Hurly-Burly

I’m going to go back a few years here to the days before all-seater football stadiums existed. An evening game at St Andrews in 1968 when Birmingham were playing Arsenal in an FA Cup replay. Names that will be familiar to you such as Trevor Hockey, Geoff Vowden, Fred Pickering and Bert Murray were in the Blues team. And in goal was Jim Herriot whose name was used by Alf Wright as his pen name James Herriot in the books and tv series.

That night there was a crowd of 52,500 and I vividly remember the queues to get in, anxious that I wouldn’t be locked out of the ground. And when I got to my normal place with my mates the roar of the crowd singing ‘Keep Right on to the End of the Road’ was deafening, even the old codgers were belting it out. The colours, the lights, the smell of cigarette smoke mingled with chips. We were crammed together shoulder to shoulder. And I loved it.

St Andrews in 1968

A couple of years later I went to the Weeley Music Festival in East Anglia. Crowds, music, slightly different smells, Barclay James Harvest at around midnight, Peace and Love. My tent was ripped open and all the stuff nicked.

Incidentally, in one of those internet rabbit holes that you have to go down I found out that the first Isle of Wight Festival in 1968 was created by three brothers to raise funds for the Isle of Wight Indoor Swimming Pool Association who were trying to build a new public swimming pool on the island. 10,000 attended. In 1970 600,000 turned up.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago and a friend had got a ticket to go to Glastonbury. Did I want one as well? My previous experience at such a thing was not relevant, I think. But now the very thought of all those thousands in one place. The queuing for filthy toilets, no privacy, being crammed shoulder to shoulder in front of a stage with lights glaring all night and listening to some band I’d never heard of. I felt nauseated at the very thought.

Weeley music festival

Anyway, that’s by the by, the subject is hurly-burly which I’m taking as tumult, noise, commotion. And notwithstanding what is written above I do like a bit of all three now and again. A sort of controlled tumult.

I still go to the match and sing along (occasionally) but I don’t like all-seater stadiums where you can be stuck shoulder to shoulder in a seat next to some jerk who has had a few pints before the game with the inevitable consequences. I like being able to move around away from the confusion about why someone gets drunk before a game and irritates me.

On the other hand I love going to a crowded concert and sit listening to the magical sounds of, for instance, the Liverpool Philharmonic as they and a choir can and has brought me to tears with a work such as Beethoven’s 9th with its magnificent hymn to humankind in the last movement.

Or being in a cinema and I’ve got two nominations for this version of tumult, noise and confusion. The first is Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as used in ‘Apocalypse Now’. The horror, the soaring music and the twisted humour at the point where ‘Charlie don’t Surf’. It’s awful and breath-taking.

The second brings me back to 1968 (again) and the first time I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. You want confusion and the rest it’s all here with knobs on. But the music is perfect and the initial and final theme of Richard Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ makes my skin tingle even now and I must have watched the film more than twenty times.

For the poem I have to go back to the Blues and the '60s.

Before the Game

Leaning against the wall,
waiting for my mates,
the rough red brick
of the toolmaker’s yard
stains my jacket
like it did the last time
and the time before
and the time in the twenties
when other shoulders
turned to light Woodbines
in the lee of the crowd
the smoke soon lost
in the up line steam
that shadows the bodies
crossing the bridge
into the first noise
of the main stand
behind me
where two kids
swap cards
dodging a horse
as the copper
leans down
cheeking a woman
with three scarves
the boys of ‘64
share chips
buying a programme
from the same spot
as they did the last time
and the time before that
the dust from my jacket
brushed off
for another layer
to our history.

Thanks for reading, Terry.