Fruit Tree

It has to be Tangerine. Apples are awesome, bananas are brilliant, cherries are cute (fabulous blossom too), damsons are delicious, entawaks are exotic (look them up), figs are flavoursome, greengages are groovy... I could go on through the alphabet... but tangerines are the tops.

Let's get the etymology out of the way first. It ought to come as no surprise that tangerine was originally an adjective meaning 'of Tangier', the Moroccan seaport from which the fruit was first shipped, given that it grows in that region of the north African country. It was in fact once known scientifically as 'Citrus nobilis var. tangeriana', though its modern binomial is simply Citrus tangerina. The OED cites the first usage of tangerine from an edition of The Tatler in 1710. Morocco to this day is still the fourth largest producer of tangerines behind China (the world's biggest grower, though their variety is more commonly known as mandarin), Spain and Türkiye.

Tangerines

As for the fruit itself, tangerines are smaller and less spherical than oranges. A ripe tangerine has a slightly pitted, soft thin skin, is usually easy to peel, and the flesh inside tastes stronger and sweeter than an orange. Tangerines are great thirst-quenchers, being 85% water, 13% carbohydrate (fructose and glucose) and 2% fibre and protein. They are rich in vitamins A and C. One small tangerine provides about a third of the recommended daily vitamin C intake. Eat three a day and you'll never be a scurvy knave. They are also virtually fat-free. 

Tangerines are easier to grow than many other citrus fruits. They can even be grown in containers indoors. They require these key components:

- a mineral rich soil that does not decompose, and contains live microbials

- organic fertiliser without synthetic salts

- regular watering to keep soil moist but never waterlogged

- a minimum 6 to 8 hours of sunshine during the growing period (May to September in our hemisphere)

- a temperature than never drops below freezing

Tangerine trees take four years to reach maturity and start fruiting. They can eventually grow up to 15 feet tall, but can be kept more compact (6 to 8 feet) in a container or if pruned regularly. A healthy tangerine tree can produce up to 100 lbs or 45 kilos of fruit each season and will continue to fruit for up to fifty years if well maintained.

well maintained tangerine trees

Who recalls as a child finding a tangerine at the bottom of one's Christmas stocking? Apparently it's a tradition that goes right back to the 13th-century when French nuns would leave stockings full of fruit, nuts and tangerines at the houses of the poor at Christmas. It's certainly the case that the giving of tangerines as gifts to family and friends at the tail end of the year is an honoured tradition in China and Japan, the fruit and the colour being symbols of good luck and happiness.

 

The colour tangerine (as separate from orange) didn't appear in print until 1899. As an historical back note, even the word orange was a latecomer to the official spectrum of recognised colours. Until the arrival of oranges in 13th century Europe (brought to Spain from Persia by Arabs), and the naming of the colour after the fruit (nārang in Persian which became naranja in Spanish, with "have a naranja" eventually morphing into "have an orange" in English), objects of a shade between red and yellow were always described by the compound word reddish-yellow or yellowish-red (geoluhread in Old English).

Nowadays, tangerine, also known as 'vibrant orange', has a hex designation #f28500 in computer graphics and a Pantone number 15-1247 in the painting and printing trades. And we in the jewel of the north are very proud that our local football team plays in tangerine (not orange) and white, a tradition which actually began in 1923, before which time Blackpool played in a variety of fairly ordinary red or blue kits. It is not unusual to hear or read us being referred to as the Tangerines, as well as the Seasiders.

And so to my latest poem, which also lends its name to the title of my upcoming second collection due some time in the spring. More on that later. For now, I give you...

Tangerine

Sitting in the shade of this tangerine tree

a quiet hour devouring you page by page
my false bride, your Christmas stockings
eyes of night dimpled smile lips as bright

as morning sunlight striking citrus.  Folies

fade in memory. Your hex code printed on

emotions soft and slow to ripen till waxen

peel yields up its mist of essential oil, zest

as promise of cool flesh in segments fresh

and full which pressed to bursting squirt a
sweetness on my tongue. The tang itself of
life, of love, reveals in complex favours by

degrees, a liquid fire to quench such lusting
as is chaptered within. End of my questing,
just rind and spit pips attesting you’ve won
an unintentioned heart. Love you tangerine.

I couldn't write on the subject of fruit trees without leaving a small musical bonus in the form of Nick Drake's beautiful song: Fruit Tree from the LP 'Five Leaves Left'. It might have been inspired by his visit to Morocco in 1967.Just click on the song title to activate the YouTube link. Enjoy.

 

Thanks for reading. Up the mighty Pool. S ;-)

Read More

Work!

Work! A means to an end? An end in itself? Something to be avoided at all costs? Where would I place myself on the 'work to live....live to work' spectrum? Probably just about here, without giving too much away: always intellectually stimulated, rarely exploited, often emotionally fulfilled. I've been lucky. I'd like to think I'm just about the full pyramid. (See Maslow's hierarchy illustration further on.)

"When Adam delved and Eve span..."

We all started off (as a species) working to live... finding/growing food, building shelters, making clothes, fulfilling the most fundamental physiological needs. Husbandry and wifery (as above, farming and clothes-making), among the top jobs along with building (brick-making, carpentry, stonemasonry), hunting and fishing. Doctors, priests, teachers and soldiers followed, along with philosophers, prostitutes and poets (of course), fulfilling safety and societal needs. It could be argued that by this stage some, with their basic needs catered to, were becoming vocational and living to work. I'll leave you to ponder the pyramid below if you're not familiar with Maslow's ground-breaking 1943 work.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

I'm not going to get into religion and the rise of capitalism, overlords, underlings, exploitation, slavery and all that. Far too complex an area to cover in 500 words (which is approximately the length a blog should be, though I often disregard that rule of thumb). 

Anyway, I'm retired now, though I still work voluntarily as the Supporters' Liaison Officer for Blackpool Football Club and as the organiser of other volunteers from the fanbase who give of their time on a regular basis to help clean the stadium ready for match days and litter pick the rubbish that is left behind on the terraces after every game, despite tannoy requests to deposit it in bags at the turnstiles on exiting the stadium.

volunteering at Blackpool FC

It was while cleaning the stands at Bloomfield Road recently thar the idea for today's cheeky poem came to mind. It's not to be taken too seriously but there is truth in and between its lines. Any similarity to Henry Reed's famous poem 'Naming Of Parts' is purely intentional. 

Cleaning Of Stands

Today we have cleaning of stands. Yesterday,

Saturday there was a game in the stadium

with the team mis-firing again, And today,

today we have cleaning of stands. Buddleia,

roses and dahlias flower in the neighbouring

gardens, and we have cleaning of stands.

This is the North Stand, the Kop. And this

is where the Ultras sing and swear and drop

pie cases, cigarette butts (though smoking is

banned), plastic bottles and chewing gum while

in the gardens, tangerine blooms sway with

an eloquence our Ultras have not got.

This is the South Stand, which is never full.

It is cold and doesn't get the sun. Its terraces are 

littered with hot dog wrappers, wooden forks, 

empty bovril, coffee, tea and hot chocolate cups. 

Its fans are fragile and motionless, rarely letting 

anyone see a spark of joy or anger.

This is the West Stand, the most expensive seats,

beloved of families whose younger kids slide

excitedly backwards and forwards. We clear up

the remains of picnic lunches, dropped chocolates,

sweet wrappers, an occasional nappy. Those happy

clapping youngsters are tomorrow's Ultras.

And this is the East Stand, it holds the away fans.

It's open at the back, so if the game's boring they

can admire our gardens with their tangerine and topiary.

It's full of plastic beer mugs, pie cases, empty vapes

burst inflatables, stickers  and torn up match tickets,

and today we have cleaning of stands.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Giants

I'm standing on no one's shoulders* this week. That's because giants has not proved a popular theme with the Dead Good blogging collective! Although I didn't propose the topic, I'm a little surprised no one else went for it. I thought there would be plenty of scope, from the magical via the metaphorical through the monumental to the mythical, but clearly I was mistaken (just as I was wrong about Blackpool being good enough to avoid relegation).

*"Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes " translates literally as "dwarves mounted on the shoulders of giants". It's a phrase normally attributed to Priscian (approx. 500 A.D.) and was well-known to scholars from medieval times onwards as a metaphor for the generational advance of intellectual knowledge or wisdom.

It was also referenced, famously, in a letter by Sir Isaac Newton in a self-deprecating attempt to explain his pre-eminence as a 17th century polymath and renaissance man: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac it was who formulated the basic laws of classical mechanics, known as Newton's First, Second and Third Laws of Motion (waiting for you just a decent web browser away).

The more scientifically-minded among you will know that during the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics were formulated as well. More standing on the shoulders of giants. And guess how many of those there are? That's right! They're known as the First, Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics... except that subsequently another principle, which underlay them all, was found to be necessary (the fourth of three) which they opted to call the Zeroth Law. Strange but true.

We will return to the Third Law of Thermodynamics later, but with all this talk of shoulders and giants I couldn't pass  up the opportunity to celebrate the fact that seventy years ago this week Blackpool FC won the 'greatest Cup Final' of all time at Wembley, beating Bolton Wanderers by 4 goals to 3. By the law of threes, it was Blackpool's third appearance in the Final (they'd lost the earlier two to Manchester United in 1948 and Newcastle United in 1951). Also by the law of threes, Stan Mortensen scored a hat-trick (the third ever player to do so in an FA Cup Final match), although our Wembley triumph has gone down in history as the Stanley Matthews final.

Wembley 2nd May 1953

I was three months old at the time and 3,000 miles away, but that game and that squad was the reason why as soon as football was on my radar (aged five), the team in tangerine was the only one for me, heroes all for a towering achievement. I have a framed rosette from that Final hanging on my living-room wall and I still get emotional every time I watch the game back on DVD. 🧡

Okay, back to the advancement of knowledge stuff. Walther Nernst, a German chemist, was building on the pioneering work of previous giants of the scientific world like Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, all renowned for their studies concerning heat, when just before World War I he developed his postulate that became the Third Law of Thermodynamics, stating that "A system's entropy approaches a constant value as its temperature approaches absolute zero ". Oh dear, I can sense your eyes glazing over, but stay with me. What you really need to know about Nernst is that he was buried three times. Now read on.

Walther Nernst 1864-1941

Born and raised in Prussia, he then went to university in Zurich and Berlin where he studied chemistry, was granted his doctorate at twenty-three, was a friend of Albert Einstein, devoted his life to the study of thermodynamics (the actual and theoretical properties of heat/cold and light/dark), was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1920, and was an outspoken opponent of Hitler and Nazism. It is said that Einstein was much influenced by and indebted to the theoretical and intellectual propositions made by "the great Nernst ". In his spare time Walther also invented the electric piano. And yes, after Nernst died in 1941, he was buried three times. The first was in Gau, where he had been living out his last few years. Later his remains were disinterred and re-buried in Berlin. Finally he was dug up once more and found his current resting-place in a cemetery at Gottingen, next to two other giants of German science (and fellow Nobel Prize winners) Max Planck and Max von Laue.

I've tried to make my latest experimental poem vaguely topical. It was Walpurgisnacht at the beginning of this week (30th April), that night when witches supposedly consort with the forces of darkness. It precedes the May Day festival named after the 8th century Saint Walpurga (big in Germany but born in Devon actually), she who converted the heathen Hun to Christianity and is said to have banished witchcraft from their lands. On Walpurgisnacht allegedly "magical girls dance and spin to the powerful tune of the devil." It has become like a second Hallowe'en for German revellers. All it needed (in my imagination) was for three-times buried Walther Nernst, that maestro of heat and cold, light and dark, to rise one last time and perform a little experimental witch-defying magic of his own. If you're reading this poem on a mobile phone, you might want to turn your device sideways (to landscape mode). Cue Walpurgis night weirdness...

On Walther Nernst Demonstrating His Third Law Of Thermodynamics As A Cheap Party Trick...

Walpurgis night in Berlin's famous Kühlekeller, full of chilling ice bar revellers, vodka flowing, frantic dancers toe-to-toeing, teeth and underwear glowing white in ultraviolet light and Kristel spinning to perfection commanding everyone's attention, continuously circling seductive in the centre of the dance-floor, exerting her field of powerful underworld magic on young Brandenburgers, levelling resistance minute by fatal minute to the point where souls begin to sway and slip away blank-eyed and careless of the cost - when suddenly Walther Nernst, impeccable in formal evening dress, materialises from a sublimating cloud of CO2, and like a latter-day saint commences his miraculous experiment on the assembly, slowing the motion down, dropping the temperature further to a frost, entropy in train, with thwarted Kristel enchained as heat, light, motion drain away until in engulfing darkness, knowing that her party's over, and right before everything stops for ever, spiteful words issue from her pretty witchy freezing blue lips:  "O, you think you're so clever, a big hero, but you're an absolute zero!"

   

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Slots

Write about  slots  they said, (never mind who 'they ' are for now), and so here I am April Foolishly tapping away on my laptop in the jewel of the north, filing (filling?) my customary slot as the Saturday Blogger with words, pictures and poetry that I hope will be worthy of your attention, when most of mine is distracted, elsewhere.  

It's local derby day II. The mighty Blackpool are playing away at Preston North End, due to kick off in a couple of hours. We won at home earlier in the season and really need the points if we are to avoid one of three relegation slots waiting at the wrong end of the Championship table. To get demoted would be a disaster (obviously) and I'm hoping that April doesn't turn out to be the cruellest month (TS Eliot allusion #1) for the Seasiders.

Give us your money!

We may stay up, we might go down. There are odds, apparently. I'm not a gambling man and consequently don't bet. I don't get the psychology of it. Therefore it concerns me that the betting industry has muscled into the world of football big time and got a grip on the pockets of football fans in the last few years, (Bet Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Bet123, 365, 24x7, 888, Bet Fred, Tom, Dick and Hurry etc).

Betting companies have bought the naming rights to football stadia, they are the shirt sponsors of many leading league clubs, and a combination of the internet and mobile phone technology have allowed matchday betting to become pervasive. I'm told it's possible to bet on pretty much anything related to a game: results, half-time and full-time scores, the timing and number of goals, the scorers and assists, number of corners, penalties, red and yellow cards and on and on. I'm sure it opens up the way to corruption, cheating and fixing as well as making it far too easy for people who can ill afford it to lose significant amounts of money. It's insidious and personally I'd ban it from the game. I'd hate for football to become a sport predicated on betting in the way horse-racing so patently is. It ruins lives. It all seems a far remove from that more innocent era of the original football pools.

Of course I realise it's not just a sport-related phenomenon. A lot of the adverts I see on TV these days are for betting 'games', online bingo and casino plays. When a mobile phone can act as a bingo card or worse, a slot machine, then the one-armed bandits can virtually hold the world to ransom. I guess I have a puritan streak, but I'm shocked that this form of gambling can be marketed as entertainment and even as a social activity.

Just when you thought it was safe...

Talking of shocks and social activities, I couldn't resist sharing this image, purporting to be of The Scratcher (alias Margaret Thatcher) doing an impromptu DJing slot for Easter bank holidaymakers on Margate Sands (her dirty fingernails, connecting nothing with nothing, blah blah blah - TS Eliot allusion #2). Whoever it was said she can never be dead enough spoke for me. Infamous woman.

By the way, I'm not going in person to the match today. Last year I got hit in the side of the head by a coin thrown by Preston fans. Unacceptable behaviour. I'm planning to watch the game live on TV in Blackpool's Number 4 pub, hoping for the best while anticipating the worst. Come on you Pool. (I fear a 3-2 score line.)

To check out, here's my latest, an acid little poem:

Better Luck Next Time (Sucker)

Roll up! Roll up! So many plays to choose.

No punter is ever refused. So are you in?

Roll up! Roll up! What have you got to lose?

Your house, your job, your wife and kids,

your shirt, your soul, your life. You bet. We win.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Frisson

The simple English dictionary definition of frisson is: an emotional thrill; (and oh yes, I do have a simple English dictionary...as portable companion to a weightier and more complex tome). However, frisson is a word of French origin, and for our friends across the channel it means a shiver or a shudder.

My challenge, then, is to find out whether a blog - or more realistically the poem within a blog - can induce the thrill of a shiver, shock or shudder in you, gentle readers. We shall see in due course.

exiting (sic)  times

First, though, there are several reasons why we might be about to experience emotional thrills in the week ahead. Monday sees phase two of the great unlocking in England's green and pleasant. Throw open all the doors. We'll be able to mingle and hug, just not too intensely; drink beer inside a pub, indulge in non-takeaway pizza* and curry, to be enjoyed immensely with friends at leisure and with no washing-up; drop into a cafe for a latte while out on the non-essential shop; and for followers of the Mighty (that's Blackpool FC to you, aka the Seasiders or even the Tangerines), we've got two League One play-off semi-finals to look forward to, with fans being allowed back inside grounds to watch the games. Deep joy.

If, as fans, we want to get dizzier still, there may even be another play-off final at Wembley at the end of the month, for you know what they say: "You can't beat Blackpool at this time of year!" What an away-day that would be for those of us who haven't travelled more than a couple of miles from our homes in a very long time. We dare to dream the tangerine dream.

*Sad footnote to the above: the Pizza Express in the jewel of the north shut during the first wave of pandemic a year ago and has never re-opened its doors. It's now gutted, as am I, for an American Hot and a cold Peroni had been affordable and favourite treats every few weeks since the 1970s. (I've probably consumed a thousand of them and sense a future blog on that score.)

But enough of this wide opening preamble. It's time for some cheap thrills. Here's the poem as promised,  conjured from the darkest quarter of the imaginarium, chock full of sex and death, (eros and thanatos if you'd prefer) and quite OTT.  I'm taking a chance with it, as it's a narrative way outside my comfort zone, so I hope it ticks at least one of your shiver, shock or shudder boxes. Do let me know...

That Long Strange Trip Advisor Poem

State facilities rating (scale 0 through 5):

Staff are more than courteous, I've been

treated like a queen. Room basic but clean, 

bed firm, and breakfast to die for.

They offered me a priest but I said

send me the other one in his stead.

They didn't understand. And I only smoke

after a good fuck. Still, a lucky five stars. 

Reason for visit (e.g. business or leisure):

Mercy. Where do I begin, honey?  I was

a teenage stunt cunt for a porn film pimp

until I married a rich dude; just my luck

he turned out to be another kinky mother.

You any idea how hard a man can get 

when you put a ligature around his neck 

and pull it tighter as he shoots his load?

One time I figured I'd just keep pulling...

...his death spasm made my insides flip,

and sent a thrill right up my spine. 

No better feeling, plus I got to keep

his bucks. Two years later, different state

same tricks. I was getting a taste for it,

rich man, wild sex gone wrong, no blame.

So it went on. I didn't care if his ass was

pink, brown, yellow or black just so long

as he had money in the bank and hot lust

for me in his heart. Then the Feds began

to join up the dots, got bang on my trail

soon after number five: arrest, trial, jail.

Thought I 'd rot in there, but seems not,

and that's the reason for me visiting here.

Business or leisure? A bit of both, I'd say.

 

Additional comments (this part optional):

The Black Widow fries tonight, a hot date

with destiny. I guess a lot of white ass 

wants to see the ghost of electricity howl 

in the bones of my face (thanks Bob)!

My fanny's on the line so I hope they all

come at once. I don't want no limp dicks

witnessing my final coup de grace!

Thank you for completion. Have a nice day.

And thank you, gentle readers. The emotional rollercoaster awaits, S ;-)

Read More

Moon In June Too

What a happy few days in the jewel of the north, at least for those of a tangerine persuasion! Passion combined with principle wins out in the end.

I refer, of course, to the announcement from the Receiver on Thursday that Simon Sadler (a Blackpool-born multi-millionaire and confirmed Seasider) has acquired a 96.2% stake in Blackpool FC (the other 3.8% being held, historically, by a raft of over a hundred small investors). When a wealthy lifelong Blackpool fan buys your club and says it's a privilege to become not just its owner but its custodian, then all the signs are that we can look forward to better days at Bloomfield Road.

With the arrival of Mr Sadler, the spectre of any Oyston involvement is banished for good after 30 years of hurt - and now the rebuilding process can move on apace. I am confident that our new owner will prove to be that ethical custodian of the club we have been hoping for. All I would add is that it would be fitting if Valeri Belokon could be offered some titular position - honorary Club President for instance - in recognition of his original investment and drive to promote the club and his principled action in pursuing the Oystons through the courts to achieve by civil means what the football authorities should have accomplished years ago if their duty to ensure proper governance in English football had been discharged effectively.

There was another (less momentous) announcement from the club on the same day, revealing that I, your Saturday blogger, have been appointed as the first dedicated Supporters' Liaison Officer at Blackpool FC. As unpaid dream jobs go, I couldn't have asked for better than this daunting but incredibly exciting position at the football club I love. It's a good thing I'm retired! This isn't the place to go into details (I don't want to bore the pants off my readers) but I think the SLO plays a vital role (regardless of who does it) in any well-run football club and I will give it my very best endeavours. Wish me luck.

Tangerine Moon - 13th June

I wasn't quite sure how I would approach the week's  Moon In June  theme, but I suppose the intent was to get our band of Dead Good Bloggers reflecting on the role of rhyme in poetry. You will have gathered from reading the poems I've posted here over the years, or have maybe heard me read aloud (if you frequent poetry gigs), that I'm not a big fan of regular metre or very prescribed poetic structures. There are exceptions. I quite like the sonnet form in particular and the villanelle (and have written quite a few in each mode). There is an element of technical challenge involved that, for me, elevates them above the rhyming couplet and even terza rima.

I hope that doesn't sound dismissive of regular verse, the iambic pentameter et al; it is just personal preference. There are patently many excellent poets and poems employing regular metre, poetry which touches the reader by force of the language used and the emotions or ideas expressed.

Conversely, I don't necessarily embrace everything set out in free-form. I have been giving it a bit of serious thought with the current theme in mind... how for instance would I classify a typical poem of my own (excluding those ballads, odes, pantoums, sonnets et cetera)? If I had to pick a label, I would probably go for contemporary lyricism, by which I mean a flowing structure which doesn't have a fixed rhyme scheme or meter but is free verse albeit with a rhythmic flow, employing a combination of mutating meter (line length and stress) and occasional rhymes (internal and end) plus a lot of assonance to achieve an organic effect. (Heck, time out in Pseuds' Corner beckons!)

As a bit of light relief, I've fettled up a deliberately humorous poem today, poking gentle fun at all the rhyming Simons and Ursulas of verse. I love you really.  As a concept, it reflects the age-old timbre of street campaigns, seen recently in everything from Brexit through Global Warming to the dreaded Trumpkin; in content it delivers in full on today's topic.  Let's call it a timely protest by the Rhymesters' Union ;-) I hope you like it...

Ursula of Verse :-)

Rhymesters' Union Rant!

Protesting rhymesters
Raise the chant:

What do we want?
The moon in June!

Rhyming protestors
Rant in cant:

And when do we want it?
Any time soon!

What do we want? The moon in June!
And when do we want it? Any time soon!

The moon in June, the moon in June.
Any time soon, yes any time soon.

The timing, protesters,
Could not have been cuter,
But as for the rhyming -
The less said the better!

Thanks for reading, y'all. S ;-)

Read More

What If...

Speculation is mounting over what might happen next in the twin dramas of BREXIT (you're all familiar with this national pantomime) and OXIT (the more parochial campaign by Blackpool fans to rid our football club of the odious Oystons). Appropriately, this week's blog theme is What If...

That being the case, I thought I'd recycle a piece that I wrote for the Blackpool Gazette last week. Regular and long-time readers of my Saturday Blogs might recall that Philip K Dick is one of my favourite novelists of the 20th century. He's not much read these days but some of his works have found widespread fame and appeal as films or TV series - Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, The Man In The High Castle. This latter, among other things, posed the question: What if Germany and Japan had won World War II and divided the free world up between them, what might life under the evil axis regime have been like?

That imaginative leap set me thinking about a reverse scenario: What if Owen Oyston had not been allowed to buy Blackpool Football Club back in 1988, how might the fortunes of the club and the town have progressed differently over the last thirty years? What follows is a short story, my brief fictionalised account of what could have transpired in the jewel of the north if history had taken another, kinder course. I don't think it's necessary to be a fan of Blackpool FC or even football to enjoy the fantasy and to appreciate the moral:

‘The Man In The High Penthouse: an alternate history of Blackpool Football Club’
(with apologies to Philip K Dick)

From his vantage point on high, he gazed out across the magnificent bowl of the Bloomfield Road arena. For several days now he had been in reflective mood. A late December sky was turning tangerine as the sun sank below the level of the Billy Ayre Stand, casting a lengthening shadow across the hallowed turf. The wind began to stir a chill into the air and so he stepped back into the warm confines of his penthouse suite and pulled the sliding doors closed against the elements.

He stood there for some moments, looking out across the stadium, home of the Mighty, and cast his mind back thirty years. In 1988 a wind of change had been blowing straight off the Irish Sea and through the broken-down stands of Bloomfield Road, decrepit home of a famous football club whose luck had worn thin, whose very future was on the line. There had been an attempt by a local businessman to snap the club up for £1. The prospect of Blackpool FC being taken over by a single entrepreneur reputed to have an eye for the main chance was not an attractive one. That was the point at which the organisation known simply and affectionately as The Ten had stepped up as a consortium of wealthy international Blackpool fans and had tabled a successful counter-bid. He was proud to have been a part of that.

Bloomfield Road stadium in an alternate universe

Over the years, their vision and investment had both restored and transformed Blackpool into one of the finest and best-run football clubs in the English League. Working in conjunction with the local council they had rebuilt the Bloomfield Road site to comprise a 25,000 seat football ground, cinema complex, ten-pin bowling alley, Blackpool FC museum, club shop and live music venue with bars and restaurants. Working in partnership with the new University of the Fylde in South Shore they had redeveloped Squires Gate as a state of the art training complex for use by both football club, the university and the townspeople. They were rightly proud of their youth academy which not only provided a stream of talented players into the Blackpool squad but also generated significant revenues when players were sold on to their rivals in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow and London.

As good as the realisation of all these plans had been for the town and surrounding area, buoying it up as a resort when the appeal of foreign package holidays began to eat into Blackpool’s traditional trade, the real testament to the commitment of The Ten had been the gradual and then sustained success of the Mighty on the field culminating in Blackpool becoming English League Champions for the first time ever in 2011, which success earned the consortium the accolade of The Perfect Ten.

From a low point in Division Four in the late 1980s, Billy Ayre steered a team captained by Trevor Sinclair up through the divisions. The Seasiders were promoted to the Championship in 1993 and reached the League Cup Final in 1994 where they lost to Manchester United at Wembley (not for the first time). Jimmy Armfield was appointed Director of Football at Bloomfield Road and was instrumental in helping Ayre and his bright young Seasiders with free-scoring Scott Taylor clinch promotion to the Premier League before the end of the millennium. Ill health forced Ayre to retire but his successor Steve McMahon, backed by shrewd investment from The Ten, consolidated the team in tangerine as a vibrant force once more in the top flight of English football. A second FA Cup Final victory, this time over Portsmouth at the new Wembley in 2008, was no less than the Mighty deserved. Bloomfield Road was a footballing mecca, regularly full to capacity on match days and frequently a busy hub of activity during the rest of the week.

The pinnacle of success for the club came with victory at Old Trafford on the last day of the 2010/11 season, a result which saw Blackpool pip United for the league title that had so long eluded them, that they had last come close to winning as far back as 1956. It was an emotional day for McMahon, Armfield, their jubilant players, the dedicated members of The Ten, Blackpool’s vociferous tangerine army and all who had dared dream that with the right groundwork, shrewd investment and infectious spirit of ambition, almost anything was possible. It was an achievement that would sustain the club and the town for years to come.

He let out a nostalgic sigh as he closed the blinds, shuttering the darkened stadium from view. He had a New Year’s Eve dinner with representatives of The Ten to look forward to in a few hours and then a home fixture against fellow title-chasers Liverpool beckoned on the morrow, with the electric frontline trio of Barkhuizen, Miller and Vardy all vying to net Blackpool’s 50th goal of the season. There was still an hour or two to kill. He filled his tumbler with whisky, reached up and pulled a favourite album by the Ministry from the rack, a reminder of the year this amazing trip had begun. He slid the vinyl from its sleeve, placed it on the turntable, cued the record and settled back with his drink to enjoy The Land of Rape and Honey.

The end (or is it?)

For a poem on the week's theme of What If... I'm making a radical switch to the world of reincarnated souls - and of a cat's soul in particular - but I couldn't resist first sharing this photograph and caption with you. It cracks me up in a Cheshire smile whenever I look at it, so I hope it works for you too:


HIS COMING HAD BEEN FORETOLD IN ANCIENT MURALS

It's not a random image, by the way. The relevance will become clear. Okay, onto this latest poetic product of the imaginarium. I won't give any more of a preamble because the poem, if it's doing its job properly, should manage to convey all that's required; (or you can always Google some of the references). Here goes...

Cat As Trophe
What if I really am,
as hypnotherapy suggests,
the reincarnated soul of Sam,
the Farriners' rat-catching cat cremated
as my luck turned bad
in London's greatest conflagration
of which I was prime cause?

What does it say, this relegation
for my sins to human form,
about the great wheel of existence?
That cat is higher on the path
to perfect being than is man.

I must confess I ran from rats
in those mad final days;
avoid them like the plague
was the word in the Lane
for they brought a filthy,
creeping death across the city

That fateful night
saw me take flight from infestation,
a failed attempt,
for in my haste I overturned
a proving case before the open stove.
All was soon ablaze.
Crazed, I died in that inferno
which in three days
burned half of London to the ground -
a happy consequence
in one respect,
for fire purged the plague,
but not one I can hold to my account.

Thus in atonement for my falling off
I'm bound to live as blameless as man can,
proprietor of this cattery in Battersea,
keeping my knowledge close,
tending my foundling friends.
I hope by good deeds I will grow to good,
reverse the flow of fortune's wheel
and at some future date return,
restored felicitous to feline form again.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Sir Owain and The Tangerine Knight

The blog theme this week? Balladry. My initial reaction? "Oh b*ll*cks!"

I've only ever composed one ballad in my time and that was way back in school days, aged eleven. We had to read out loud around the class The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (already referenced by our dear Scottish blogger yesterday) and as holiday homework we got to write a ballad of our own over the Christmas break. My reaction? Then as now - see above!

To suggest that the task blighted the festive season would not be entirely true however, as I didn't set to until the day before school commenced again. My composition was a last-minute effort (well, more like six hours if I recall) and I didn't enjoy the experience one bit. I can't even remember what I wrote about, which is very unusual; the fact I have erased all memory of the contents of said ballad just goes to show what a deeply unrewarding exercise it was! I might have vowed at the time that I would never write another ballad. I don't remember, but it is highly likely. Oh, I got a commendation for what I wrote, but that didn't make any difference.

Balladry then, what's it all about? The word ballad derives from the medieval French chansons balladee (danced songs); ballad shares its etymological root with ballet - and the significant features of early balladry were narrative verse (usually written in couplets with a refrain), set to music to be sung and danced to, almost a form of musical theatre. Over time the dancing was dropped leaving the ballad as a sung or even spoken narrative - and it survives to this day in somewhat reduced circumstances as slow-paced, usually romantic pop music.

In its heyday (15th to 19th centuries), three distinct classes of ballads emerged. Firstly came the Traditional (or popular) Ballads as devised and widely performed by wandering minstrels in medieval Europe. These were often about famous events or people, like folk-hero Robin Hood (who had a great many ballads written about him) and were akin to an oral history of the times. One of the most famous and considered a fine example is The Ballad of Chevy Chase, supposedly composed by the Lancashire-born minstrel Richard Sheale in the mid-16th century.

Then with the arrival of the printing-press came the Broadside (or broadsheet) Ballads, mass-produced on poor quality paper and sold in street markets and at fairs by hawkers. These ballads were quite often scurrilous or seditious, like The Tragical Ballad of the Lady Who Fell In Love with her Serving-Man, the precursors of pulp fiction and soap opera, if you will.

Finally, in the late 18th century, the 'proper' poets got to grips with the form and the Literary Ballad was born, courtesy of the likes of Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Coleridge and Wordsworth.

This week's poetic effort (remember, I detest the ballad, so I use the word effort advisedly) takes its cue from a masterpiece of medieval literature, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. That epic poem (author unknown) wasn't in fact a ballad at all, but a superb alliterative poem of over 2,500 lines in 101 verses.

I haven't gone to that much trouble (as will become apparent) but I have fashioned a hasty spoof and I offer an excerpt below from Sir Owain and The Tangerine Knight...

First, though, I should share some background explanation to this spoof - for those of you who don't share my constant preoccupation with the tragi-comedy that is Blackpool Football Club.

In as few words as possible, then: Owen Oyston, flamboyant local business man, bought Blackpool FC in 1988 for £1. For most of the thirty years he's owned it, the club has struggled in the bottom two divisions of the football league, hampered by lack of ambition and investment on behalf of the owner (who is not of the same order of selfless benefactor to football club and community as the likes Jack Heywood at Wolves or Jack Walker at Blackburn). Change came in 2006 when a Latvian banker became a 20% shareholder in the club (apparently with an agreement to up that share to 50%). Valeri Belokon's ambition and investment in the team and the stadium helped to elevate Blackpool FC back into the top flight of English football for the first time in forty years. He said it was his intention to get us there in five years. In fact it took just four - a fantastic achievement. Owen Oyston is on record as saying "we wouldn't be in the strong financial position we're in without Valeri Belokon."

Curious then that as soon as the 'holy grail' of Premier League status and its associated rich revenue streams had been attained, Belokon apparently found himself side-lined by the majority share-holder, various agreements appear to have been reneged on and the Oystons are alleged to have diverted many millions of pounds that should have gone to the football club into their other businesses. Lack of ambition and lack of investment soon reasserted themselves as the modus operandi and Blackpool FC plunged from top flight to bottom division in five disastrous seasons. Blackpool fans have not taken this cynical management lying down. Most of us are disgusted by the Oystons' poor custodianship of our football club and are boycotting until Owen agrees to sell up and go. Nor has Mr Belokon. The Latvian has taken the Oystons to the High Court under the Companies Act claiming unfair prejudice and seeking to expose the Oystons' business practices in the process. The five-week trial is about to enter its final week. We await the outcome with keen interest. This could be the game-changer that finally triggers Oxit!

I hope these closing cantos and final couplet do not prove a jinx. Hear our voice! We want our club back. Fingers crossed...

Sir Owain and The Tangerine Knight  - Cantos X-XII
Blight spread like plague through Blackpool town,
Football's fortunes came tumbling down,
But funds for use in time of need
Had been diverted without heed,
If not illegal then at least unethical,
The motive unmistakeable -
No thought of putting football first.
Our famous club was sadly curst.

When fans perceived the owners' greed,
Then Owain Out became the creed:
Give not a penny more to his regime
While staying loyal to the team
Perforce the order of the day.
Fans in their thousands stayed away.
But supporters rallying for change, alone
Persuaded not Sir Owain to atone.

Then the man who'd fired our great revival
Stepped forth as Owains' doughty rival.
The magnate seeming in denial,
'Truth and honour' went on trial.
A costly battle thus was fought
For justice in the highest court.
What was revealed soon made it clear
There could be but one winner here.

So after thirty long, hard years of Old Sir Owain acting like a feudal Lord,
Thanks to that Knight in Tangerine our football club was finally restored.

Thanks for reading. Have an intrepid week, S ;-)

Read More

Simple Blues

I must be suffering from Obsessive Blogging Disorder! It's just shy of midnight and I haven't had time to think, let alone write - but I don't want to shirk my duty to the Saturday Blog, so here's a token multi-media submission on the theme of Blues:

Quote of the day:
"Who would have thought supporting a football club could be so difficult?"

Image of the day:

Sea Of Hull Art Installation

Audiolink of the day: surprise fabs demo

Normal service will be resumed next week, S ;-)

Read More

Green Shoots?

"Most reasonable minded people will see the green shoots of recovery are showing"...

Bloomfield Road visited by aliens?

Thus spake the chairman of our "cash-rich club" (allegedly the envy of the football league) when he broke radio silence recently to explain in a string of cliches that, despite Blackpool FC flirting with a second successive relegation - this time to the bottom division a mere six years after lighting up the Premier League - he will get it right (although he didn't manage to do so last time or the time before that or the time before that....) Plus, his father is a self-made multi-millionaire who has told us: "I really believe we can get back to winning ways and return to the top flight. For my part, I am dedicating my life to achieving the success that we all want."

It would be churlish of us to doubt their wisdom, their vision and their collective determination to rebuild the fortunes of our football club - were not those very attributes as hard to evidence as the multi-millions the club is supposed to be worth; and, by the way, they are weeks late in filing the company results for the year to May 2015 and the club president Valeri Belokon is taking High Court action against them.

Therefore I say: Churls of the world unite. 'Tis the season, with good reason, to be sceptical.

[This week I am perforce a silent poet - self-gagging at the dictate of jurisprudence.]

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Must Try Harder!

This week's theme is Must Try Harder and so you're in for a helping of Blackpool footballing folklore - but first, congratulations to the team, who apparently did try harder this afternoon and who have notched up a handy 5-0 win over Scunthorpe (although I wasn't there to witness it on account of my ethical boycott), thereby lifting Blackpool temporarily at least out of the relegation zone.

This will be a blog of two halves and a contrasting tale of two 'legends' of the game, the knighted and the benighted. Inferences are there to be drawn, for those who wish to draw them, about the ugly truth that entwines itself around the beautiful game.

John Owen Oyston, a lifelong Blackpool supporter, took over Blackpool FC in May 1987 when it was on the brink of bankruptcy. The Tangerine Apocrypha states that he bought it for £1. Blackpool was a struggling 3rd division club at the time, with gates of around 4,000. Owen likes to say that he saved the club from going under and in one sense, of course, that is correct (although other options were available). He has been saving the club since 1987.

Nearly 30 years on.... Blackpool is a struggling 3rd division club with gates of around 4,000 and Owen Oyston is a multi-millionaire. What is the point that I am trying to make? Read on.

For the majority of those nearly 30 years, Blackpool has been in the bottom two divisions of the Football League, scrapping to get by; and twice during that period Owen has tried to relocate the club so he could sell Bloomfield Road (our football ground since 1899) for commercial redevelopment. We now have the stadium registered as an ACV - Asset of Community Value - the first one in Blackpool, I believe. The only significant change in the footballing fortunes of the club came in 2006 with the arrival, as a 20% shareholder, of wealthy Latvian Valeri Belokon. His investment (some of it in the form of loans) enabled the renovation of the stadium and the purchase of key players who were instrumental in Blackpool's rise to the Premier League in May 2010.

We were in the top flight for only one season (though shrewd investment in a good reserve goalkeeper in the January transfer window almost certainly would have ensured our survival in the top flight). We almost got straight back the following year, losing the play-off final at Wembley much against the run of play on the day. Since then, despite a financial legacy from that year in the Premier League of over £100 million, Belokon has been side-lined and is currently pursuing a High Court case against the Oystons under section 994 of the Companies Act, the perception is that not a great deal of the Premier League millions has gone into the footballing side of Oyston's business empire and that which has been invested in the football club has not been wisely placed - poor managerial appointments, an over-reliance on short-term contracts and loan players.

The paradigm changed as a result of that season in the Premier League. The majority of the 15,000+ fans who enjoyed that short rise to the top regard the subsequent lack of vision, ambition and appropriate investment in the club by Owen Oyston and his son Karl (chairman of Blackpool FC) as the squandering of a legacy - and many a life-long Blackpool supporter will not step inside Bloomfield Road again until the Oystons are no longer part of Blackpool FC.

Owen has conceded: "The directors of Blackpool Football Club, and obviously I am included, have made some bad decisions, the consequences of which we are suffering from." He also said: "I really believe that we can get back to winning ways and return to the top flight. For my part, I am dedicating my life to achieving the success that we all want."

Words are meaningless (except mine in this blog, of course!) unless they are backed up by actions.

Unfortunately, there is not the merest hint of a sign from the Oystons that there is any ambition, a long-term plan, or the astute investment to back it up, to lift Blackpool out of this slide down the divisions towards non-league football. Maybe the undeclared goal, as rumoured, is to wind the club up and sell or build on the land. I hope not.

Football clubs are not just businesses (though there is nothing wrong with investors making a reasonable return). They are social enterprises. If Blackpool FC goes to the wall, it is a community that suffers. It is we the fans who, over decades, have poured both our emotions and our hard-earned wages into watching the team, buying the shirts, scarves, TV sports packages. Our money funds this 'industry' and without the fans - the real heart and soul of any football club - there would be nothing worth. If Owen Oyston is the lifelong Blackpool supporter he claims to be, then as majority shareholder he needs to take decisive action to preserve any good his legacy may represent - even if that means standing his son Karl down as chairman; even if that means selling the club to new owners who are prepared to invest with ambition and a respect for the proud history of Blackpool FC and its deeply hurting fans.

All I can say is Owen Oyston - must try harder!

Okay, it's half time. Let's move on from the ridiculous to the sublime...

Stanley Matthews, born in Hanley, was originally a Stoke City (and England) player. He was in the RAF during World War Two and stationed in Blackpool so he played by invitation in Blackpool's wartime team from 1941 onwards. When hostilities ceased and League football eventually recommenced it wasn't long before Matthews signed from Stoke and joined Blackpool FC officially in the summer of 1947. He was part of the magical Blackpool team of the 1950s, usually finishing in the top half of Division One (without ever winning the League Title) and contesting three famous Wembley cup-finals.  He drew thousands to see him wherever he played and he continued to play for the Seasiders until 1961, clocking up 440 appearances for the club before re-signing for Stoke City. He then played for Stoke, at the highest level, until he was fifty - a quite exceptional feat. He was made a CBE while still at Blackpool and received a knighthood in the year he 'retired', for he actually went on playing the game he loved in veterans' matches until he was seventy.

Stanley was arguably the greatest footballer not only of his own era but of all time. We were so lucky to have him playing for Blackpool for the best part of 20 years and the best part of his career. He was always a perfect gentleman on and off the field. He was never sent off, in fact he wasn't even once booked in his whole playing career. He became a global ambassador for the beautiful game and devoted much of his out-of-season time from the 1950s right through to the 1970s to coach poor children in various parts of Africa. In 1975 he ignored apartheid and formed a team of black schoolboys in the township of Soweto. They became known as 'Stan's Men'. When they said it was their dream to play in Brazil, he organised the tour for them through his connections.

Always looking out for the good of the game, he followed the technical developments of South American football with interest and was openly but politely critical of the FA and its parochial view of the game that Britain gave to the world.

One of my favourite quotes from his (very readable) autobiography concerns the FA and that famous 1953 cup final, where only 12,000 of the 100,000 tickets were allocated to Blackpool supporters: "I couldn't make up my mind whether they were dunderheads or simply didn't care about the genuine supporters who were the lifeblood of the game."

He became an honorary vice-president of Blackpool FC (goodness only knows what he would have made of the ravages besetting the club right now) and the sporting world and more mourned his death in 2000. His legend lives on and a new documentary film is in the offing.

There you have it then - two working-class lads who 'made it' in their different ways. As I said soon after kick-off, I would leave it to you to draw your own inferences. And so, just before the final whistle, this week's poem, written in tribute to a boyhood hero - that footballing genius and all-round good man Stanley Matthews.

I wrote it originally for the Imperial Hotel's Visitors In Verse project last year and offer it here re-titled and in slightly modified (and improved) form.

Stan For All Seasons
He was blown into town by the fortunes of war,
fell in love with the Fylde and would train on its shore;
wore the tangerine jersey of Blackpool with pride
when the Seasiders flowed, an unstoppable tide,
to the spine-tingling cry of "Come on you 'Pool!"

Matthews played on a diet of strong tea and toast,
he steered clear of the booze and he rarely smoked,
made the most of his talents through fitness and balance;
this wizard of dribble, our lightning mid-fielder
left many a decent full-back for a fool.

Twice beneath the twin towers Matthews tasted defeat
playing for Blackpool FC - but in May Fifty-Three
his will to succeed would not be denied;
he helped win us the cup and grown Seasiders cried
- a timeless moment of pure sporting cool.

The first player to be knighted while still in the game,
Sir Stanley stayed focussed and didn't court fame;
he gave up his summers to coach the poor boys
in the slums of Soweto and Dar-es-Salaam,
using football to challenge minority rule.

Matthews carried on playing for fun, once retired
till, injured at seventy, was heard to retort:
"a promising career cut tragically short!"
This man for all seasons deserves his renown,
for in football's rich sporting crown he is the jewel.

Thanks for reading. I'm heading for the showers! Have a good week, S;-)

Read More

Tangerine - Follow Your Dream

I was born and grew up in West Africa, 3,000 miles  - two continents, one desert and an ocean - away from my nearest English League team. That would probably have been Portsmouth, which was where my Mum came from. Her family were big Pompey supporters. Her Dad had been sacked for taking the Saturday off work to go and watch Pompey in the 1939 Cup-Final. He and his mates had asked for the day off and were refused. His mates threw a 'sicky', lied to their boss, went to Wembley and kept their jobs. My granddad refused to lie about going up for the Final and lost his. Pompey wasn't going to be my team, however.

My Dad came from a small town in Derbyshire, was a rugby enthusiast, played it through school and university and never had very much time for football. Regardless, rugby wasn't going to be my game. (More on that later.)

I was born in 1953, just a few months before Blackpool won the FA Cup. From the moment I was old enough to take an interest in football and understand anything about it - probably aged 5 - I was a hooked. It was a Boys' Own thing, the romance of those 1953 cup exploits by Harry Johnston, Stanley Matthews, Stan Mortensen, Jackie Mudie, Ernie Taylor and the men in tangerine. Blackpool's famous football team was the one for me. I was going to play for them one day! (Of course, as it turned out I was never talented enough to make it as a professional footballer.)

Back in England from West Africa, we lived in Peterborough for several years and then Cambridge for several more, both of them a long way from Blackpool! The first league game I ever went to was Peterborough v Swindon at London Road. My best mate's Dad took us. (I told you my father had no time for football.) The Posh won 3-2 and it was magical to go home and listen to the result on the radio - some compensation for hearing that Blackpool had lost 4-0 at home to Villa that same afternoon.

Later, in Cambridge I went to a rugby-playing secondary school, no football allowed except in our break-time. That didn't stop my schoolmates and I from forming a football team and playing in the local Sunday League - though the Headmaster would never recognise our existence and refused to read our results out with all the rugby results at Monday assembly. I lived quite near to the ground of Cambridge City, so we used to go and watch the Lillywhites even though they were a non-league team, in preference to Cambridge United who got admitted to the football league. It was all about community. When I wasn't playing or watching football I was playing Subbuteo - Blackpool, naturally - and following the fluctuating fortunes of my tangerine dream team from afar.

The first opportunity to watch the mighty 'pool live came in 1970 at Oxford, last game of the season. We lost 2-0! I'd been hoping for more of the rampaging stuff that (so I read in the paper) saw the team secure promotion to Division One the previous Monday when they'd trounced PNE 3-0 at Deepdale no less; (Fred Pickering's famous hat-trick night). But at least I did see Pickering, Suddick and Hutchinson in action, plus Jimmy Armfield in his penultimate season for the club.

For three years I was at Warwick University and living in Coventry, by which time Tommy Hutchinson had been sold to Coventry City. So I used to watch Tommy and the Sky Blues at their old Highfield Road ground playing Division One football while Blackpool under Stokoe and Potts struggled in vain to get back up out of Division Two. (It was to take nearly forty years.)

After university I lived and worked in London and saw Blackpool when I could, mostly at Brentford, Fulham, Millwall (scary place) and Orient, though there were at least a couple of visits to Stamford Bridge in there somewhere. Came the '80s and marriage and children and the dream team faded to the background somewhat as my adopted second club, Coventry City, enjoyed some heady times.

But fortunes fall and rise and this side of the millennium my beloved Blackpool has been on the up again, so with time and disposable income on my side I started watching them regularly. They took me to Wembley three times and up and down the M1/M6/M55 'exile run' every other Saturday (and some Tuesday nights) for years after I'd become a season-ticket holder at Bloomfield Road. Driving into Blackpool used to feel like  coming home - although I'd never lived here - and watching the Seasiders play in the top flight of English football again was something of a dream come true.

I worked for over thirty years for Kodak but the photographic industry has shrunk to almost nothing with the rise of digital technology so when I turned 60 I took a voluntary redundancy package and early retirement. That allowed me to buy a little house in Blackpool just a stone's throw from the football stadium. It was going to be a week-end base to ease the pressure of that 450-mile round-trip but after a period of domestic turpitude it became my permanent home.

Blackpool FC's problems of the last few seasons have been well-chronicled elsewhere. Suffice to say that five years ago we were riding high in the Premier League and now we're in the relegation zone of the third division. The owners of the club have not proved ideal custodians of the social enterprise that is Blackpool FC and a legacy has been squandered. Blackpool supporters are living the nightmare at the moment. I was going to spend my retirement years living by the sea, writing novels and enjoying watching my team play. There hasn't been much to enjoy recently. So I joined Blackpool Supporters' Trust  upon its formation last summer, prompted by an ever-growing dissatisfaction with the way the club, our club, was being run. For the last year I've been putting my energies into the Trust, first as press officer and then as chairman, trying to help turn the nightmare back into a tangerine dream again. It's going to be a long haul, but the supporters are the heart and soul of Blackpool Football Club and we will reclaim it for this and future generations of fans.

I've not yet written my definitive football poem (though I did write one about Stanley Matthews for an Imperial Hotel poetry project last year), so I'll sign off my 50th Saturday Blog with Tangerine, featuring Led Zeppelin in one of their more reflective moments. You can also listen to it via the YouTube link below.

Tangerine
Measuring a summer's day,
I only find it slips away to grey.
The hours they bring me pain.
Tangerine, Tangerine,
Living reflection from a dream.
I was her love,
She was my queen,
And now a thousand years between.

Thinking how it used to be,
Does she still remember times like these,
To think of us again?
And I do.
Tangerine, Tangerine,
Living reflection from a dream.
I was her love,
She was my queen,
And now a thousand years between.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XdDq_E34Cc

Thanks very much for reading #50. Have a good week, S ;-)

Read More