. The Father Christmas leading our way this time explained this would be our last visit to the Dickens rehabilitation wards, which are due to close this year – apparently because they are just too dilapidated to renovate properly, though shutting them entirely instead appears a rather offhand option.
For all the beauty and joy of the Christmas anthems, and the bright beams of momentary appreciation on the odd patient’s face, it does also feel a little demoralising touring the hospital – full of ancient, incapacitated skeletons, most in what seem to be catatonic trances and fated only to have us few strangers as Christmas Day visitors. The staff are always unfailingly cheery, despite their own arduous Christmas responsibilities, but I can never come away, an hour or so later, without feeling both downbeat, and relieved to be so much happier off at this time of year.
Our Santa guide also thanked the dozen or so of us there for continuing to come along – apparently now the only hospital in the area where people visit on Christmas morning to sing and hand out gifts. Another sad sign.
At least this time there seemed to be more family visitors accompanying some of the patients than usual – in fact, it was the first year in ages I can recall struggling to find enough spaces in the unusually-packed car park.
Until next year, then, when it seems even fewer patients will be there…
To be honest, the rest of the day then becomes a ‘shut-the-door-on-the-world’ type of insular affair. We had entertained a steady stream of visitors on the Christmas Eve, which had been predictably hectic before, during and after, before the annual ritual of reading a page each – in alphabetical order – of a Nativity story pop-up book my parents bought for me as a baby. And the equally-repetitive ritual of laughing at how I had broken every pop-up feature in the book through overuse. Then the hanging-up of stockings – including an additional, frankly-gargantuan new one for Lyndon’s new wife Jessie – then off to Midnight Mass.
Christmas Day followed similar alphabetical patterns – the order in which we would take turns to open a present, the line in which we queued to enter the front room for Christmas evening tea. But I wouldn’t have it any other way… The usual patterns were covered overall – the pre-lunch walk with newly-shorn dog Frannie (wearing one of Christy’s old woolly jumpers for effect); the singing down the phone to relatives in the Midlands.
And yet with some new features. The excitement and novelty of Jessie’s first Christmas here. Next brother down, Noel, and his girlfriend Vicky becoming engaged, sealed with his present to her of a ring (she got him a PSP…) And instead of someone hauling out old videos of us brothers as kids, we instead watched a beautifully-put-together DVD of Lyndon and Jessie’s recent wedding. Then the Coronation Street Christmas special (old habits, etc etc etc…)
Boxing Day was similarly laidback, though I did get out of the house for longer, for the important ritual of Spurs v Birmingham. If the performance was pretty woeful, luckily the result went our way – 2-0, though with hefty thanks to two ‘penalty’ decisions going our way: one, when Robbie Keane went down and won a penalty, the second at the other end when Muzzy Izzet’s fall earned not a spot-kick but a second yellow card for diving. At the match, I suspected neither should have been a penalty. Watching the TV highlights, I decided both probably should have been, but ah well – as the Mirror report suggested, perhaps we really were finally showing our top-four credentials by winning games without playing well: Though I also thought, maybe we were also showing we were top four by actually getting refereeing decisions going for us instead of us being the undeserving victims – three home matches in a row with penalties our way, unheard-of! I can’t remember the last time we won three penalties in a season, at least not since the 1993-94 season, when we managed to miss three in four days against Chelsea and Aston Villa…
But anyway… Spurs then went and put a ‘bah humbug’ dampener on the week by losing 2-0 at West Brom last night – I suppose our below-par performances were bound to end in a deserved defeat eventually.
Hopefully onwards and upwards from here…

Festive felicitations...

"I trust Christmas brings to you its traditional mix of good food and violent stomach cramp..."

No, no, no...

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be Lilywhite...

(To be continued.....)

Waddle I do, when you are far away...?

Oh dear, it's not looking promising for stolen Toga the penguin, despite the nationwide appeals and £9,000 reward issued for his recovery...
That is, I assume he was stolen, and didn't simply had various distressing issues of his own which all became too much and made him make a break for it, to look for his 'own space' away from the prying zoo-visitors' eyes for a while... (much like the animals in the film Madagascar, in which the crack troupe of penguins were by far the most entertaining attractions...)
Anyway, hope you're still hanging on in there somewhere, Toga, little buddy - and that this particular penguin gets p-p-p-p-picked up very soon (sorry, all predictable tabloid instincts just had to kick in eventually...)
Penguins are lovely-looking creatures - though I was surprised to be told today they 'bray like donkeys'. I'd never thought of that. Nor considered whether donkeys, indeed, bray like penguins.
I think I just about prefer puffins, mind. Though, as my dad never ceases to infuriatingly remind all and sundry whenever one gets mentioned:
One thing about the puffin
Almost tickles me to death,
He always is a puffin -
Yet he's never out of breath...
By dint of nigh-on 28 years of incessant repetition, it now seems that, despite myself, I do the same...
I believe this must have been the kind of thing to which Philip Larkin was referring...

'Well, so could anyone...'

I was sorry not to see a documentary the other night about the making of 'Fairytale Of New York', by The Pogues and the much-missed Kirsty MacColl - despite an alarming and surely-unnecessary intervention by Katie Melua in a new version. I hope the rereleased single enters highly in next Sunday's chart - in the week commemorating five years since Kirsty died, and raising money for the Justice for Kirsty campaign highlighting the lunatic leniency her killer received.
Yet ‘Fairytale’ is very far from my favourite festive song. Yes, it’s a good singalong tune and the spiky lyrics are a tasty contrast to the sugary sentimentalism of so many other Christmas songs. Yet perhaps the impact has just been dulled by over-exposure - both of the song itself, and people gushing about its status as the finest of all. For me, anyway. Clearly not viewers of VH1, who last week voted it Britain's most popular Christmas anthem. I prefer Kirsty’s other work, though - notably There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvisâ and England 2, Colombia 0 (˜He lied about his status, he lied about his life - he forgot he had three children, he forgot he had a wife - now it's England two, Colombia nil, and I know just how those Colombians feel")
Ah, it seems at least a few fellow heretics agree about this most sacred of cows in the Christmas scene, at this Drowned In Sound discussion - but how quickly one idiot goes to an utterly ill-judged and pathetic extreme. Hmm...
I would actually like to hear more, each Christmas, of one-hit-wonder Jona Lewie's ˜Stop The Cavalry" - that first annual refrain of ˜Dub-a-dub-a-dum-dum, dub-a-dub-a-dum" always sounds so strangely reassuring...
Apparently the song was not originally meant to be marketed as an all-out festive release at all - originally scheduled to come out in November, with an arrangement not quite so Salvation Army'd-up until a canny record producer pricked up his ears at the cursory Christmas mention in the middle-eight and suggested making a little more out of it.
Can't really imagine it any other way, now...
I think "Stop The Cavalry" was the opening track on a Christmas CD I compiled for our family festive lunch a few years ago. I hope I can find it when I return home in a couple of days' time, though I suppose I could and should really put together a fresh one.
Featuring all the traditional fillers, obviously - yer Wizzard, yer Slade, yer Lennon, yer Phil Spector Christmas album tracks ("Winter Wonderland" above "Frosty The Snowman", I think) and yes, yer Kirsty&Shane...
Hmm, what else, though...? Well, Elvis's version of "Blue Christmas" is a lovely little lament, and Glen Campbell's "Little Toy Trains", while rather more over-wrought, is another heart-tugger.
The wonderful Loretta Lynn came up with "Country Christmas", not quite up to her finest songwriting standards, but fun enough and, well, different at least.
This would all sound a little too cosy for Christmas, though - worth tossing in a few dhoosras to stop Champagne-sniftering mum, dad, and Grandma dozing off into into their plum puddings...
Slightly crunchier and quirkier would be two to prompt approving nods from my indie-kid brothers: "I Want An Alien For Christmas" by Fountains Of Wayne, which remains marginally the right side from wackiness), and "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmasâ" by Eels. I mean, how could anyone reasonably resist a song featuring the joyous exclamation, "Baby Jesus - born to rock"...?
In fact, I may well just recommend it to our local vicar for this year's Midnight Mass service.
Then there's any track from Conor 'Bright Eyes' Oberst's Christmas album, probably favouring his feedback-swaddled, rather industrial assault on 'Little Drummer Boy', which has each 'Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum' almost drowned out by what sound like furious bursts of artillery fire.
Calming the mood back down a little could be the glacial yet pretty 'Just Like Christmas' by Low, who can tend to be much harder work to listen to away from their December outings.
'The Christmas Song' by The Raveonettes is also chilly but charming, while 'Christmas Time's A Coming' by Emmylou Harris, and 'The Angels Cried' by Alan Jackson and Alison Krauss, are perfectly palatable country finger-plucking twitters.
Veering a little off the wall again are the frankly un-singalong-able 'December Will Be Magic Again' by dear old swooning Kate Bush, and 'Children Go Where I Send Thee' by Natalie Merchant, whose voice I love but who startles me with this song by seeming just so, well, funky.
And yes, that is a word I use only sparingly and reluctantly, but this souped-up hymnal really is - by my standards, anyway. And often-prissy Nat's, too...
Other delectable December-namechecking tracks would include Thea Gilmore's 'December In New York', and Merle Haggard's heartaching 'If We Make It Through December'. As with the full Christmas albums recorded by Johnny Cash, I find I prefer Merle's regular recordings to his seasonal stuff - he and the Man In Black can't help but sound a little too stern on such carols as Hark The Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night, as worshipworthy as both singers are generally...
Rufus Wainwright's 'Spotlight On Christmas' is as melodic and delicate as his desperately-disappointing and dirge-like Want Two album wasn't this year, while 'Christmas With Jesus' by Josh Rouse is not so superb as his 2005 album Nashville but is a grower nevertheless.
Slightly more sour would be Tom Lehrer's anti-commercialism send-up, "A Christmas Carol", as chilly and bracing as a freshly-flung snowballs, and administering such admonitory lyrics as "On Christmas Day you can’t be sore, your fellow man you must adore - there's time to rob him all the more, the other three-hundred-and-sixty-a-four" and "Hark the Herald Tribune sings, advertising wondrous things - God rest ye merry merchants, may you make the Yuletide pay"...
Hmm, the words "bah" and "humbug" spring somehow to mind, yet the wise-cracking maths professor - a satirist-ician, anyone? - does indeed have a jolly way with a tune, and an impressive line in glittery glissandos from one end of the piano to the other.
Coldplay's Chris Martin is not quite so expressive with his fingertips as he accompanies himself solo on a Radio One session version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" - in fact, so sombre is the arrangement he himself seems to have having anything but, yet I find it affecting nonetheless.
More surreally self-accompanying is the Peter Doherty-prototype Peter Perrett, of The Only Ones, bashing out wayward chords on an acoustic guitar while slurring "Silent Night" - the entire vocal sounding constantly on the verge of falling apart into several hundred shattered fragments. As appeared the vocalist himself, I imagine. But it is lovely stuff to behold.
Honourable mentions should also go, I suppose, to "2,000 Miles" by The Pretenders; "Gabriel's Message" by Sting (I know, I know...); the salvage job done by one of my favourite bands, The Manic Street Preachers, on one of my least favourite festive tunes, 'Last Christmas'; and ˜It's Christmas All Over Again" by Tom Petty, which seems typically twee but is redeemed by the fade-out as Tom goofily ponders aloud his wishlist for Father Christmas: "Hmm, let's see - I want a new Rickenbacker guitar... A Chuck Berry songbook..."
I’m not quite so keen on Chuck Berry's own "Merry Xmas Everybody", which is serviceable enough but a little humdrum.
More tangential, cold-snap-related gems include "Snow" by Harry Nilsson, The Bangles' shimmery, urgent take on Simon and Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade Of Winter", and the Wonderwall-baiting "Writing To Reach You" by Travis.
Amusing enough to merit one listen per year - just the one, mind - are the droning, contractual-obligation-like "Christmas Time Is Here Again" from one of The Beatles' mid-1960s fan club Christmas discs; "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses; "Once In Royal David's City" by, believe it or not, Chas and Dave ("Mary woz vat muvvah mild..."); and Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", only by an oh-so-very-earnest Glenn Hoddle and Tottenham's 1981-82 FA Cup Final squad.
Providing I have knocked back enough sherry, Champagne, mulled wine and eggnog - and yet not quite too much Stollen and Pannetonne - I can just about stomach, say, 'My Only Wish' by Britney Spears, and two separate songs called 'Christmas Day', by Dido and by the slightly-below-par Squeeze.
Prize turkeys I simply won't allow in the house, let alone the stereo, include those abominations by The Darkness, Mariah Carey and Jon Bon Jovi (although his very young and callow vocal solo on the 1980 Star Wars tie-in, 'R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas' provides more enjoyment than the rest of his grown-up career could conjure in total), as well as - sad to say - the hideous "Wonderful Christmastime" by Sir Macca, a true McCartney nadir which simply reeks of desperation for a seasonal standard of his own, yet sounds just so cheap, tinny and tacky.
And I'm someone perfectly happy to defend him over the Frog Song...
Speaking of frogs, the Christmas album I would like to locate again is my much-beloved-during-childhood Muppet Show Christmas album, featuring guest star John Denver.
Apparently my parents finally confiscated the record from the much younger me after one too many - or, in fact, several dozen too many - repeat plays deep into summertime.
But surely enough years have now passed for me to be trusted with it again...
We shall see. Roll on Sunday...

"D'oh!" and woe in Wolverhampton...

Home, so sweet, sweet home. How glad I am to be here, writing those words, at this time tonight, rather than sitting, shivering, in a West Midlands industrial yard overnight. Then again, throughout tomorrow. Then again, overnight.
What a terrible prospect seemed to be in store for me, just a few hours ago.
I drove up to Wolverhampton this morning, to report on Wolves versus Leeds for the Sunday Express - my second football assignment for them, and, as it happens, my second Wolves home game for them.
I parked in the same place as last time, a £3-stay goods yard-cum-match day-car-park just ten minutes’ walk from the ground, where I met my cousin Dan for a strategic exchange of Christmas gifts from our respective branches of the family.
He had parked up on the narrow lane you reached upon first entering the car park. I, on the other hand, was pointed through the steel silver gates into a more expansive depot space, just beyond, but which the chubby youngster seemingly placed temporarily in charge seemed to assure me would remain open for the duration.
After a pre-match drink in a nearby pub, we entered the ground for what turned out to be a fairly dire and dull match. I did find myself a little glad, though, that the second half proved quite as drab as it was, for it meant I could keep my freezing hands buried deep inside my coat pockets for most of the time, and only have to make very-occasional notes in a scrawl which came to resemble a two-year-old’s.
I phoned in my copy reasonably swiftly after the game, at least the 400 words they wanted and probably more, and felt pleased with myself - for overcoming the stutters and confusion that usually overcome me when obliged to phone in semi-improvised copy, and for having what seemed to be the newspaper’s most prominent of tomorrow’s Championship write-ups.
Then I got to listen to respective managers Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Blackwell give their brief Press conferences, before phoning in some of their more interesting quotes - all with Dan on hand, after I’d panic-strickenly texted him midway through the second half to ask if he wouldn’t mind sticking around for a little while with his mobile phone ready to act as an emergency substitute if need be. This was because, despite charging mine last night, it started emitting alarming sounds shortly after the second half kicked off, and warning me with large exclamation marks that the battery was low.
Luckily, it lived long enough for me to phone all my copy through, and I thought I’d got away with it.
Dan and I strolled back to our cars, relieved with the 1-0 win for Wolves and to finally approach some warmth. He drove off happily, and I strolled through the open gates and into my car, pausing only to plug in my iPod, put on my seatbelt, and fire off a very quick, cursory text to a work contact who had texted me about a story I’d be working on tomorrow.
That brief gesture appeared to seal my fate, however.
Two minutes, maximum, was surely all that intervened between me walking through the open gates, then turning my car around only to find them hammered and locked shut in front of me. I was aghast and unbelieving, frantically fiddling with the bolts, then hollering towards the headlights of the last car ahead of me, the other side, only to see it roll away regardless.
So then it started to sink in. I was locked inside a goods yard, on a Saturday night, with no idea who to contact, when it would reopen - frankly, what the hell I was going to do.
Silence.
And then a bleep, and another, as my mobile phone, on the passenger seat beside me, illuminated one last time to warn of imminent battery failure, before abruptly keeping its promise.
Wonderful. Now what…?
Not that I knew who to phone, anyway, but it seemed to blast the last nail into the coffin.
Hopelessly, in both major meanings of the word, I drove a couple of times around the yard, desperately scanning for some secret exit, but of course, there weren’t any. Just rows and rows of trucks, lorries and coaches. I scribbled down all the phone numbers on each one, more out of instinct than positive planning, before ever-optimistically driving back up to the locked gates. Still locked.
Well, suddenly I could see myself stuck here tonight… and tomorrow… and until 9am Monday. Yet without the ability to even call my family, or the office to explain why I wouldn’t be in work tomorrow.
The only option seemed to be to leave the car here, clamber over the gate and at least look for a payphone, explain myself to my family and see whether I could kip overnight in the Midlands with family here, or get myself back to London tonight and worry about the car later.
First I had to get out. No choice but to hoik myself up and over the metal-spike-topped gates. Getting up was easy enough, but that’s when I abruptly had to pause. 15ft down seemed a long, daunting drop. I strapped my bag over both shoulders and in front of my stomach, brought my feet together on the same side of the gate, and clustered my long coat-tails tightly around me, but still had awful visions of the bag or coat catching one of those spikes and leaving me messily hanged for the workers to find greeting them on Monday morning.
Then, suddenly, down, and I’d made it - landing a little heavily on the palms of both hands, leaving both grazed and pained, but it could have been a lot, lot worse. And I was out.
Now to find a payphone.
Hmm, a payphone. What a quaint concept, in this digital era of always-ready-to-hand personal mobiles. Finally I found a botth, started pouring in coins and dialling each of the numbers I’d noted down - starting with the security firm whose notice was posted on the gate - but all kept ringing out, obviously office numbers.
A woman waiting for the phone finally tapped on the window and asked if I would be long. I gave an apologetic shrug and said I had to make a few calls, which she seemed to accept, before disappearing.
Unfortunately, a few minutes later, more violent bangs on the door interrupted my latest fruitless phone call, before the man responsible yanked open the door and began bellowing me about what was I doing, why wouldn’t I let his wife use the phone or tell her how long I’d be. My anxious instincts kicked in in the face of this almost-incomprehensible onslaught, and I tottered out of the booth, tried to explain I was in a little trouble and just needed a little longer, but to no avail as he pitched himself into an intenser fury, demanding to know who I thought I was and what he was thinking of doing to me, etc etc. I was expecting the steam to start issuing out of his ears. Actually, I was expecting him to draw a knife and put me out of this evening’s developing misery - either that, or spontaneously self-combust, which I’d happily accept as a technical knock-out in my favour.
I stammered out that he could have the phone if he really wanted, and with an indignant ‘I’m going to!’, he took a step that way as I more quickly ventured the other, before firing off furious cries of ‘Fuckin’ white prick’, ‘You’re in the Reans now, man’ (referring the notorious local estate, I gathered) and ‘I’ll raaaaise ya’ (reminding me later of Dudley Moore exclaiming ‘I’ll raaaze them to the ground with my knob’ when discussing the BBC in one of the Derek and Clive tapes, though I wasn’t paying this much attention at the time). I beat a hasty retreat, considering it wise not to point out I had 30p of credit he was about to rudely seize for himself.
Honestly, though. Fancy me having the AUDACITY to use a phone booth I’d reached before anyone else. Shocking behaviour, and thankfully not to be tolerated at such a LOCAL phone box, for LOCAL people…
Sure enough, the next booth I found was already in use, but instead of adopting my recent friend’s tactics, I headed to the Asda supermarket opposite the football ground to try third time lucky.
I knew my dad had the Walsall game that day, and was hoping he wouldn’t yet be too far towards home and could come to collect me.
My latest thinking was to at least get back to London that night, travel by train to and from work tomorrow, then somehow prevail upon dad or brother to drive me back up to Wolverhampton in time for 9am opening on Monday. I could then retrieve my car and drive back in time for my 4pm start at the office that day.
Of course, my dad’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Phoning home was more successful, as my mum revealed he was still at my great auntie Ivy’s in Walsall. She phoned the landline, told him to switch his mobile on, and a few minutes later I was spluttering out my plight.
He agreed to meet me outside Molineux, by the Billy Wright statue within 20 minutes or so.
Of course, it was more ‘or so’, about 45 minutes I spent shivering and watching endless taxis stop by and drop off scantily-clad boys and girls entering the ground for some kind of Christmas special disco.
Eventually, dad arrived = ready, so I thought, to head onto the motorway and home as quickly, relief-fillingly, as possible.
Instead, he asked for directions to the yard where my car was pathetically parked. I couldn’t quite see the point of going and taking a look through the bars to where it inaccessibly lay, but pointed the way anyway.
At first, I thought I had got the final turning wrong. This one looked wrong - ie. There were no hefty gates blocking the distant way at the end of the alley, and what seemed to be an in-action white van had its headlights twinkling.
But, wait a minute - as we pulled slowly closer, there indeed was my car, plonked where I had left it, and within physical grasp.
Someone had returned to the yard, opened it up for some purpose or other, and I was back in business. A miracle! Well, it certainly seemed so, anyway.
I beamingly urged dad to turn around as soon as possible, and we’d hare our way out before the gate-keeping jokers pulled a similar stunt. But he leisurely-ly asked for the Christmas gifts from the boot of my car, before finally we could pull away and begone.
If I’ve ever felt so delightedly relieved by an unexpected development, then I can’t remember it now.
But then again, I am still feeling a little odd, disoriented but overall delirious at how it all turned out nice again in the end.
Somehow.
It really was a terrible match, though…