My love affair with Ironbridge, then and now
Part 1: The strange life of a Bayern Munich away shirt
Part 1: The strange life of a Bayern Munich away shirt
As I’ve written voluminously on my over two decades old love affair with the “Grand Old Lady” of Ironbridge, I thought I’d colour these past and present images from this World Heritage Site with three brief tales from the past decade. Rather than wax lyrical yet again on how I find a somewhat inner peace and of time standing still when within earshot of the bells from St Luke’s Church or the beauty that can be found when alone late at night on the bridge and under a full moon, or the accompanying sounds of the owls hooting and singing in the nearby trees or the swooping of bats on such a night or just the simple pleasure of sitting on “Stephen’s Bench” and enjoying the smiles and laughter from visiting tourists seeing the world’s first ever iron bridge for the very first time, rather than this, I thought I tell you a short tale involving a Bayern Munch football shirt.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always been fascinated with football shirts of all creeds and colours and even those in competition with my footballing obsession of choice, Liverpool. I’ve loosely collected retro style football shirts over the years or rare ones or shirts that continue to resonate with me for their association with a particular player or era. However, this Bayern Munich shirt was somewhat of a one-off, a current seasonal shirt (2012/2013) but what a doozy this shirt was! On seeing it for sale at an out of town “Shopping Outlet” or “Mall” for a ridiculously cheap price I simply had to have it as it was the German club’s white away shirt (as opposed to their traditional red home shirt) and both the shirt sponsor and the traditional spelling of “Bayern München” on the back of the shirt was in a shocking pink!
Beautiful!
Sadly many others didn’t share my appreciation of this very distinct football shirt, and a football shirt and, effectively, just a piece of cloth if you will, that drew such regular ire, and in a World Heritage Site and UK tourist attraction too! One evening I was sat by the War Memorial overlooking the bridge, watching the sun setting in the distance as I was oft to do whilst I lived in Ironbridge, when someone called me a “traitor” for wearing such a shirt before mere weeks later being told to “burn” this football shirt by a very irate individual indeed. Yes of course there are connotations and connections between England and Germany and the horrific wars that have blighted our collective past, but it’s still a shirt, a piece of cloth and a nearing out of seasonal date football shirt. Not a declaration of war! This crass analogy also sadly comes with a large pinch of salt as well as a shocking reality as well as being told to burn this shirt as the obvious traitor to my country that I am, it also led me to the precipice of the first physical fight in my life for over four decades.
Naturally I blame my brother Andy (who for both legal and tedious reasons I can’t expand upon why he’s not actually my brother, but he kind of is) and after moving to Ironbridge I invited Andy to toast my good fortune with a couple of Sunday afternoon drinks beside the River Severn. Having just purchased this football shirt of doom, I wore it on a brilliantly sunny Sunday afternoon that soon turned awkwardly dark. As you will see from the accompanying images, The Tontine Hotel sits squarely in pole position at the end of the iron bridge and THE spot for visiting tourists, but whenever I’ve ventured inside this pub/restaurant/hotel I’ve always felt a “cold” and unwelcoming atmosphere. I can’t explain it: height of Summer or the depth of winter and one of their delicious carvery meals, it’s always felt cold and insular and unappreciative of anyone seen as an outsider. This particular Sunday afternoon demonstrated this.
In spades.
Leaving Andy in my wake I ventured to the bar to order our drinks and the drinks we planned to consume in the warming rays of a beautiful summer sun, but I was accosted immediately by a young drunken man at the bar and it was squarely down to the shirt, that damn Bayern Munich shirt. Mere seconds after walking in this oafish man is right in my face, firstly complimenting me on the shirt (“I bought it yesterday in the outlet near Chester” I cheerfully responded) before being reduced to sighs of astonishment and then a growing wariness of this drunken man’s intentions. He quickly went from admiration to determination and repeating over and over again the simple, if now threatening, phrase:
“I want your shirt”.
Naturally this was laughed away until he simply wouldn’t stop saying this stock phrase. Over, and over, and over again. Minutes slowly ticked by as I waited to order our drinks and with Andy joining me I tried to tell him what was happening but he was soon in conversation with the other three members of this drunken gang. Repeatedly in my face and with a clearly rising anger, I was retreating step by step along the bar so as to keep as much personal space between us as possible and, not entirely aware of who and what these drunken creatures were at this stage, I tried making jokes, talking about Ironbridge, the sunshine outside, anything, even the Kasabian t-shirt this horrible creature was wearing. I tried desperately to change tack and away from his constant repetition of wanting and needing my shirt, this damn German football shirt, and how I was also a fan of the Leicester rock band Kasabian and what was your favourite song and have you seen them play live? I’m sure you can guess at his response.
“I want your shirt”.
To make matters worse he also insisted on asserting that Cristiano Ronaldo was a far better footballer than Lionel Messi and that, as a Manchester United fan of sorts, he was both biased and right. Asking for my footballing allegiances only served to heighten the tensions between us but thankfully it was time for him to go and he at last removed himself from my personal space and stumbled drunkenly out of the pub with his three ghoulish friends in tow. Before I could tell all to my brother Andy and bask in the sunshine of the outside world rather than the coldness and strangeness of this unwelcoming hotel, the barman called me over and with his tongue only partly in his cheek said:
“You dodged a bullet there, mate!”
It turns out that our merry gang of local hooligans had spent the vast majority of the day inside The Tontine Hotel and, one by one, they’d taken turns to try and attain their stated goal for the day — a fight. I was just the latest in a long line of saps and passers by to be drunkenly targeted by these despicable creatures and now they were, in the words of the barman “off up the hill for a real fight”.
I don’t particularly recall what happened next and can only guess Andy and I supped (old English for drank) our pints in the glorious rays of the sun and hopefully laughed off this ridiculous escapade, but it’s a surreal if odious example of the trouble that seemed to plague both me and this damned shirt during the Ironbridge summer(s) of 2013 and 2014.
For someone who has football shirts in his wardrobe dating back to a previous century let alone decade, it may, or may not, now come as a surprise that I no longer have this white and pink football shirt of utter doom. In fact I “wore it to death” to use an odious phrase, over those two summers and I ended up ceremoniously dumping it forever (along with many other objects of life’s clutter and stuff) in an effort to bring an end to an era as well as the ushering in of a new one.
In Ironbridge.
Always, and forever, in Ironbridge.
*All images captured by me on Sunday 2nd October 2022*
Thanks for reading. My “Summer Project” has taken me to the waterways as well as many local historical and religious ruins as I’ve crisscrossed the border between England and Wales, and my three most recently published travel articles are linked below:
A sneak peek at the Ironbridge Festival
24th September 2022medium.com
A beautiful return to Chirk Castle
14th September 2022medium.com
Two noble fools return to Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon
15th September 2022medium.com