The Football Factory

by John King

  Usually I’m fine with memories. Just remember the good times. All the Chelsea games we’ve been to through the years. The laugh we’ve had. Good times as a kid. Of course things go wrong now and then but it happens to everyone. You can’t dwell on it or you’ll end up a basket case. I see my mum and dad once or twice a week. There’s no bad blood between us. It’s funny I should think of that time now. It’s the flu that does it. Makes you lose your grip. Everyone has black spots in their lives. Things that go wrong. It can’t be denied some people get it worse than others, but most of us just roll along with the occasional hiccup. We’ve chosen our way and the three of us at this table haven’t done too bad. We’re working, with money in our pockets. We’ve got good mates and tight families and we don’t go without birds when we want them. We have a laugh.

  I suppose we’re like niggers in a way. White niggers. White trash. White shit. We’re a minority because we’re tight. Small in number. We’re loyal and dedicated. Football gives us something. Hate and fear makes us special. We have a base in the majority which means the cunts in charge can’t work us out. We have most of the same ideas but we’ve worked them round to fit ourselves. We’re a bit of everything. There’s no label. We’re something the rich cunts hate and slumming socialists can’t accept. We’re happy with life and there’s no need for social workers. None of us are sitting in the freezing cold, lonely and depressed, fucked up on drugs or drink or sex or whatever else is out there waiting to do your brain in. Our heads are together. We’re three normal blokes and we go along with the football bit because it’s part of our lives. Some people join the army, others the old bill. Some go in for killing people with politics and others finance.

  Everyone’s in a gang. Everyone has some kind of badge. There’s uniforms everywhere you look and they all mean something. Something and nothing. So when the old bill and the politicians and the mindless Joe Public cunt down the high street get together and moan about the scum rioting in their back streets, shaming the good name of England, we laugh in their faces. Laugh in their faces and piss in their eyes. It’s not what you say or do, it’s why you say and do it. That’s what counts. Two people could go out and each of them kill someone and both could have different reasons. One would be right, the other wrong, depending on your viewpoint. It’s a hard thing to be honest about. The same if you go out and fuck the arse off some tart. The same with everything. We all think we’re right and the other bloke’s wrong, that’s natural, but listen to the cunts delivering lectures and despite their educations they haven’t even worked out the basics.

  I’m going back to Hammersmith after the second pint. I leave Mark and Rod getting wound up by the screaming birds and get a black cab home, glad to find a driver who doesn’t want to talk. There’s a time and place. Sometimes you want to be left alone. We cut through the side streets and along the Fulham Palace Road. I watch people going into pubs and restaurants. An outsider. The cab drops me at the bottom of my street and I go across to the Indian. I drink a pint of Carlsberg as I make my choice, then sit back watching the happy couples in action. Psychedelic music floats in the background while men and women stare into each other’s eyes. Waiters push trolleys glad they’re serving lovers and not the closing-time drunks they used to rely on before half the curry houses went upmarket, but who will probably turn up later all the same. When the order’s ready I finish my lager and go home.

  It’s cold in the flat so I turn the heat on, put my dinner on a plate and sit on the couch. I flick through the channels looking for something worth watching on the telly. There’s the usual blockbuster, murder and mystery in a foreign city. I don’t follow the story but it’s good having the noise. My nose runs more than usual as the Madras makes its mark. Maybe I’ll burn the flu away. It’s fucking hot enough. When I’ve finished I start dipping in and out of sleep. Saturday night and I’m stuck at home like an old man. Mark and Rod will be laughing their heads off, slagging off those birds maybe, or moving to a better pub. They’ll be talking football and sex, steaming on lager. It makes you appreciate life when you get sick. All the simple things. That you have a bit of excitement with the football and relaxation with your mates down the pub. It’s a shame there’s all those poor bastards alone the whole time, with nothing to do but work, wank and worry about the future.

  I think of the Tottenham game and it cheers me up. People join the army and sign away three years of their lives just to find a bit of danger. Films can’t do it like the real thing. It’s the difference between wanking and shagging a bird. We need more than videos. Watching films about psychos isn’t enough. Or the cunts going on about sex the whole time like they’re dangerous. That’s almost as sad. If that’s the biggest thrill they get they’ve got no chance. Not that I’m ready to go without the business of course, but the way some people go on about it you’d think they were going into a war zone. I mean, we’re not queers or anything, but you get your sex and it’s good while it lasts, then you go away with Chelsea for a high-profile match, when there’s the chance of trouble, and the excitement lasts all day.

  It’s a hard thing to explain. It’s not that it’s like sex, just that there’s a bit of risk involved. People watch horror videos and whatever to feel a bit of danger. The urge is still there even if they live boring, everyday lives. Mind you, service a bird nowadays and you’re taking a risk with AIDS and everything, but even that’s not new. We’ve never thought about getting a dose more than having to queue up down the STD, but there was enough people died of syphilis in the old days.

  When the football finally comes on my head clears and I forget all the bollocks floating around my brain. I still enjoy football on the box. Not like when I was a kid learning about the teams and players, knowing all the line-ups and names of grounds, but it’s a Saturday night tradition you don’t get when you’re in your prime because you’re out and about. Maybe when I get older it’ll go back to the beginning again. Maybe I’ll lose my desires, for violence as well as sex, and make do with the things I enjoyed as a kid. It’s all that second childhood stuff. They’ve got the usual selection of studio experts, some talking sense, others shit. There’s a Manchester derby between United and City. They go on about big city rivalry till I get bored, but they’re even showing highlights of Chelsea-Wimbledon. I’m like a child watching United and City rip each other apart with their different styles of play. It’s a good game, but you don’t feel the same watching clubs you don’t support.

  There’s under ten minutes’ worth of the Wimbledon game. It’s dire football but you have to admire the characters Wimbledon bring up from South London. A few minutes of decent action is what the armchair fans get. It’s all they want. All they deserve. The day’s been a waste of time but it would have been a total write-off staying away. What’s the point sitting at home all your life in a chair with football on the screen when you could be there in person? They show every goal from the division. I’ve been to all the grounds and see the stadiums as more than the view on the screen. To me they’re towns. There’s streets, pubs, shops, people. Everywhere has its own character. There’s Everton getting stuffed at home and behind the stand full of scousers I know the streets are terraced throwbacks to another era. When Villa go on the rampage through the Coventry defence I imagine the park next to the Holte End and the brickwork of Villa Park’s main entrance. And when Norwich put three goals past West Ham I have to smile even though I’m picturing the street behind the stand where me and Rod got a hiding.

  All your average bloke sitting on his arse fiddling with the remote control gets is the pitch and three stands. He wastes his life flicking channels, pulled back to the football by the sound of the crowd and the passion that makes the game special. None of the TV companies seem to care about supporters, but without the noise and movement of the fans football would be nothing. It’s about passion. They’ll never change that. Without passion football’s dead. Just twenty-two grown men running round a patch of grass kicking a ball about. Fucking daft reall
y. It’s the people that make it an occasion. When they get going it takes off. If you get any kind of passion it spills over. That’s what can happen with football. That’s what makes it for me. It’s all connected. All part of the same thing. They can’t separate football from what goes on elsewhere. They can make you stand to attention when you’re being watched, but when you get away from the cameras fantasy ends and real life takes over.

  POPPY DAY

  Mr Farrell walks to the newsagent’s for his morning paper. He pays his money and takes his choice. He argues over the local election result with Mr Patel. The Tory candidate has been defeated by his Labour opponent, yet neither has much to offer. The BNP has been attracting those white working-class voters alienated by the established parties. Mr Farrell and Mr Patel agree that a right-wing local councillor would mean more racist attacks, and that the bangra kids in the next street should turn their music down after midnight. But there’s no telling the youngsters of today. They shake their heads sadly and Mr Farrell leaves.

  —A white boy got knifed last night outside the youth club. They say he was stabbed through the heart. If he dies it’ll be halal murder. He’s on a life-support machine and they don’t think he’s going to survive. The police are trying to hush the whole thing up so they don’t have a race war on their hands, but people should know the truth. People have a right to know what’s true and what’s a lie.

  A woman with curled hair and glasses held together with sticky tape has stopped the old man. It takes Mr Farrell a few seconds to recognise the face. Mary from the White Horse. She’s getting on in years now and the joke doing the rounds among the younger men is that she was shagged silly in her youth. Mr Farrell remembers Mary when she was a young woman. He sees her partially naked on the common more than half a century ago. They were teenagers at the time. There was cold grass and the smell of her excitement through the beer fumes. Mary had firm breasts in those days. Rock-hard nipples. A sharp brain that lost the thread during the war. People say it’s the effects of untreated syphilis, but Mr Farrell puts it down to the Luftwaffe. Nobody wants to hear about the realities of mass bombing. They just want a soft memory with Churchill walking through the wreckage and the royal family taking enemy flak.

  —It’s those Pakis again. Hooligans the lot of them. They should send the smelly little bastards back where they come from. Hang the ones who stabbed the white boy and kick the rest out. Put them on a slow boat to Calcutta or wherever it is they come from.

  Mr Farrell wonders if Mary remembers their night on the common, but doubts it very much. She has changed. Not so much her body, which is bone white and wasting away, because this is inevitable, but more the eyes which have emptied and sunk into the skull. Gossip says she’s a drug addict. A slave to heroin and the men who keep her supplied. He sees little truth in the rumour. Mary is too old for this form of recreation and, more importantly, she doesn’t have the money. Unless the other rumours are true. But who would pay to have sex with such a woman?

  —Their time’s going to come. You mark my words. How much longer do us whites have to get pissed on before someone does something? They give them the best flats and what do we get? Nothing. We get nothing but promises and excuses from the council. This new one will be worse than the last.

  Mr Farrell continues. It is Sunday morning but the streets are busier than usual. It is Remembrance Day. A time to conjure up the Mighty Fallen. Friends and relatives rotting in the Channel and mud of France. But the old man won’t remember quite yet. Not till he’s had his breakfast and read the paper. Then he will let the memories come back. Relive the good old days.

  —I’ve made you a nice cup of tea, dear. Milk and two sugars. I saw you talking with Mary Peacock. I watched you from the kitchen window. What was she saying? She looked upset, but she always looks upset these days. She’s not well that woman.

  Mr Farrell goes into the kitchen. His legs ache from the four flights of stairs. The kettle is cold. He turns it on and puts a tea bag in his favourite red mug, then gets the milk and sugar ready. He looks at the mug and sees a small crack he’s never noticed before. Bangra vibrates through the brickwork. The smell of curry. He likes Indian food. When the kettle has boiled he makes his cuppa. He looks at the old photo, a picture of his wife who has been dead for the last three years.

  —There you are. That will warm you up nice and quick. It’s hard this time of year, but we always get through the cold weather in one piece, don’t we? There’s Christmas to look forward to, and then the new year. A brand new start.

  Mrs Farrell had high blood pressure but the doctors operated anyway. They made a mistake. An honest mistake. Mr Farrell has seen death many times and understands, but he loves his wife. He is careful and keeps his wits about him. People can be narrow minded. It makes him happy that his wife is still there, that he hears her voice and sees her face even though her body is in the cemetery. If he didn’t have her he would be sad. Lonely even. But he will never be defeated. He has the blood of the bulldog breed flowing through his veins. He will stand tall and see the thing through.

  —I hope you’re still going to Whitehall. You haven’t changed your mind, have you? You always say you’ll go, but you never do. You always leave and return before you’re halfway there. I’ve got your medals ready. Let me see you wear them. Go on, put them on your chest. They should have you laying wreaths. Poppies for your friends. How many of those bastards lost people on D-Day? Politicians start wars, they don’t fight them. They cause the trouble and sign the forms and hide when the bombers come. How many of them suffered like I did? Answer me that.

  When Mr Farrell has finished his tea he takes the medals from his wife. He doesn’t like it when she swears and never uses bad language in front of her. She saw and heard enough before he found her. They made her suffer and then he played the hero. The medals gleam and he is embarrassed, but somehow proud at the same time. His wife’s eyes light up when she sees the ribbons pinned to his chest. Most of his mates sold their medals to collectors to help pay the bills, while some threw them away in disgust, but Mr Farrell kept his for a rainy day. Mrs Farrell admires her soldier. Her knight in shining armour. The Englishman who looked for her two months after the concentration camp was liberated, to find if she had survived.

  —I hate that woman. Mary Peacock is a fascist. An English Nazi. Whenever I speak with her she is criticising the blacks and Indians. And me with my accent and history, though she’ll never know everything that happened.

  Mr Farrell stands behind his wife. He runs his hands through her hair. The same now as it was a year after they were married. After it had grown. She was beautiful with long hair. So much different from the shaven skull. He remembers the texture of her head when he helped lift her into the truck. The stench of death is overpowering. Mortal flesh and broken limbs. He sees a coffin disappearing beneath the soil, but the Nazis didn’t waste money on wooden boxes. He wonders how many times she was raped by the Ukrainian guards. He tells her that Mary Peacock is a sad and bitter woman. That life has been cruel to her in its own way. That she needs something at which to direct her hatred. It is not right, but it is the truth.

  After reading the paper and eating a breakfast of egg and toast, Mr Farrell smartens himself up in front of the mirror. He spends time on his hair making sure it is combed properly. His wife is sitting at a window staring towards the common. She will stay at home while he attends the ceremony. She prefers to stay indoors these days. Three years since she last left the flat. He kisses her on the cheek and she pulls him towards her. There are tears on his cheeks. He smells the salt and disentangles himself. He must go. He doesn’t want to miss the train.

  Fifteen minutes later Mr Farrell is standing on the platform at Hounslow East. A train arrives and he chooses a seat. The carriage is almost empty. Two youths in leather jackets sit opposite a man with two young children. They are the only others aboard. The youths consider themselves patriots and verbally abuse the man and his children. They are smelly Pak
i bastards. They should be exterminated. Wiped off the face of the earth. The only good wog is a dead wog. Adolf Hitler had the right idea. There ain’t no black in the Union Jack. The holocaust is a myth. A blatant lie put about by the Jews who control the media. Part of a Jewish Bolshevik Asiatic Zionist world conspiracy. Look at what the Zionists have done to the Palestinian people, though they’re just a bunch of smelly Arab shit-stabbers. Nothing’s as bad as a Paki though.

  The Indian leads his children to the doors at the next station. The taller of the boys stands, follows, punches the man in the face, splitting his lip. He laughs because the blood is red. The doors open and he kicks the kids onto the platform then turns back to his friend, the father torn between his children and the kind of violence which goes against his nature, opting for the crying kids. The youths share a joke and feel good together. The doors close and the train gathers speed. Mr Farrell is alone in the carriage with the two boys. He feels no fear. He is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male. He served in the war. An old soldier with the mark of the bulldog on his forearms, cut into the skin and filled with blue ink. He has killed for England and the English way of life. He is proud of his identity. He wears his poppy with honour.