Eastbourne football clubs, and one other.

 There’s a hierarchy of Eastbourne football clubs. It goes something like this:

 

1. Eastbourne United Association FC.
2. The other Eastbourne club in the town centre and which is handy for the pub and the second-hand bookshop.
3. The other other Eastbourne club, which isn’t even in Eastbourne.

 

Eastbourne United have, in addition to the merits of being easy to park at and being very friendly generally, have been playing host to Bexhill’s own “other team”, who represent an unimportant and easily-disregarded wilderness of old people’s homes, a roundabout, and a rather good cheese shop. These exiles have been scuffing up Eastbourne’s pitch for several seasons, hopefully in exchange for a monetary consideration, but will soon be returning home to said wilderness, having built a stand for people to be in. I haven’t been up to have a look so I don’t know whether said stand faces towards or away from the pitch.

 

 

We look forward to our visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Printed Football Programme

 I am the programme editor at a Step 5 club, or, as the commentators like to say, the 9th tier of English football. We produce a printed programme: our print run was about 30 at the start of the season, but as we're having a successful one the print run has crept up to 45 and we're still selling out.

Why do we do it? It would be so much easier and cheaper to just have an online offering, and if we did I'd be able to do some really cool things with layout, content and interactivity, as well as have more relaxed deadlines. It's tempting.

This is my routine for a Saturday game: using the last programme as a template I do us a cover. It might be a player portrait, an action shot taken by one of the many talented local photographers who are happy to give their stuff for free. There's the stats stuff, which I try to leave as late as I can, a bunch of local paper and social media snippets, and the regular manager and chairman columns. It takes an amazing amount of time considering how much is pure boilerplate. Visiting clubs often send you a bunch of history filler that you struggle to edit down, and you're tempted to insert lies just to check who's reading this stuff; "in the 1921-22 season we were relegated to the South Brighton League, which was odd because we're from Yorkshire". They are also liable, in lieu of anything resembling a team sheet, to send you a list of all 40 of their registered players, implicitly inviting you to "pick the bones out of that lot".

I print at home. The printer belongs to the club, and I can claim back from the chairman for consumables (I hope!). I have to be conscious that the more big fields of colour (dark winter skies!) I print, the more expensive it all gets. It's nice to have a higher grade of paper for the cover, but that costs more. I acquired a ream of green A4 from a contact who probably nicked it from work and that gives a nice look to the fixtures/ results/ tables pages, but if I had paid for it that's another cost. To save money we have bought cheaper print cartridges, which would be great if you didn't have to take them out every 10 pages to wipe off excess ink from the nozzles. This whole thing's probably using up a whole working day of my time. I just finished folding and stapling for tonight's game and I'm going crosseyed. This, after all, is time I could have been spending on the sofa watching Diana Rigg in The Avengers.

So why do it? Because people like printed programmes. Older supporters like them because they're "not very good with computers" - non-league football attracts quite a few older supporters who once maybe travelled to watch West Ham or whoever, but who can't manage it these days. Groundhoppers like them: it's a kind of certificate of attendance. Ordinary people like them: it's something to hold in their hand. Recently, helping out on gate duty I was really gratified at the number of people buying programmes, and by the number of people, especially visiting supporters, telling me how much they appreciate them. 

If we sell 45 programmes at a pound each, well I'm no good at maths but I can do THAT... deduct the costs above, and we're maybe making a few bob. If some kind soul sponsors the programme, why thank you, and of course we have a few advertisers, but they're mostly doing it because they're someone's mate or out of pity, and thank you to them too. Not to blow my own trumpet, but if the club has a retired person who can prioritise its interests over Mrs Peel on BritBox then a printed programme sort-of works. 

A football post

A brief return to Blogger to put in a little article which was intended for the Bexhill United programme of which I am the editor these days - 20 pages of footy goodness, ("not too much black pleeeze Colin"), but the piece grew in length and self-indulgence until it wouldn't fit. 

We used to have a nice little community on Blogger, years ago. I expect they're all dead now. 

Anyhow... 

These are good times to be a Bexhill United supporter: at the time of writing we’re 7th in the league when a lot of us expected a struggle. In fact, these are good times to support the club at all levels, and if Bexhill doesn’t float your boat, to actually support your local step 5 or 6 club, wherever you are. (Unless it’s Shoreham FC, obviously ☺). 

 At all levels above, for sure you might see more skilful play, but even at Isthmian League level, just one step above us, you'll see players and staff who are only there for the money, who have no real connection to the club or the area. They don't know where the best chip shop or pub is, they won't tell you in private that they're too fat, old, slow or knackered (or all four) to compete any more. Your local hero might (no names!), but he's still a better footballer than you probably ever were and you should respect him, and this level of football, for that. 

 You're here, if you're anything like me, to see solid football, to see tackles that mean something, passes and goals. Yep, their goalie's crap, the floodlights are poor, the pitch is hard and lumpy and the wind off the sea is cutting you in half, but this is the real game. Nobody's doing it for much, or any, money, that tackle just generates some loud swearing rather than a theatrical attempt to get someone sent off - if he stays down he's probably broken something! If a piece of high skill is the exception rather than the rule, well we just appreciate it when it comes and we forgive the blunders because that's just human. 

The manager doesn't think he's a Tuchel or a Klopp, but he's in the same business and takes it just as seriously for those few hours, and his half-time "hairdryer" blows as hard as Fergie's ever did. The referee knows he's not Clattenberg or Dean, but don't ever doubt his commitment to his craft, or the pain that your abuse causes him. 

 No matter what the level of the game, we all go home happy, sad or "meh" at the end of it, and it's the same degree of happiness, sadness, anger or indifference no matter who we support, be it PSG, Man U, or Hassocks FC. Truly.

Thanks for reading, and as for Shoreham, we love you really. Madly, deeply, 

Socks

 

A fascinating read in the latest copy of ”The Bottle Imp” (https://tinyurl.com/ycepv4u4), about the poet Hugh McDiarmid and, more specifically, about the 1800 mile round-trip taken by his socks, and how it puts him not necessarily in a good light.

Get “The Bottle Imp” (https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/signup/) anyhow: it’s free, above all.

What Of It?

 

This is a bit of Flash I wrote 7 or 8 years ago and have just found again in my Google Drive. I expect I entered it for something and that was the last anyone heard of it. I had added a dark ending - a really really dark ending - for some sort of shock value and which I’ve deleted, leaving this sort of anecdote thing behind. Apologies to anyone who recognises themself in this: it isn’t really them! The top & tail quotes are from George Gissing’s “The Private Papers Of Henry Ryecroft”.

-------------------------------------------

“Nevertheless, my life is over”.

The best bit about quiz night was choosing the team name. "The AS Byatt Rocketry Club For Men '' had been deemed “de trop”: worryingly for the team's prospects it had been demanded of him “who was this Byatt anyhow when he was at home?”. So it actually turned out that thinking of a good team name before you got to the pub was the good bit, the golden pie-crust,  but that the reality more resembled the gristled disaster within.

He therefore felt difficulty heart-and-souling it as a representative of "Barbara's Big Beauties", - inevitably spelt "beauty's" - , and strove vainly against such areas of vital human endeavour as TV personalities' activities in a jungle scenario, the novels of Dan Brown, when Crystal Palace had last won the FA Cup*, or France's record in the Triple Crown**.

They came third, which they agreed Wasn't Too Bad, Considering. He had got the one about interest rates, insisting on his correctness in the face of dubiety, and was thus more pleased than otherwise, and walked the wet fag-butted street home with, not a song, a hum, in his heart.

“I am tempted to laugh; I hold myself within the limit of a smile”.

* hoot 

** v. funny, this.

Valentine Ackland/ Country Conditions

 

From Country Conditions (1936) 

 Not much preamble here. The author writes vividly about the daily life of countryside workers - in the 1930s, so it’s scarcely ancient history -  in the quaint country cottages that sell for hundreds of thousands now, once “done up”. Of course it’s beautifully written, has a lefty sting in the tail, and is taken from the estimable “Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society” .

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Some years ago I came across this self-portrait of the French artist  Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun in the National Gallery (London). So captivated was I that as soon as I got home I got stuck into the sources. The owner of one website in particular had a scanned copy of a biography written by the art critic Haldane MacFall (of whom more here). The scan had not been edited at all and so contained a lot of scan artefacts and imperfections. I offered to correct it and did so, and a few weeks later sent him my HTML and text versions. 

The only reply I ever got from the website creator was that he couldn’t look it over just yet because he was going to Antarctica - which I thought was an extreme form of criticism -  but after a while I got over it, assumed he’d fallen into a crevasse, dumped my efforts to Google Drive or whatever it was called then, and forgot about it.

Anyway, here it is . I don’t know if he took on my changes, or did his own, or just left it, because I’ve just read my version and I don’t have the energy to read it again just yet. But enjoy MacFall’s unique style and enjoy  Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun ‘s marvellous portraits.

Lockdown reading

 

I’m seeing too many recommendations for easy or comfort reading: I seem to swing the other way: when I was in for root canal work I was reading Siegfried Sassoon’s War poems. It was an almost instinctive reaction, not calculated at all, to make my trepidation and potential pain trivial. Since lockdown I’ve been reading Franz Werfel’s account of the Armenian genocide “Forty Days of Musa Dagh” which has a similar anaesthetising effect against the inconvenience and boredom... as well as being a very very good book.

Starlings

 

From this week's New Yorker (Despatches From a Pandemic 13 April) "Starlings are an invasive species; in 1890, a Shakespeare enthusiast released sixty starlings into Central Park, as part of a whimsical mission to introduce to North America every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare’s works; today we have two hundred million."

Some Writing, as in "that's SOME writing".

 

"A London charwoman does her work, takes her money and goes away, sterile as the wind of the desert. She does not spongily, greedily, absorb your concerns, study your nose to see if you have been crying again, count the greying hairs of your head, proffer sympathetic sighs and vacuum pauses and then hurry off to wring herself out, spongily, all over the village, with news of what’s going on between those two at Pond House." (from "Selected Stories (Virago Modern Classics Book 383)" by Sylvia Townsend Warner)

For more, see sylviatownsendwarner.tumblr.com

Twitter fun

Today I made my own Twitter app. Find out how I did it at http://xmodulo.com/2013/12/access-twitter-command-line-linux.html . Linux only, btw.

Books & Music

It's been a week of Squid (The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science Of) and Beck. Until now I've liked the idea of Beck more than the actuality, but nearly 20 years on I'm getting hooked on his inventive way with sound.

Jolly Tunes.

Amon Duul II - "Hawknose Harlequin". 9'52" of genuine 100% hippy shit; I love it. You will too, if you try.

Becoming Pope

Some time ago my friend W----- decided that it was his ambition to become Pope. Recent events have almost certainly reignited this ambition but W----- is now almost 21 and has some catching up to do. The following is a list of first steps W----- needs to URGENTLY take towards attaining Popehood by the time he's in his seventies: 1) Start believing in God. This may or may not be optional. 2) Become a Roman Catholic. Probably compulsory. 3) Start training for the priesthood. It is well-known that only Cardinals can get to be Pope, and you have to do the grunt-work first. Well, that's it for now. I'll report back when those 3 things are done. Please bless us in our endeavours.

Never worked for me either

In Last Week's News, someone had the idea that Richard Clayderman could induce erotic behaviour in tortoises and were proved wrong.

Louis v Rick

Louis v Rick: The Story of a Man Who Taught his Cat to Use Instant Messaging.

Valentine's Day

is soon, chaps. The 99p shop has Valentine's posters in the window... what shall I buy?

Cartoon fun

Thank you again. B3TA

Entertainment

The guys at work like Heart FM (I'm not doing a link): they must do, or else why would they have it on all day? You'd like it too if your idea of entertainment was being shouted at by Emma Bunton.

Why I like Linux

I knew that as soon as I had my own laptop as opposed to a shared PC that I'd want to try Linux. Windows Vista, which came pre -installed is a perfectly serviceable OS for general use, and my use is pretty general, but I wanted to see whether a modern Linux system could give me what I wanted.

After a few tryouts of other Linux distributions (and they make it easy for you to try them out without losing your Windows system) I'm using Bodhi, and I'm loving it: imagine a world where you decide what software to install or not, where help is community-based and actually helpful & friendly, where you can customise your system just how you want it, where you don't need to spend any time fighting viruses or defragging your hard drive. You need to be an inquisitive user, to want to get to know your computer and not be afraid to try something new or to get on the forums for help.

How to get Linux: Download an image file, burn to a CD or stick, and boot. If you like it, install. Instructions are always given. Try getting that with Windows! Did I mention the cost? £0:00 including VAT.