Immortality

2024  has been a bit of a wake up call already. When your hero's or peers start to curl up their toe's it brings home to you the fragility of life. I remember Franz Beckenbauer strutting his stuff in the great German football team of the late '60s and early '70s as he brought a new dimension to defensive football in the same way that Johan Cruyff was later to do with Holland's brand of total football. His death announcement was soon to be followed by that of JPR Williams, one of the hero's of the Welsh rugby era which spanned the 1970s and into the '80s. He was only a few years older than me and I could easily have played against him had I been a slightly fitter rugby specimen.

I have always said old age comes with unwanted gifts, and we cannot be too complacent as we just don't know what is around the corner for us.

It was re-enforced yesterday when I received a call out of the blue from Ian Ruddick, the brother of Steve. Steve had sadly died at his flat in Thailand a few months ago, and Ian was clearing the possessions from his brothers house in Croydon where he found a letter unopened which I had written to Steve in 2019.

We had lost contact with each other around 2010 and little did I know that he had upped sticks and moved to Thailand after various trauma's in his life in the UK. Steve and I were thrown together in 1971 when I moved from Plymouth to college in London and he did the same from Newcastle. We shared a bedsit in Stoke Newington, North London and then a flat in Northcote Road in Clapham before girls got in the way and we moved into our own places. We regularly met up and exchanged stories until the phone calls and and face to face meetings stopped, and only recently when the Antique Roadshow came from Clissold Park, just across from said bedsit, did I mention to SWMBO that if anything did happen to him  hopefully Ian would be in touch. Little did I know that events had overtaken that conversation and a close friend had already been taken from us.

So 'live for today' becomes even more relevant as our life's breath decreases by the moment. So book that holiday, buy that gift and tell people how much they mean to you before it is too little too late. 

Cheers Steve, and Haway the Lads!

The Crystal Maze

Work took me on a magical mystery tour for South London yesterday, as I travelled by train to Crawley and Three Bridges. The Northcote Road area of Clapham Junction has changed out of all recognition. While the street market still exists, and the Northcote Arms is still on the corner, its clientele now consists of yummy mummies and City types rather than poor students and bed sit dwellers. The Bank was a bank in my day, its now a gastropub, and there are the obligatory coffee shops, cheese and butchers outlets. The bakery I used to live above is now a designer breadshop. I wonder if the cockroaches still live upstairs??

On then through Balham, gateway to the South, a picture of which sits on my lounge wall to remind me of the times. We had good fun in and around Bedford Hill, and Devonshire Road. We were not quite on first name terms with the working girls, but the fact that the Bedford Arms is now owned by the Soho House group shows how that area is well up market too now. That said, you did used to be able to buy Chocolate Oliver biscuits in the old fashioned Cullens store in Balham High Road.

Thornton Heath has two great Youngs pubs, The Fountains Head and the Lord Napier, the latter is a big band and jazz pub in the Glenn Miller style. I must schedule a trip back there when Argyle play Crystal Palace.

I brought my first house in Norbury, and Tim was born in Mayday hospital just outside Croydon. I always thought it a strange name for an A & E department!

The train then swept in and out of Croydon giving me just a glimpse of the old IBM office that I first worked in and the Porter and Sorter featured previously in this blog. Croydon is still one of those places which is easy to get into but a nightmare to find your way out of. Just as well then that I was on the train.

Croydon has not changed much since I worked there thirty years ago, although it does have a tram now which goes from Wimbledon to various locations in South London. I took it once from there to Addington and walked on to Shirley Wanderers RFC for their 50th anniversary celebrations. The clubhouse was a bit like Croydon, in as much as there were the same old faces there from the mid '70s when I played regularly for them.

Rugby was a great game to play in those days, but watching the two matches at the weekend, I am beginning to think that its days are numbered. Their big chap runs into our big chap, then we do the same. Flair and enterprise seem to have disappeared.

I don't enjoy rugby league as Ii feel I am watching the same game every week, and with a few exceptions union seems to be going the same way. I do hope the rugby world cup will revitalise my enthusiasm for the game, or once again during a crackingly good social weekend, the match will become the low point.