Cambodia Diaries - 21 June 2011

London Calling...at a price!

It’s been a good while since my wandering thoughts featured London, but having brought forward my annual summer return by a few months; I returned to Asia slightly nostalgic and definitely penny-less for the experience.

You do not need to be a QPR fan of nigh on 40 years to know that despite being perched top of the Championship for all bar two weekends of the season, having the tightest defence since North Korea went all shy on us, being 8 points clear going into April and seemingly unstoppable certs for the Premiership, that things could go still come down to an hour before the kick off in the final game of the season!

With this in mind and ignoring the opinions of others suggesting we would be up by Easter, wisdom dictated that to avoid a disaster, I should return to London to ensure they got over the line.

But more of QPR later.

Landing into an excited London and clearly delighted to see me, it transpired the red carpet at Heathrow’s T3 was not for me but for the many dignitaries and assorted hangers on rolling into town for the wedding of Pippa Middleton’s sister to a young German lad.

Like a lot of people, I wish them no ill will but the hullabaloo was not for me and so I took myself off for a bracing walk on the wedding day into Ealing’s diminishing countryside. A cool morning for some was actually freezing for me as I strode out purposefully for a few hours until needing the warmth offered by the regal delights of William Hill’s on the Greenford Road at just the time the happy couple were pronounced mann unt frau!

After another Catherine arrived a few days later, we embarked on the tourist trail/traps of London. My old training route for the London marathon offered sight of some of the city’s great sites and so bright and early one Pimlico morning, we set off and not for the first time in this part of London, I sustained an injury.

The first pain came at the old GLC building, now doubling up as a hotel and aquarium. For a family of four, at the special rate mind you, Mum, Dad and two nippers could get in if they shelled out £94!! At which point my jaw hit the ground with a painful thud!

Crossing Westminster Bridge towards the Houses of Parliament, the area was packed with a noticeably dense line featuring hundreds of people queuing to enter Westminster Abbey, scene of the nuptials a few days earlier. Not that fussed, we pushed on towards lunch, before working our way back up to Westminster from the Victoria Station end. We first encountered the splendid Neo-Byzantine structure that is Westminster Cathedral and which is always worth a visit for catholic and pagans alike. Walking down Victoria Street we decided that as the earlier madding crowds had reduced to a trickle, we would venture inside Westminster Abbey. Our passage came to an abrupt halt when we were asked to pay £16 each to go inside a church and my jaw hit the floor again!

True Faith for a fee!

Not in this or, if there is one, any other lifetime would I pay such a sum to enter what is in effect, part of our national heritage much less a place of worship. There were however, some signs saying those who merely wished to worship could do so for free, which left wonderful images of Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jehovah Witnesses and Tom Cruise’s lot all in that queue seeking to avoid the fees. (Oh and the catholic cathedral was free to enter...well done Rome!)

The cost of London was something that being a Londoner I was always conscious of but as with most of these things, it’s only when you remove yourself from the eye of the storm do you really see the horror of it and I really could go on and on about this and the seemingly voracious appetite of our Oyster travel cards for topping up. But for the yin there is a yang and for the first time in years, I visited a museum in London!

I had forgotten that British museums are amongst the best in the world, who politely request a donation when leaving and I was only too happy to oblige. It is hard to rival London for its variety of free museums and long may that continue. On a visit to Liverpool, another old stamping ground of several years, and a city I often found little to talk about which could assist the local tourist board, but I have to compliment Liverpool because since I left, they really have upped their game and the maritime museum in Albert Dock, is well worth a detour.

Now having said all that, the jaw hit the floor when asked to pay £20 to enter the Tower of London but aside of the cost of entry to a place anyone educated within 50 miles of Traitors’ Gate gets in for free as a school kid, I thought it an excellent day of travelling through the history of London and England. If you are going to shell out for something, then grudgingly I concede the Tower was marvellous...probably because visiting twice in a lifetime is enough.

The future catching up with the past

And so to the poisoned chalice that is supporting a team who perennially flirt with mediocrity, but who more often than not shoot themselves in the foot as we clutch defeat from the jaws of victory!

Many of my friends will know that this can only refer to Queens Park Rangers. The team from my locality and the team I was first taken to as a boy by my Dad back in the 1970’s and whom I have followed ever since. Over the years my support has been heavily punctuated by absences from London and since the turn of the century, absences from the UK. However, come 3pm GMT, my thoughts return inexorably to events at QPR and to the many friends made and whom I hold dear to this day.
Our recent history over the last 15 years is such, that when the MC at the final game of the season said before the gathered throng “If you saw a Hollywood film about what has happened to QPR over the last 15 years, you wouldn’t believe it!”

He was not lying because even we don’t believe it at times!

But seeing as I have been there for more of the disasters then the triumphs, I knew that if, as I suspected, things went to the wire, watching it with the other QPR fans in Phnom Penh was not an option. I had to get back to London to watch the final games. Ironically, to get ticket for the penultimate game away at Watford was handled by my fellow Asian based Ranger and Berlin marathon runner, Dave Rowe. For hopefully the final game before promotion at home to Leeds, there was nothing else for it and so I rang the club and forked out for two tickets marketed as ‘Banqueting Tickets’ but which were really nothing more than seats near where I once had a season ticket with a big fodder, some free beers and the chance to listen to the views of former players, Rufus Brevett and the legend that is Stan Bowles!

Now many will know that QPR’s latest ‘trials and tribulations’ actually involved a disciplinary matter following a series of allegations levelled at us by the Football Association (‘the FA’), which although QPR were always supremely confident of defeating, nonetheless cast a shadow over our seemingly imperious return to the Premiership. The upshot being that if found guilty, we might not be promoted automatically or via the play-offs! In the end, elements of the English sporting press managed to galvanise nothing into something. Thankfully a couple of reporters knew otherwise and the FA contrived to show yet again, their foolishness by firstly; scheduling the disciplinary tribunal in the final week of the season and then announcing that their decision would be promulgated after the season had finished!

So to Watford with a clear goal. Win and we would go up automatically as champions, lose and we knew we would make a hash of it. It was a nervy affair but after years of incompetence and disasters and for only the second time in mine and I suspect many thousands more diehards lives (and subject to the FA hearing a few days later), we witnessed the Rangers win a match that resulted in silverware. After which near delirious celebrations in the Hertfordshire village ensued, only for occasional punctuations of panic as someone reminded us we still had the FA tribunal to overcome.

Still, that was out of our hands and what was most definitely being placed into our hands were beers courtesy of a former player who clearly was not worrying about the FA or the cost of living as he went from pub-to-pub buying QPR fans beers!!

Andy Impey (second from right) and four QPR marathoners

Then to the banquet suite called Leeds at home, with the air thick with wonder as to what would the FA’s decision be on the following Monday and which cast a huge cloud over what should have been a monumental celebration.

Sat next to a lad who thought flying in from Belfast warranted respect and his mate who, after the game, was to nip to the O2 to play in Barry Manilow’s backing band, we managed to enjoy ourselves nonetheless as we sat back for Mr. Bowles to enlighten us with tales of football in the 1970’s.

And then my phone went ping.

I had a message and when I read it, my jaw dropped as did all around me as I passed my phone around for fellow diners to read. And then another phone went ping.

“Any questions for Stan and Rufus?” enquired the MC.

Arguably the loudest roar of the day was given to me when I read out that the FA had in fact made their decision and there was to be no points deduction, We were up!

To say London W12 was delirious would be underplaying the matter. Never have I seen such an outpouring of happiness. People didn’t know whether to laugh, shout, sing or cry as spontaneous hugs befell all descending to Loftus Road. The ground was buzzing with happiness and relief. Relief largely focussed on the ending of 15 years of unbridled farce and incompetence held together by a few thousand of us rocking up week after week to witness what was often a horror show. And that’s just the off-pitch shenanigans because the stuff witnessed on the pitch was often an affront to the game itself.

For the next 90 minutes, none of it mattered and the fact we lost merely added an ironic QPR twist to proceedings. But when it was all said and done, a lot of people had lumps in their throats as finally, a bit of silver was held aloft by a man in a blue and white shirt that confirmed us champions.

Champions!

What was wonderful was bumping into people I knew from following the Rangers for years, all of whom like me, had rightly come to bury the past. Although the future with QPR will always be a case of dancing with calamity, for one day at least, we stopped fretting and got on with enjoying ourselves.

But as I left Loftus Road, a sort of home-from-home for me, I felt a certain closure in being able to say goodbye to a nightmare era in the club’s history. There for the relegations, losses and cup exits aplenty over the last few years, the Premier league is something that will likely happen without me. As we left I turned round for a last glimpse of our old compact stadium and realised that the many years of ‘active participation’ in the first half of my life are in all likelihood behind me and the paths I have chosen to go down and which will likely keep me in the far flung reaches of Planet Honneywood for the foreseeable future, makes it increasingly likely that my support will now become ‘passive observation’ from afar.
And so to the Goldhawk, the pub my mates and I invariably repaired to before and after games and often in varying states of melancholy. However, today we were all in decidedly chipper mood. There present was a snapshot of much of my life; friends from junior and secondary schools, college, people from where I grew up, Manchester, lads I travelled with and chaps I ran marathons with....after that I really don’t remember too much because this was a ‘hang the expense’ occasion, unlikely to appear next until 2039!!

Next season we’ll be back to being the whipping boys again and there are bound to be a fresh round of owners, managers, frauds masquerading as professional footballers and all served up at exorbitant prices.

But then again, we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Old enough to know better – several happy boys and girls!

Cheers

JHx