COLUMNIST JOE JENNINGS
Summer Stifle...
Comments (12) : At times, during the season, you can?t wait for it all to end. At a point in proceedings, the results don?t seem to disappoint but depress and the games don?t seem to dazzle but drag. You can?t flee the prospect of Zante, with the lads, drinking Tyskie and talking absolute nonsense for hours upon end. You think of the sun, the sea and the sand as suitable remedies for the disappointment Everton serve up gift-wrapped and hand-delivered perennially, year upon year?
If you feel absent, lost, indifferent... then there?s always England to offer comfort. If anything, England offer freedom from the relentless responsibility and pain of club football.
But it?s not quite as simple as that, is it?
In fact, the summer destroys routine that you have come to rely on. It kills what you live for. It closets your passion. It cuts you off from the girl who?ll always love you no matter what.
The fixture list provided us with a mighty blast of sanity, the new kit launch shows we?re not far away, and now we have the meaningless pre-season friendlies to come, which, inexplicably, console the deprivation of games at the Old Lady.
And then, of course, there?s the ludicrous freneticism of the contemporary transfer market which has so far linked us with over a hundred players.
All of the above, and more, makes the idea of mosquito attacks on the flesh, cockroach infested hotel rooms and overly enthusiastic Greek waiters hoping for a jockey?s whip seem far from appealing. I just need my Everton fix. I need to be on Goodison Road, with my mates, eating a burger from a suspect house-turned-café establishment, wondering whether Moyes will go with two upfront or one. Everton, and more importantly Goodison Park, is love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine.
I just love match days at Goodison Park and I pine for them during the close-season that probably annihilates rational logic. I love the structure of it all. I love getting off the 81 bus and putting a bet on at the prison-like William Hill on Walton Lane. I love getting ridiculous odds for 4-0 (with Hibbert scoring) and getting my Toffee Mints from the newsagents nearby. It may seem systematic and regimented, but it?s what I love doing most. It fills me with abstract warmth.
I can?t wait for it all to begin again. Strangely, I can?t wait for the moans and groans that will no doubt await if we sign Jason Roberts and bring in Lorenzo Amoroso on a free and are expected to somehow overcome the Gunners. I can?t wait to walk along Shitty Road lamenting the dirty bastard dog owners who have no respect for their surrounding area.
But most of all, I can?t wait to reaffirm the most alluring feeling of pride and belonging that any Blue can feel, as I am struck by the temple that is Goodison Park all over again. The glimpse of the Gwladys Street stand as you edge closer, and then bang, as you hit the island, there it is, the Everton badge proudly emblazoned on the Main Stand of the Old Girl. It?s heart-racing, blood-pumping, soul-stirring adrenaline that only Goodison Park can captivate.
Summer stifle may only be in its infancy, but liberation can be found, for any Blue, way before the season commencement, at a beautiful stadium named Goodison Park.
Reader Comments
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My Partner thinks I?m obessessed about Everton and she thinks I experience "cold turkey" between seasons.
As If ! I can handle the lack of games and inactivity no problem at all. Hang on ...Is that the time!?! ! haven?t checked NewsNow for 20 mins so gotta go...
Unless you fill the void with Football Manager, in which case you check the media on a daily basis to see if the REAL Everton would get Eidur Gudjohnsen on loan, because he’s been brilliant in your game.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Us lot can, and have done many a year, put up with being bollocks, but what we can't stand is failure to bulid on excellent foundations; it was heart-breaking. But somehow Moyes and the players turned that debacle around and we had a fantastic season.
This year I?m more perplexed than ever, I read from source such as Dominic King (supposedly in the know) that Moyes isn't even back at work yet and that no transfer activity will take place until he is. Furthermore, what is expected to follow is then a pursuit of ?promising youngsters?.
OK but this is not what we need to progress in the league... surely we cannot go through that all over again? At times like this my only condolences are old copies of When Skies Are Grey, Visions of Goslings ?Screamer? and crazy proper Evertonian posts like this.... Is right, Joe.
You mention Goodison Park a lot. How do you feel about going to Kirkby? Some would imagine that the younger ones ( you are 18 I think? ) would not have built up an unbreakable bond with Goodison yet and it is only the ’oldies’ who are against the move being entrenched in their ways.
Just wondered what you think.
I think it’d be the death of Everton Football Club mate.
Everything we stand for will be diminished the day we step out into that cow shed. Moving for the sake of £6m, which of course, centres around us getting 50,000 to Kirkby each week?
The move has more holes than Swiss cheese and I refuse to be a part of it. If it happens, I’m done with Everton.
We all love Everton but some of us have other interests.
I also love tennis & Wimbledon, the Ashes series, the Lions against the barbaric Boks. swimming at our local lido, cycling topless down to West Wittering beach, Glorious Goodwood, downing my body weight in chilled rose wine sitting outside the Kings Arms in Arundel. Most of all I love heading down to Isle de Re for a fortnight of total chill.
Then again, I also love skiing, mountains, snow, frost etc etc. It’s called variety and without it life would be utterly tedious and we’d all be bored shitless. Which is what you sound like right now...
It’s only 6 weeks to the start of the new season Joe. Surely there are other things to do in the meantime...
Rose wine goes down like silk nickers in summer, it also gets one pissed much faster than tasteless, headless lager fiz and one can still see one’s feet afterwards. But bottled beer is also commonplace here. Depends on the mood.
You’re quite right, each to his own. The point was simply about variety, not specifics. A long hot summer to you all.
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1 Posted 27/06/2009 at 20:20:00
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