Wednesday 15th March 2006

I was annoyed to wake up at about eleven and not eight, the hour the alarm on my mobile phone was set for. It turns out the phone was set to vibrate. What sort of alarm is that? Surely the phone’s designers must have thought to themselves that lots of people considerately have their phone on vibrate all day so as not to pollute the air with constant ring tones, but these same people will not have the senses of a spider and therefore not be able to notice the tiny vibrations caused by a silently ringing phone when they are peacefully asleep.

The only advantage of a vibrating alarm is for the deaf, but as we established in yesterday’s entry they could purchase the VibraLite 3 wristwatch and wear that in bed. OR, if having to buy a special watch seems a little discriminatory against those who are hard of hearing, they should design the phone so it both vibrates AND makes an audible alarm, thus serving everybody properly.

I don’t even think a mobile phone would be a suitable vibrating alarm for the hard of hearing. You’d need to keep it very close to your person, presumably in the top pocket of your pyjamas, and unfortunately it’s no longer 1973 and most people no longer wear P.J’s.

So how do deaf people set an alarm? It would have to have a very heavy vibrating feature, akin to a minor earth tremor. What I’d do is set up some sort of Wallace And Grommit style contraption out of levers and rope that was attached to my alarm clock, was triggered when the big hand clicked onto the hour, set off an intricate series of cogs and pullies before tipping a bucket of iced water over my face from the ceiling. ‘I think I’ll call it my deaf-o-waker-upper, Lad.’

So the result of this unwanted lie-in was that I got less done on the book today than I wanted. About two thousand words, half my daily quota. It will have to be a long day tomorrow to make up. I’m pleased at how this annoyed me though. I’m pleased that I was disappointed at the missed morning’s work. It’s promising.

I would have worked on through the evening but my friend Patrick, the son and heir to Landlord John’s empire, selfishly asked if I wanted to go and watch Super Fulham play at Anfield tonight? What a cruel gesture, as he knows full well that I’ve got a nonsensical and pointless book to finish, but just to spite him I took up his offer. Ha! In your face, Patrick!

And it’s good I did because I’ve not been to see The Lads, as I mately call them, at all this season and I don’t think you can call yourself a proper fan unless you go at least once. I’ve been planning to make trips to Craven Cottage for a home game for ages and time’s running out – the season ends in a couple of months. So this was my opportunity to grace the team with my presence and hopefully inspire them to their first away win of the season.

Night games are better than day games in every way. Or three ways. One, it’s just like going to the pub except it’s a massive pub with 45,000 people in it, and instead of watching the game on the TV, the actual players act out the game in front of your eyes. This is very clever because they do so at almost exactly the same time as it’s being shown around the world on TV screens, so it’s a wonder they know what moves to do. But they almost always get it spot-on. That’s professionalism.

Two, the atmosphere is generally better. It’s as if the night forms a blanket around the ground and keeps the volume in. I might add this does not serve to keep any heat in.

Three. It condemns the stupid away fans, who’ve probably travelled hundreds of miles to watch this, to a long, boring and painful drive through the night if they’ve lost, probably arriving home in the early hours of the morning really tired and having to get up for work the following day and having nothing to show for their effort and expense. The idiots!

Only on this occasion, the visitors were us, Super Fulham, and therefore the joke was very much on me, even if I didn’t have to return to London.

Two things I knew about this match before it started...

I was standing outside waiting for Patrick when a man walked past selling Golden Goal tickets. You buy one of these for one pound, scratch off the foil and it reveals a time in minutes and seconds, say 32.41. Then, if the first goal’s scored on exactly that second you win loads of money. Obviously it’s stupid and I don’t do it but it did get me thinking to myself about the time of the first goal, and I agreed that it would be in the 16th minute. Truthfully. The second thing I knew was Robbie Fowler would get his first goal for Liverpool since returning, a bit like Jesus from his time in the burial cave, or in Fowler’s case Leeds and Manchester City, which is remarkably similar.

Liverpool pelted Fulham in the opening exchanges and then Robbie Fowler scored... in the 16th minute. I tell you, I give up betting on football and THEN become psychic. It’s a wretch. That’s so psychic you can’t even DO a bet on it, I don’t think. Correct goal scorer and correct MINUTE? I think they’d have given me 200-1.

I was sat with the Liverpool fans (who were, in reality, the only fans there because Fulham only brought about 200 – the travel shy layabouts) and this was fine except for the two sat behind Patrick and I who spoke to the players continually as if they were the manager. “That’s good work Harry, lad. In on him! Well done, lad. Jamie! Jamie! Watch your man! Good lad. Okay, Stevie close on him, close on him… No! Stevie! Watch the number 5! That’s it! Good lad, Stevie, lad.�

It was continuous.

I think that would be the best prize in football. You get to manage, single handedly, the team you support for one unimportant game. It would be the ultimate football prize for any fan. Especially the fan sat behind me. The odd thing was he wasn’t saying it at a volume any of the players could possibly hear, but then not quietly to himself either. It was as if he was simply playing out his managerial fantasies. And I suppose if he’s shelled out money for his season ticket he’s got every right to do that.

Super Fulham equalised against the run of play and I bit my glove instead of cheer. But I knew it wouldn’t last. 2-1 to Liverpool, and then 3-1 on the hour. And it’s not that Liverpool were even that good – we had just again failed to be anything approaching Super.

I left on 85 minutes to avoid the rush and as I waked around the ground, with others filing out, a huge roar went up from inside. Evidently 4-1. And as I got to the other side of the stadium it happened again. 5-1. Good God.

I got the packed bus home. Standing next to me was an elderly cockney fan. “Are you a Fulham fan?� I asked. He said he was and I told him I was too. “You shouldn’t be on this bus!� said a Liverpool fan next to me, without malice. But when you’ve won 5-1, who’s going to quibble? The old man started moaning about Super Fulham and then said, about the lack of Fulham fans at the game “It’s because these bastards thought they’d still be in Europe so they changed the game from Easter Monday, the bastards.�

Now, I wouldn’t have said that on a bus full of ninety Liverpool fans. He was the bravest old man in the world. That’s what a war does for you. So I was now paired with him because I’d already said I was a Fulham fan, and so I started casually telling him how I live here in Liverpool and often go to Anfield to support them, almost as a second favourite team, just in case there were any fists about to fly my way. I liked the brave old man though. He’s was quite rock n’ roll in his own way. He’d come up from London on his own by rail, was staying the night, and then going home again. He must have been 80. I hope that’s what I’m doing when I’m his age.

Right, 1500 words, it’s already quarter to eleven. This is why the book doesn’t get written. You distract me. I’m off. Up the Fulham. The best, and currently perhaps worst, team in all the land.

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