Ray Of The Rovers

(Spoiler Alert: this title neatly presages a comic – and emotionally revealing – moment in the one-man show discussed below.)

Hitchikers Guide To The Family

“Hi, I’m Ben Norris.”

Outside it’s Halloween – children run amok, extorting sweets as protection payments, as older children run amok, wearing facepaint (more than usual) to drink heavily.  Fuck all that noise: Let’s go to the theatre.

Ben and his Dad are very different men; Ben is into art, and words.  He’s a talker.  He’s a Poet.  Ben’s Dad is into football, beer and not expressing feelings – the favoured pastimes of his generation of men.

I know Ben Norris because he booked me to play at his Poetry night in Birmingham in 2012, the same year he started this show.  He as a great host and it was a good gig.  He said I ate bare biscuits and I wondered what the fuck that meant.  Mostly because I read it as bear biscuits.  Which was even more intriguing.  (I know what it means now, of course.  It was a bit like the first time someone said to me “You’re sick.”  I thought it was a compliment, given the tone and context, but a very enjoyably idiosyncratic type of comment.  I thought it might be a thoughtful reflection of the strength of words in my songs….I really liked the young man who’d said it, for that.  For a week or so, until I heard someone describe a t-shirt as “sick”.  It was a good week, mind.  But this isn’t about me or my unreliable narration of barely-remembered anecdotes.)

This one-man show is more about football than I expected.  Ben and his Dad support Luton Town, and share a memory of the Glory Day in 1988 when Andy Dibble made an amazing penalty save in a surprising League Cup Final win over Arsenal.  Ben remembers that day, which happened years before his birth.  Because that kind of memory is collective, isn’t it?  And Ben’s memory of it is his memory of his Dad talking about that game.
And he’s not likely to bond with his Dad over much else, is he?
So, it’s a show about masculinity, memory and family.

It’s about Ben.  Who is on a pilgrimage to Wembley – the old one, that isn’t there anymore.  To connect with his Dad, who doesn’t live anywhere near there. 
The journey takes in a game at Kenilworth Road, the home of Luton Town (The Hatters).  Years ago, I saw Luton play at the Memorial, against Bristol Rovers.  Luton had three men sent off. 
It finished 1-1. 
“Eight men – and you fucked it up!”  The Rovers fans derided the home team.  But this isn’t about me, or Bristol Rovers.

It’s about masculinity.  At university, I was once presented with an essay question:  “Is Masculinity in crisis?”  I vacillated between thinking “I honestly couldn’t give a fuck” and “If it is constructed on misogyny and domination, then yes, because those things are shit and being culturally challenged in a more serious way than previously.”  In the end, I chose a different question.  Neither of the above answers could have earned a decent mark, I thought.

At one or two places in the show, Ben is apologetic for the paucity of Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy references, but there are a few there for those who will find them…”So long, and thanks for all the fish” is one of them.
See, I get it.

I can relate to all this, a bit; my Dad is a football/beer fan, is of That Generation, but it sounds like he’s probably not much like Ben’s Dad apart from that.  My Dad has never knowingly gone more than ten minutes in anyone’s company without telling the story of The Time He Scored A Goal At Celtic Park.  He’s a storyteller.  A Talker.  But this isn’t about me, or my Dad.

And it never will be, because Ben has now ruined the one-man show about my Dad that I never got round to writing.  This one (Ben’s real show, not my imagined one, that I may or may not have seriously thought about writing, but definitely haven’t done any writing for) has ended my plans for a one-man show about my Dad.  (Plans I barely even knew I had before this show started.)  Which is a shame, because my Dad probably would’ve loved it.  (It would start with him in a pub telling someone he’d just met that he scored a goal at Celtic Park in 1965. And it would probably end with the same scene.  You get the picture.)

It’s worth it, mind.  Ben’s show is funny and it’s touching and a lot of it is in verse (in a subtle sort of way…Ben is a poet.  A very good one).  But it subtly blends a conversational style of delivering said verse with actual conversation and audience participation.  I won’t ruin The Big Moment, because I expect you to make the effort to see this show, do you hear me?  Go and see the show.

The show is on for two nights at The Alma in Bristol, which used to be my local when I lived in that part of town.  I’ve got some unreliable memories of the place, of course (involving regular late-afternoon drinking sessions with G.Rhymes, The Single Massive, open mic nights, quizzes, a really interesting show about Empire that I enjoyed, even though I really really needed the toilet for the last half hour of it).  But this isn’t about me. 

Reviews aren’t about The Reviewer, are they?  They are simply a list of things The Performer has previously done coupled with some barely-intelligible knowing pretentiousness, flecked with glasses-perched-at-the-end-of-the-nose musings on The State Of Things.
A Review is decidedly not a solipsistic reflection on the feeling the art in question evokes in The Reviewer and how The Reviewer relates it to their own life, is it?  No, it bloody well is not.

Anyway, I went to the first of the two nights at the Alma.  It was most enjoyable.  I might’ve gone to the second night instead, but funny enough, I was at the Mem to see

Bristol Rovers vs Fleetwood Town

in League One.  Proper Football.  Ben and his Dad, Ray, might have enjoyed it.

As is customary, we meet in the pub for a pre-game pint.  As is customary, we have one more which makes us a bit late for kick off.  As we turn off Filton Avenue, we hear a small roar, in the sudden vacuum of silence from the home fans.

Bollocks, already one down. 

As is customary, the Rovers fans quickly re-group with the familiar refrain of Goodnight, Irene.  The place is heaving.  By the time we get in, the aisles between the sections of terracing behind the goal are full.  A steward makes a half-hearted attempt to clear the aisles, before astutely retreating.  Unlike Rovers (this season, at least), he knows when he’s beat.

Unusually, I have put my local team ahead of my First Love: Celtic are playing in the Champions League, which I could be watching on the telly, in a nice warm pub with a nice cold pint.  With my Dad.  Although this is the first (and possibly last) time I have made this choice (by virtue of not noticing the clash), live football is so much better than watching it live on the telly.  You can’t smell the pasty farts or hear the individual anguished cries on the telly.

The game is poor.  I go for a Lucky Piss (the one where I leave the action so that something will happen – like lighting a fag to make the bus appear.  It’s magic.)  It doesn’t work.  Adge texts me:

“Skied it, take a shit, this might take a while”

“Brushing me teeth….waiting for the cheer”, I reply

“Did you bring floss?”

I go back and shrug.  Did me best.  Adge has a go at the magic, opting for a reverse of the fabled Commentator’ Curse: “It’s gone stale, hasn’t it?  Nothing happening.”

Thirty seconds later, Rovers get a corner and score from it.

The place lights up.  I wonder what Ben and Ray would make of it.  The short video clip, in the show, from Kenilworth Road, didn’t look this exciting – it was quaint, by comparison, but it’s probably not a fair comparison.  There are over ten thousand people here tonight, which is a good turnout for a damp Tuesday night when there’s Champions League games on the telly.

My Dad keeps me updated on the Celtic game. 
“1 0 down piss poor defending again.” 
It’s like I’m there.

Out of nowhere, someone hurls a racial epithet at an away player.  I’m a bit shocked.  I don’t go often, but I haven’t heard that at a Rovers game before.
I don’t know who said it, and I don’t know if anyone else even heard it.  I did, but I sort of pretend I didn’t.  Because I’d like to believe I didn’t.  Because that will help me think I’m part of a big crowd of people who are decent, with whom I share values, as well as some kind of identity – dare I say fraternity…? 

Because I lack courage: that needed to challenge a stranger, to start an argument in a crowd.  I’m also apprehensive of the consequences; I don’t know if anyone will agree, back me up, or take no notice.  I don’t know how the racist will react.  I am a man.  I am a coward. 
It wasn’t that loud, and I wonder if no one else heard it or if they preferred to simply not experience it.  Are we all cowards? 

I wonder what Ben and Ray would make of that.  Or my Dad.  Maybe I’ll ask him about it….excuse me.

Oh, by the way: Rovers nick it 2-1.  (And Celtic manage a draw.)