Two weeks ago it was Frankie's 6th birthday, and to mark the event we arranged for a dozen-strong hand-picked flashmob of local infants to come round for a couple of hours and lay waste to the house under the thinly-disguised pretence of taking part in a pirate-themed birthday party. My specific areas of responsibility included Pass the Parcel, which passed off without incident, unless you count the mysterious overnight dissappearance of several of the nowadays obligatory inter-layer prizes (I could have sworn they were in there when I prepared the parcel the day before, although admittedly several European-style lagers had been consumed at the time). This oversight occasioned tearful recriminations and very nearly a full-scale riot, only prevented by Charlotte appearing at the eleventh hour brandishing a paperbag full of promises and lollipops.
Other highlights included a Treasure Hunt (during which I got to win back some of the credibility lost during the Pass the Parcel, managing to successfully herd the entire gathering seven times across a criss-cross course taking in each of the downstairs rooms three times, and even managing to remember where I had hidden the Treasure). There was also an impromptu game of hide-and-seek, occasioned by the dissappearance of someone's three-year-old brother, who, after a five-minute room-by-room scouring of the house amid rising panic, emerged from the locked upstairs toilet wondering what all the fuss was about. This incident came with approximately half-an-hour left, and actually (once we had realised the errant toddler had not in fact wandered out onto the A6 to take his chances with the buses) came as a welcome diversion, given that we had by then entirely run out of scheduled party games and were facing the real possibility of having to supervise a bulging houseful of tiny sugar-overloaded houseguests for fully half an hour, unassisted and Without Any Plan Whatsoever. I was all for hitting the post-party stock of strong drink and/or putting in a call to Childline, but fortunately Charlotte, who is made of sterner stuff, came to the rescue again, producing apparently from nowhere a box labelled 'Pin the Parrot on the Pirate' and, aided only by force of will and the dwindling reserves from the emergency lollipop bag, restoring some semblance of order just in time for the arrival of The Parents.
An hour later the last of the guests had departed and Frankie could get on with the serious business of opening his presents. These included (courtesy of his Tyneside-based grandparents) a Newcastle United hat and scarf, which made its match-day debut last Saturday, not at St James Park (that will come, mabe next year) but at Moss Lane, for the match of the day in the Blue Square Conference- Altrincham versus York City. The match had been chosen for the accessibility of the ground by public transport (I figured if the match was rubbish at least there would be an exciting train journey to look back on), also the stature of the visiting team, who are making a strong push for promotion and could be relied upon to bring a sizeable crowd (but what with York being a fairly prosperous University town and everything, probably not too many outright nutcases).
The Northern Train network delivered its part of the deal faultlessly, dispatching us in Altrincham at 1PM, at which point I realised that my habitual pre-match routine of finding the likeliest-looking hostelry and steadily seeing off three or four pre-match libations was not one likely to find favour with Frankie, whose ambitions for pre-match refreshment were limited to a carton of still ribena and a packed lunch box full of bite-sized Lincolnshire cocktail sausages. After a vain attempt to persuade my sceptical companion that a ramshackle-looking boozer named the Bridge Inn might present the ideal environ in which to enjoy this homespun fare, I gave up and headed instead for a rather posh suburban park, where we whiled away the two hours before kick-off watching the ducks and playing on the swings.
And the match itself? Well, despite several near-misses (each of which was preceded by me urgently digging Frankie in the ribs with a shout of 'Frankie look a chance there's going to be a goal, ah oh no he's tripped/ fallen over/ is offside/ has ballooned it twenty yards over the bar and into the adjoining industrial estate') neither Altrincham or their illustrious visitors from the Minster City could summon a goal to mark the boy's first attendance at a 'proper' football match (we're not counting the time two years ago when he spent thirty minutes freezing on the touchline at Trafford FC before retiring to the clubhouse). The 0-0 scoreline seems to be a minor irritant for Frankie, which is more than made up for by other memorable incidents, which I will ask him about in ten years' time and see if he still remembers them, namely:
1...The thrilling moment before the game when match day mascot 'Rocky the Robin' broke off from his pre-match circuit of the touchline to shake our six-year-old's hand
2...The bloke beside me, a world-weary York City supporter who entertained us with a number of bellowed exclamations and admonitions, notably 'What did you call that, Brodie, you big daft bloody Pet-ayy-ter!'
3..The announcement at the end that the crowd was 1024 (and my explanation what that meant, and that if we hadn't been there it would have been just 1022
4...The hell-for-leather run through the streets of Altrincham to catch the train home, occasioned by my leaving it until the very last possible moment to leave the terrace, given that 'they're bound to score a goal any minute, look here's a chance, ah no, he's missed/ collided with the linesman/ been felled by a steak and kidney pie launched from the centre paddock terracing').
My money is on number one, and in a way I'm glad there were no goals as they would surely have paled into insignificance compared to being welcomed to the stadium by a giant songbird, even one that quite clearly had a man inside. That visit to St James' Park (where the matching Newcastle United hat and scarf might not get quite so many quizzical looks) has got a lot to live up to already.
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