Great expectations
Jeremy Clarke hree hours to go before the new season kicks off and I'm sitting in the beer garden in my new claret-and-blue Fred Perry polo shirt. I've got a credit-card-style match ticket for the East Stand Lower in one pocket, 50 quid in the other, and I'm easing my way into my first ice-cold Fosters for exactly a month. About half a dozen lifelong friends will be along at any moment. Bliss.
There's a couple of hundred people in the beer garden already, the vast majority wearing the new replica shirt, and more replica shirts are streaming down from the Tube station at the top of the road. I like to get here early on match days because after about one o'clock the bar is permanently under siege, the bar staff are working like acrobats, and you can waste a lot of valuable drinking time queuing.
The tables fill up quickly and I'm soon elbow to elbow with a gang of blokes I don't know and someone has started up one of those I'm Not a Racist But ... conversations. I'm not following it. I've been budged along to the end of the bench and I'm looking into my glass and wondering whether it would be easier, the next time I go to the bar, to get two pints, or even three, to save time.
Then I notice that the bloke facing me across the table is talking to me. He's telling me a story. Same theme, more or less, as far as I can judge: I'm Not a Racist But — we must somehow resist this dismantling of the societal values we grew up with.
I couldn't care less. Really I couldn't. I've got my beer and football head on and I'm in the mood for letting go, for shouting, singing and maybe even dancing — not The Moral bleeding Maze.
'We had respect,' he's saying. 'In those days we wouldn't dare call the old folks by their first name, would we? They'd been all through the war and before that the Depression. We looked up to them. Now look at it. You've got kids round here knocking old people down for their pension money.'
I looked at him Mid-fifties. Owlish prescription glasses. Basically kind face. Old tatts on wasted forearms. No smart 40 quid replica shirt for him, just a baggy old T-shirt. The bloke didn't know me from Adam yet he was talking to me like a brother. He had that kind of indestructible innocence about him that you come across now and then that makes you wish you had it.
'Why don't we protect our old folks any more? It's sad. Years ago I was walking along the road near here and I saw these two young white guys walk up to this old black guy and punch him in the face, bash, wallop, and he goes down on the pavement like a sack of anthracite. So I went up to these two white guys and I said to them, "What did you do that for? You could kill an old guy hitting him like that. If you want someone to hit, hit me. Come on. Hit me or f**k off."
'I helped the old guy up and I was supporting him over to a wall that he could lean on for a spell, when suddenly he pulls out a blade and stabs me in the back with it. He pushes it into me, then starts carving me up with it. I've fallen on my knees in front of him, and I'm pumping blood out everywhere, and I says to him, "Why, Pop? Why? I've just helped you!" And he went, splosh, pushed the blade into me chest and begins carving me up again.
'I nearly died. I had to have ten pints of blood put back. Three months I was in the hospital. A hundred and forty stitches. You know what the old guy got for nearly killing me? Thirty quid fine for possessing a knife. His brief said his client was disoriented after being punched in the face and the judge bought it. It killed me Dad. He had a heart attack not long after that. Me bird left me. It was too much for her. We were going to be married. I lost the use of this arm for years, but funnily enough I seem to be getting it back.'
He took off his T-shirt and showed me his lily-white torso front and back. He looked like a map of the rail network of Britain.
'And my point is: if I saw an old black guy in similar circumstances this afternoon, I'd help him out again. I wouldn't hesitate. Don't give me any of your I'm not a racist but ... stuff. Check out the scars. I was brought up to respect old people, no matter what colour they are.'
Then he gets up and leaves. He was on his own too, it seems. I'd mistakenly thought he was with the others.
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