Actually its brilliant.
Thanks for sharing. It's the first time I've seen it.
I'll probably need a Ghislaine Maxwell grade 24/7 suicide watch now
Evokes a million memories of so much stimuli, both visual and nasal.
Nothing was as bright, vivid or thought provoking on a four year old's eyes and nostrils as walking up the centre stairs to the North Stand seats and seeing the ressies in their effervescent scarlet tunic with single white Boro lion across one breast on a shimmering lush green carpet of North Yorkshire Moors harvested turf, neath the flood lights of a mid week evening.
The sweet sickly aroma of pish and sweat, slightly masked by the smell of Woodbines, Bovril, stale beer and the tinderbox deathtrap of a wooden stand.
I was even taken to one or two pro games that first season. Apparently I was at the Oxford game, where the Holgate perimeter wall collapsed but have zero recollection.
I did remember thinking, wow!, this is the equivalent to one of my dad's earliest Boro memories, of being passed over the napper of Boro gadgies at the age of 13, to be plonked onto straw bails around the pitch against Burnley in the 6th round of the FA Cup in the terrible winter of 1947.
I'd grown used to him banging on about us being robbed. Little did I know, that I too, was to grow to taste that same pain, over and over and over again again. Seemingly ad finitum.
Thanks dad
As I got to know the sons of the other gadgies in those first few years, we made Ayresome our playground.
The first couple of years I was more interested in ducking and diving through the side doors of the North and South stands than watching the football, laughing at the token barbed wire atop the wall at the back of the Bob End, which was supposed to keep the kids from the Boy's End jumping in among the grown ups.
Our dad would see my head popping up in different parts of the ground as I'd either scale over or slide under the dividing fenses between the chicken run and Holgate or into the new seats in the middle of the Bob End installed for the 66 World Cup or running down the passageway between the Bob End and North Stand like trying to avoid Colditz search lights and the eyes of the Gestapo.
Nothing was unsurmountable, no passage blocked, other than the dressing rooms, boardroom or 100.club.
I'd spend the next 5 years or so stood outside the Boro Social Club under the South Stand waiting eternally for my auld fella to reappear, with a flushed red face, rubbing his hands together in anticipation and steaming breath on a freezing night air, to the sound of the crowd already installed on the Holgate barriers and the wave of hot breath as a chorus of the Ayresome Angels would blast out. Then spend the match either stood or sat on the front wall or back fence, until the bobbies would walk along smacking the dangling shins of the kids like a kid dragging a stick along railings resulting in us jumping down or even falling down the back embankment.
I spent most games with my nose pressed into the backs of giants and being in awe of the hard lads.
My feet hardly touched the ground again until I'd been carried along by the departing crowd to the bottleneck to Boot Boy alley
I learnt to handle myself waiting outside that club, as did all the scrotes of my age, but I began to meet more and more of my extended Boro family on that stretch of the Clive Road, in front of the frosted glass windows of the club. I'd be forever peering through that opaque glass to make out the sight of the silhouette of my dad putting his coat on as the wait was excruciating. And it wasn't for the doggie bag of Upex pork pies, sausage rolls and pease pudding from the gadgies spread laid on by the club.
One of the scruffy scrotes I'd regularly see hanging around was
@Johnny Vincents Motorbike, who lived down our road and his mother was a friend of my mam's.
A million years later on discovering the late, Tim Lloyd's Hong Kong based Boro Mailing List when I lived in Paris, I was amazed that the young kid and father I first went to Ayresome with my dad for the reserves was Tim's dad and older brother.
Well that should have killed some time..
Bah, humbug. Its still NYE and the next match is a year away
KTF, WSO, IWWT, Block 2: The Bob End Crew, UTFB.
Herbert BAMLETT
Tim Lloyd's original Boro Mailing List
Bonne année et bonne santé mes amis rouges