Exhausted limbs lay spread on grass

Both from the choir school and ours

As the battle fought extracted heavy toll

One never knows the kind of feeling

Until the senses tired and reeling

Find that extra yard from deep inside the soul.

We ached like hell they did as well

But stuck it out to tell this tale

Of that summer day we clashed when in our youth

The smell of freshly mown green grass

Where flowers bloomed in Battersea Park

Beside the fountains, that caressed both teams with spume.

We’d heard them sing in choir at mass

In Westminster Cathedral by the sacristy

They certainly knew their Latin off by heart

We’d been invited to a game

By a kindly priest, I forget his name

Though I can’t say in our togs we looked the part.

As our mums and dads were strapped for dough

The nuns had pulled a miraculous stroke

In asking God to send us ten blue shirts

So with three kids in plimsolls, eight in boots

We send our team to play this school

Of kids who’d ironed creases where it hurts.

We thought them toffs, they seemed all right

Thought they’d be soft and melt like ice

It’s funny how first impressions can be awkward

Coz when the game had run its course

The whistle blown, three cheers endorsed

They certainly weren’t backward coming forward.

They shook our hands, like we were mates

The battle fought seemed far away

We laughed and joked as youngsters often do

In our dressing rooms with shiny showers

There stood a hamper deemed as ours

Which we didn’t quite get the gist of, us to you.

On fields of green, with cake and pop,

Then sandwiches we rashly scoffed

We lay flat out and dreamed the dreams of kids

The sun beamed down on our elation

The Thames rolled by The Power Station

Would getting bigger mean the end to days like this?

--------------------

As its bleeding freezing here in North West London as I write. I've tried to cheer me self up by writing about warmer and happier times as a kid growing up in Pimlico, South West London.

At the time and quite wrongly as it turned out, we all thought that the fee paying Westminster Choir School would be an arrogant bunch of posh kids who would look down their noses at us convent school kids from across the road? Not a bit of it, real eighteen carat gents they were, with great humility and the hamper full of grub left in our dressing room after the match by a kindly priest, endeared them to us even more as did the post match banquet!

This past Christmas Eve I watched with bated breathe as the very same choir school, different kids obviously, sang the whole of Midnight Mass in Latin live on the telly from Westminster Cathedral, and blown away I was too. It was wonderful. So I'm off to buy a few of their cd's with me Christmas money as soon as it warms up a bit.

This is just a little re-collection of one of them days from ones youth that on days such as this really do warm up the cockles of the heart and leave one feeling blessed at having been there and witnessed it.

A Happy, Healthy and Quite Preposterous New Year To You All.

Go well and be lucky.

Peace.

Kev.

"All that I know about morality and obligations, I owe to football". Albert Camus.

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