Rhapsody in Blue

Neil Fitzsimon

Description

Rhapsody in Blue is a joyous celebration of growing up in the late 1960s and early 70s in the aftermath of England's 1966 World Cup victory. It was a time when football and pop culture merged - an era of smoke-filled pubs, when Fray Bentos pies and fry-ups were consumed without guilt and parents had no fear of letting their kids stay out after dark. It was also a time without live TV football, when being a fan meant traipsing through the turnstiles every week. The book vividly recalls how a boy fell in love with Chelsea Football Club, cheering the Blues on week after week, while at the same time becoming immersed in the culture of street football. Neil Fitzsimon skilfully transports us to the Stamford Bridge of his youth, when the likes of Ian Hutchinson and Peter Houseman lit up the pitch. Away from the terraces, he played in his own street team in bitterly contested games against rival street sides. Rhapsody in Blue is a moving and nostalgic tribute to a lost era and way of life.

Sujets

• Gran Londres
• Greater London
• Grand Londres
• London

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785316975
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Neil Fitzsimon, 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316388 eBook ISBN 9781785316975
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Contents
Prologue
1. An Innocent Abroad
2. The Hidden Menace
3. Nerves
4. The Two-Goal Lead
5. Street Football - A New Beginning
6. The Gear Kid
7. Gentleman J.D
8. Battering the Bumpkins
9. Hutch
10. Nobby
11. Mouth Almighty
12. The Cup at Last - Part 1
13. The Cup at Last - Part 2
14. A Brugge Too Far?
15. City and Real Madrid
16. London Boys - Part 1
17. London Boys - Part 2
18. A Night to Remember
19. The Gathering Storm
20. That Hell-Bound Train
21. Decline and Fall
22. Blue Remembered Hills
23. Loathe Story Part 1 - Spurs
24. Loathe Story Part 2 - Liverpool
25. The Long Hot Summer of 1970
26. A Warped Vision
27. Nemesis
28. Webb of Deceit
29. Bug s Eleven
30. West Ham Away - 1970 - Part 1
31. West Ham Away - 1970 - Part 2 (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner)
32. Last Orders
33. Goodbye to All That
Prologue
I GO to my mum and dad s every week for tea, and on the way back I drive past some fields at the end of the road that belong to the local school. I see the same thing every week; they are empty. Oh, occasionally you will see some bloke improving his golf swing, but every week I get a catch in my throat and a sense of loss in my stomach that these fields are now deserted and, in a way, unloved and unused. I know they are still in use for organised school games, but these were the fields where I grew up, where we played football at every given opportunity. It was through these fields that I formed friendships that took me into so-called adulthood, where every evening from March to October we would play our own championships, our own private leagues. We would be there at the weekends too. Two games on a Sunday, one in the morning, another in the afternoon after The Big Match .
And now they stand empty - a bit like a cherished present that now lies in the dark recesses of a cupboard. But if parallel worlds exist, I know somewhere on those fields it is still the summer of 1971 and I m still calling for John Clarke every night, then knocking on the houses to see whether anyone s coming down the fields for a game, and Chris Espley is still mishitting crosses much to the fury of the rest of us. And Dave Hyde (struck down by leukaemia at the age of 28) is still as strong as an ox, charging and usually knocking the rest of us out of his way. These friends of mine have now all gone their separate ways, but the field, the edifice, that united all of us still remains. And sometimes when I think it is sad the way we have moved on and that things never stay the same, I know because of that field and its memories, there will always be a part of us that will be forever 16 years of age.
Sometimes, when I watch those old Match of the Day reruns of the games from the 60s and 70s, I get a strange feeling that I m watching part of my youth. Not just the normal feeling of, God, wasn t football great back then , but a thought going around in my head, something like, I wonder what I was doing on the day when Ajax won the European Cup in 1972 . It instantly brings back memories of sitting at home with my mum and dad and my sister, and the way we used to make such an event of any cup final. My mum would always make hot dogs for all of us while my dad would be sitting in his special chair in the corner holding court with his usual two bottles of John Courage, picking out his favourite player and also his scapegoat: some poor unsuspecting soul on one of the sides who would be ridiculed from the first minute of the game until the last.
One of the games featured one week was from December 1964, and it gave me an almost unbearable longing for my childhood. The game had been played on the Saturday before Christmas, and I knew I would have been out there somewhere that day, with my nan, my mum and sister, most probably dragging them around the shops seeing if there was any chance of scrounging a last-minute present from them. And most probably on that Saturday night I would have watched that very game - and being so close to Christmas, my sister and I might have been allowed a glass of Emva Cream as a treat, and I would have been almost drunk with joy at the fact that school had come to a close and I d be able to do my very favourite thing - stay in and do absolutely nothing apart from play with my soldiers, read books and listen to my records. That Christmas I got A Hard Day s Night and played it until it was practically worn away.
I know when you look back it is hard not to surround everything in a golden aura, but there is no doubt in my mind that this was a more innocent era than the one in which we live now. In fact, I believe that decade and part of the early 1970s were the last great years to be living in this country, before we turned into little America , and the greed inspired by Margaret Thatcher and her cronies transformed a lot of us into money-grabbing automatons. The sense of longing that I feel for those days also brings on a sense of pity for those too young to have ever known what it was like to be a kid back then. In fact, I could say that up until July 1969, when my grandfather died, I had enjoyed an idyllic childhood and for that I feel blessed. Even through my grandfather s death, my mum and dad still managed to give my sister and I a holiday on the Isle of Wight, which to this day remains one of the most bittersweet memories of my life. And at the end of that summer when, on reflection, that sense of total security finally ended, my love affair with Chelsea Football Club started.
In my late teens I would go out into the garden on summer evenings and look up into the sky and imagine that where the inky blue clouds met the peach-coloured sunset, was where all the days gone by and the days yet to come, lived. And that was where my nan and grandad first met and all of my family, now scattered far and wide, were hop-picking again in the fields of Kent. And that was the place where all my future girlfriends lived. All these people I had yet to meet and all the mates I had then and those I would lose in the future - that was where we would all meet up again - and all of us would have that same passion for living that the years to come would erase from us. And the air would be as fresh as the breezes that blow in from the sea. And the smell of candyfloss would remind all of us of a time when anything seemed possible - even the impossible - and that we would all live forever. I think the sadness in a lot of us is that we ve become myopic and self-possessed, not realising that what is truly essential is not our polarised little lives, but the innocence that lies within our hearts.
Chapter 1
An Innocent Abroad
IT WAS during the 1968/69 season, when we lived in the Elephant and Castle, that I started going to Chelsea on a regular basis. I d been a few times that year, with my dad, but that wasn t enough for me. For one thing, I didn t want to sit in the stands. As far as I was concerned, there was only one place to be, and that was in the Shed. Even though the prospect of standing there scared me half to death, I was determined that that was where I had to be.
Eventually, I persuaded my mum and dad to let me go on my own. Seeing as I was only 13, and the trip across London was a long one, they were a bit concerned for my safety. As for my nan, she was beside herself with worry. When I left on the day of the game, she hugged me tightly and told me, Don t talk to strangers don t do this don t do that For a split second I almost decided not to go as the guilt that she was laying on me and all the worry that I was going to cause the family, made me feel like a selfish little shit. But at that age, that feeling lasted for about five seconds.
Finally, I was off! And with the aid of my trusty little underground map, I found my way to Stamford Bridge. The opponents that day were Sunderland. After the two sterile draws I d watched earlier in the season with my dad, I was hoping for something better. I wasn t let down. The whole day was a fantastic experience. The Shed, to me at the time, seemed the wildest and most exciting place I d ever been to. As for the game, Chelsea destroyed Sunderland 5-1 with my hero, Bobby Tambling, getting four of the goals. I could hardly wait for the final whistle. I was practically bursting with the need to get home and tell my mum and dad all about the game.
That night, my mum, dad, nan, grandad and my sister listened to endless retellings of the day s great events. My nan even cooked my favourite tea - bacon, chips and tinned tomatoes - to celebrate my homecoming .
There, she said, get stuck in! You re home now and I m sure your dad will take you again soon. There was a silence. My dad looked guilty. My nan said, What s going on?
Actually, Mum, my dad replied to my nan, I ve said he can go again next week if he likes. My nan looked crestfallen and said to my dad, Johnny, how could you! My nan was too shocked to speak to me. Me? I was triumphant. I was on my way!
Chapter 2
The Hidden Menace
BY THE time Man United visited the B