It was ten years ago today
Sergeant Pepper told the band to stop playing and may I introduce to you, the one and only circle of life?
Sergeant Pepper told the band to stop playing and may I introduce to you, the one and only circle of life?
The Matrix sure does play tricks with the mind doesn’t it? Ten years ago to this very day I had just returned from Wembley Stadium after watching my beloved Liverpool Football Club win the correctly titled League Cup, in a penalty shoot-out, and in a game they barely deserved to win but did so in the lottery of a penalty competition, and under the lights of London’s famous old stadium. Then Captain Steven Gerrard hoisted that beautiful Georgian urn and three handled sporting trophy to a Wembley night sky, the Reds had won again when it really mattered, and it was rather a lovely day out following Liverpool if truth be told. Such days seeing your team lift the ultimate competitive trophy in a pulsating and throbbing stadium full of sporting humanity is to be treasured, and held close to one’s heart.
I was stood in a non-descript kitchen yesterday, when all my troubles seemed so far away, and the euphoria of the previous day’s Wembley triumph paled into insignificance when a cherished loved one gave me the final slap in the face that I had both deserved and had been awaiting for some time. I was a reprehensible oath at times and the parting of the ways had been expected but like that doctor’s letter you fear to open, it was in the mail for sure, and it duly arrived the day after Liverpool had won the 2012 League Cup Final. 7 days later, Sergeant Pepper told the band to stop playing altogether.
The band reformed a couple of times in the early part of the last decade but with a different female on lead vocal and a bewildered male singing the songs and who tried “not to sing out of key”, but who did. The imposters could not hold a candle to the previous lead singer of the band and as I was rapidly “going in and out of style” an amazing young lady was nearly always “guaranteed to raise a smile”. As she does today, always, indefatigably looking for that golden sky as I muddle through the wind and the rain. It’s a bit of a conundrum when you consider that I’m as dreadful as can possibly be imagined in a romantic relationship, whilst determinedly expectant that everyone should rise above “candle” status. So I stopped playing music 5 years ago, been a devoted solo artist ever since, and you can read any sexual innuendo into that sentence that you wish.
10 years, gone in the shake of a lamb’s tail and the lifting of sporting silverware. The events above came a couple of weeks after my 40th birthday and the night spent awkwardly in the corner of a comedy club. Shortly after my 50th I was mistaken for a blind date 180 miles away from a home that isn’t a home, and a town that isn’t a new town or a toy town, but certainly isn’t my hometown either. I don’t romantically hanker for my hometown, it’s just that I’ve lived here for 23 years now and I have not one single attachment to the place. My son and the lady who’s heart I kept breaking are obviously excluded, but where I am really reflects who I am, and both need to change.
Nondescript is a pleasing old fashioned word but not a particularly pleasant way in which to be seen, and of course I’m being harsh, at least that is on my new hometown. Perhaps we should continue with the Beatles lyrics and say I’m a real “nowhere man”? I certainly make a lot of “nowhere plans” and I do worry for that man who heard “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles for the first time and thought “Fuck me! Listen to this!”. All our yesterdays eh? Or just a daydreaming fool on the hill drunk on yesterday’s euphoria and now suffering from the bends? 10 years, in the shake of a lamb’s tail and the lifting of sporting silverware.
So yesterday was perfectly apt, and exactly ten years on from when Liverpool won yet another League Cup Final at Wembley and yet again it was via a penalty shoot-out and after being the more fortunate of the two teams to win that beautiful trophy. The swings and roundabouts of fate. The name’s on the trophy. The victors have been crowned. The lap of honour has been taken. And the singer’s want to sing a song and, being Liverpudlian, they want you all to sing along too. Seeing the Reds at Wembley yesterday leaping like unrestrained maniacs at the end of a pulsating game of football made me want to be there with them, but that’s all rather yesterday. My last game was actually at Wembley for the 2012 FA Cup Final against today’s defeated warriors of Chelsea blue. That day in May 10 years ago they defeated my Reds of Liverpool and held aloft the deserved silverware of due winners. That game and the couple of days that surrounded it typified a bewildered man looking for a light to spark a candle, let alone the bright lights of that famed stadium in Wembley, London.
So yesterday, a young Irishman dressed in a very distinctive yellow goalkeeping jersey was the Reds hero, and someone who looks much older than his more tender years, and to whom I always address as “kid”. You do that as you grow older, you tend to deliver epithets like “kid” in a beautifully respectful way (or certainly I do) and boy did the kid deliver. 10 years ago I was high up in the top tier of Wembley watching (and praying) that the Reds would defeat the blues of Cardiff City in a penalty shoot-out. Yesterday, I was chanting low and slow “Come on Kid!” as Kelleher, Liverpool’s goalkeeping hero, tried to thwart the blues of Chelsea, and again in a penalty shoot-out. I left Wembley 10 years ago a rather delighted man. Yesterday, I had a few tears for a big burly Irishman dressed in yellow. A kid.
Playing in the biggest game of his life.
Ten years in the blink of the Matrix. Two football teams dressed in Red collecting the same trophy ten years on, and if you want to be pedantic seventeen years on from the exact day they also lost 3–2 to the team they defeated yesterday. Oh how The Matrix enjoys weaving it’s mystical powers. Ten years, a few dreadful Prime Minister’s, more than a few proxy wars, sleaze, corruption, birthdays, trips to London, blind dates, friendships, cup finals, false dawns, tangled webs, tangled minds, tangled thoughts.
Thoughts on yesterday, and thoughts from today, from a paperback writer and leader of a lonely hearts club band.
Anyway, if you want to read about a blind date that wasn’t a blind date, and a few hours I’d rather have back from The Matrix, try this:
Are you Nigel?
The village of Blackford and the tears of a clownmedium.com