Many years ago I would occasionally pick up a copy of the Daily Mail and see a column by a guy whose name I have long since forgotten, but whose enduring theme was his middle-age and middle-class. By my reckoning at the time he had to be the most boring bastard on Earth, but the Daily Mail employed him and gave him column inches, quite a lot of them as I recall. I seem to remember he used to write a lot about his children’s struggle with exams, I don’t think his offspring matched-up to his expectations with regard to attitude and performance.
Now, I have decided to try blogging and I find that I am mostly coming in with the same credentials as him, especially if we take my youngest son’s efforts as a student into account - he has that whole ‘can’t bear to stop playing on the computer thing’ going on.
My decision to become a blogger is all the more surprising given that I have barely ever read one, can’t imagine who does read one, or what bloggers have to offer that might make them do so. And, despite now signing-up to do a blog myself, I am not really sure how people go about finding one that they might want to read?
Some time ago I used to design web sites and I once knew a fair bit about search engines and, although my knowledge is dated, I am fairly sure my blog is going to be one of a zillion needles in the mother of all haystacks. On top of all this, I am not entirely convinced that I have anything interesting to say.
On the plus side, it seems to me that there are quite a few journalists who have never let the latter get in their way. I think that I am about to try blogging in case I am missing a trick and that’s about the only reason I can think of. I am going to base my blog on the guy from the Daily Mail’s trick of being a Mr. Middle England. That may sound naff, and it may be naff, but it’s a tested formula.
Anyway, with that kind of super-mundane theme in mind I thought that I would share with you the story of my Chelsea coat.
Three years ago (or was it 4?) when Roman Abramovich turned my fortunes as a football fan around by buying Chelsea FC, I decided that I would re-enlist as a real fan and start visiting Stamford Bridge again – a kind of old-nouveau Chelsea fan. To buy tickets for Chelsea games you have to sign-up as a member and once you do that the junk-mail starts.
To be fair, most of the stuff the club sends out is acceptable toilet-style reading and you get an annual mail order catalogue showing all the things that you can buy from them with Chelsea written on. Which, by the way, is a lot of things. The catalogue is worth a glance when birthdays and Christmas come around. My oldest son supports Chelsea as well, so I mainly have him in mind when I flick through. My wife looks at the catalogue too, only she has my son and me in mind.
It must have been a good year ago that she first spotted a thick, quilted coaches coat that she earmarked for me. She even asked me if I liked it, apparently, and I am on record as stating that I did, but what I probably said was ‘mmm’. At the time they didn’t have my size in stock on the web site, so she put the idea on hold, almost forgot all about it, until recently when we were in JJB Sports and she pipes up with, ‘Oh look, there’s that jacket you wanted and it’s only half price. And they’ve got your size.’
Now, I actually do like the jacket and I have supported Chelsea since I was 7, so there should be no problem, but the key thing to understand about a coat like that is that it has a badge on it. And a badge is a badge, something of a statement. In this case it says to people, ‘I support Chelsea Football Club and I want you to know it.’ I hadn’t thought of that when I let my wife go ahead and buy it.
Now, I have decided to try blogging and I find that I am mostly coming in with the same credentials as him, especially if we take my youngest son’s efforts as a student into account - he has that whole ‘can’t bear to stop playing on the computer thing’ going on.
My decision to become a blogger is all the more surprising given that I have barely ever read one, can’t imagine who does read one, or what bloggers have to offer that might make them do so. And, despite now signing-up to do a blog myself, I am not really sure how people go about finding one that they might want to read?
Some time ago I used to design web sites and I once knew a fair bit about search engines and, although my knowledge is dated, I am fairly sure my blog is going to be one of a zillion needles in the mother of all haystacks. On top of all this, I am not entirely convinced that I have anything interesting to say.
On the plus side, it seems to me that there are quite a few journalists who have never let the latter get in their way. I think that I am about to try blogging in case I am missing a trick and that’s about the only reason I can think of. I am going to base my blog on the guy from the Daily Mail’s trick of being a Mr. Middle England. That may sound naff, and it may be naff, but it’s a tested formula.
Anyway, with that kind of super-mundane theme in mind I thought that I would share with you the story of my Chelsea coat.
Three years ago (or was it 4?) when Roman Abramovich turned my fortunes as a football fan around by buying Chelsea FC, I decided that I would re-enlist as a real fan and start visiting Stamford Bridge again – a kind of old-nouveau Chelsea fan. To buy tickets for Chelsea games you have to sign-up as a member and once you do that the junk-mail starts.
To be fair, most of the stuff the club sends out is acceptable toilet-style reading and you get an annual mail order catalogue showing all the things that you can buy from them with Chelsea written on. Which, by the way, is a lot of things. The catalogue is worth a glance when birthdays and Christmas come around. My oldest son supports Chelsea as well, so I mainly have him in mind when I flick through. My wife looks at the catalogue too, only she has my son and me in mind.
It must have been a good year ago that she first spotted a thick, quilted coaches coat that she earmarked for me. She even asked me if I liked it, apparently, and I am on record as stating that I did, but what I probably said was ‘mmm’. At the time they didn’t have my size in stock on the web site, so she put the idea on hold, almost forgot all about it, until recently when we were in JJB Sports and she pipes up with, ‘Oh look, there’s that jacket you wanted and it’s only half price. And they’ve got your size.’
Now, I actually do like the jacket and I have supported Chelsea since I was 7, so there should be no problem, but the key thing to understand about a coat like that is that it has a badge on it. And a badge is a badge, something of a statement. In this case it says to people, ‘I support Chelsea Football Club and I want you to know it.’ I hadn’t thought of that when I let my wife go ahead and buy it.
Normally I am easily discernible enough to work this kind of thing out, my lower middle-class upbringing tells me to avoid this kind of thing, but somehow, perhaps because of the protracted nature of the purchase, it slipped under my radar. It was a bit like getting a tattoo whilst under the influence.
Although I allowed the purchase to go ahead without detecting the defining logo that is emblazoned upon it, others manage to spot it very easily.
On my first day out in it I was in a cake shop, totally oblivious to my surroundings, when a bloke sidled up and engaged me. ‘Played well last night,’ he said.
‘Who did?’ I replied, totally clueless as to what he was talking about. I warmed up a little as I rapidly recalled that Chelsea had played in a European fixture the night before, and we carried on from there, eventually covering such issues as Drogba’s likely departure in the January transfer window and John Terry’s injured knee. When the bloke left the shop and I sat down for a cup of coffee and a cheesecake with my wife she wanted to know how I knew him.
Since then I have worn the coat twice more. On the second time out, I walked past a wall with a herd of teenagers perched on it, like Hitchcock’s birds. Once again I had forgotten all about the coat until a couple of them started chanting ‘Chelsea, Chelsea’ and another muttered ‘cunt’ in a stage whisper. I hesitated, momentarily wondering if I should go and threaten him, maybe even slip into my ‘be careful, because I am a right lunatic’ act, but I was well past them when I caught his comment and I realised that I had probably asked for it anyway; subconsciously projecting onto them, using my badge to amplify my tribal affiliation.
On the last occasion an attractive thirty-something shop assistant (a young chick to me), who was busy serving a customer, stopped mid-schpeel when she realised she was staring at me. ‘Sorry, just admiring your coat,’ she said smiling sweetly.
‘You can have it if you want,’ I told her. I muttered it like a badly drawn, stock character from a low-grade sitcom, one of those guys who has to spend his time in the garden shed because he’s afraid of his wife.
Later on in the same outing a young mother pointed me out to her 6 year-old son. The boy was wearing a Chelsea shirt and I think that she was asking him if he wanted to play with me. Luckily he didn’t, he just looked away in total disinterest, which I very much appreciated.
I have a friend the same age as me who has a Chelsea jacket. It’s a lightweight version, more suitable to coaching in the summer than for sitting in the dugout at a winter away game at Dynamo Kiev. He’s a beer hound and wears it into pubs a lot. I bumped into him a couple of days back and asked how he got on with his Chelsea jacket. I was expecting a torrent of hilarious anecdotes. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘no problems.’
‘They don’t call you a cunt, or anything?’ I enquired.
‘No, nothing,’ he replied sounding genuinely perplexed.
So, now I have developed a vision of dying. In my mind I see my wife talking to other family members. She has just had me buried in the Chelsea coat as a last act of kindness. ‘I had to have him buried in his Chelsea coat,’ she tells them, ’he loved that coat.’
And why shouldn’t I love it, every winter’s day is going to be a new adventure. I see that now.
Although I allowed the purchase to go ahead without detecting the defining logo that is emblazoned upon it, others manage to spot it very easily.
On my first day out in it I was in a cake shop, totally oblivious to my surroundings, when a bloke sidled up and engaged me. ‘Played well last night,’ he said.
‘Who did?’ I replied, totally clueless as to what he was talking about. I warmed up a little as I rapidly recalled that Chelsea had played in a European fixture the night before, and we carried on from there, eventually covering such issues as Drogba’s likely departure in the January transfer window and John Terry’s injured knee. When the bloke left the shop and I sat down for a cup of coffee and a cheesecake with my wife she wanted to know how I knew him.
Since then I have worn the coat twice more. On the second time out, I walked past a wall with a herd of teenagers perched on it, like Hitchcock’s birds. Once again I had forgotten all about the coat until a couple of them started chanting ‘Chelsea, Chelsea’ and another muttered ‘cunt’ in a stage whisper. I hesitated, momentarily wondering if I should go and threaten him, maybe even slip into my ‘be careful, because I am a right lunatic’ act, but I was well past them when I caught his comment and I realised that I had probably asked for it anyway; subconsciously projecting onto them, using my badge to amplify my tribal affiliation.
On the last occasion an attractive thirty-something shop assistant (a young chick to me), who was busy serving a customer, stopped mid-schpeel when she realised she was staring at me. ‘Sorry, just admiring your coat,’ she said smiling sweetly.
‘You can have it if you want,’ I told her. I muttered it like a badly drawn, stock character from a low-grade sitcom, one of those guys who has to spend his time in the garden shed because he’s afraid of his wife.
Later on in the same outing a young mother pointed me out to her 6 year-old son. The boy was wearing a Chelsea shirt and I think that she was asking him if he wanted to play with me. Luckily he didn’t, he just looked away in total disinterest, which I very much appreciated.
I have a friend the same age as me who has a Chelsea jacket. It’s a lightweight version, more suitable to coaching in the summer than for sitting in the dugout at a winter away game at Dynamo Kiev. He’s a beer hound and wears it into pubs a lot. I bumped into him a couple of days back and asked how he got on with his Chelsea jacket. I was expecting a torrent of hilarious anecdotes. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘no problems.’
‘They don’t call you a cunt, or anything?’ I enquired.
‘No, nothing,’ he replied sounding genuinely perplexed.
So, now I have developed a vision of dying. In my mind I see my wife talking to other family members. She has just had me buried in the Chelsea coat as a last act of kindness. ‘I had to have him buried in his Chelsea coat,’ she tells them, ’he loved that coat.’
And why shouldn’t I love it, every winter’s day is going to be a new adventure. I see that now.
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