Blog: Mostly Friendly

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Last night I headed to distant BRENTFORD with Mr P Myland to witness a friendly between Brentford and Posh. We were there entirely for reasons of SPORT, definitely, and certainly not because of any pubs that may or may not be theoretically on any corners.

The games might have been a friendly but the trip did not start off that way. Before meeting Mileage at Waterloo I queued to get some cash out of a machine. There were two machines, both busy, so I formed a single queue for both. Another chap came and stood behind me. All was civilised. Then an AMERICAN stormed over. "Which machine you queueing for?" he shouted. "Both", we said, and explained to this colonial how it worked. This felt like it was going to be CHARMING except that he then got VERY ANGRY about the whole process. "That ain't how it works!" he shouted. We explained that it was in a DELIGHTFUL way. "We are explaining queueing to an American!" we both thought. "Here, this is our culture in microcosm, enjoy it!" but he wasn't having ANY of it, and however WHIMSICAL we were he replied with RAGE. I finished my transaction and left, only to see that the OBVIOUS LOONIE had decided not to get cash out at all but to follow my fellow Brit up an escalator, telling him to "get lost" using FOUL LANGUAGE.

It was all a bit discombobulating to be honest, but luckily for me COMBOBULATION was very much on the cards. I met Mileage, we got a TRAIN BEER each, and had a very enjoyable train ride discussing Amazon TV shows, time travel conspiracy theories, and Marvel comics in modern culture. "I'm 46!" we both told each other, and several other people, over the course of the evening but really any listener would have guessed that for themselves.

In Brentford we were clearly a bit lost about which way to go to the football stadium - almost as if something had clouded our memory of previous visits - so a very nice (German I think) lady gave us directions and, when she saw we'd gone the wrong way, walked us pretty much up to the ground! Things were now all FRIENDLY again, although we were SHOCKED to discover that The Legend Of Brentford ("There is a pub on every corner!") is now not true: one of them is SHUT.

This didn't matter too much as the two NICE pubs were still going, so we went to one of them, met some CHUMS, then avoided the middle, less pleasant, pub, to go to The Griffin, where more pals arrived. I must say I had an entirely LOVELY time. We stood around drinking beer and talking a load of old bollocks/expressing important viewpoints on the modern world (delete as applicable) and it came as something of a shock to be wrenched out of this reverie by calls to attend kick-off. SOME of our party decided they would finish their pints and so miss the first ten minutes ("We're not rushing, we're 46") which does mean that they missed the only goal of the game, but hey - it WAS only a friendly, and it was only a fiver to get in!

Apparently Posh were also simultaneously playing ANOTHER game that night in Lincoln (officially a reserves match, but a bit weird to be playing at the same time) so attendance here was barely into double figures, and it got down towards ZERO before full-time as certain people (hem hem) sloped off for another pint well before the end, and then were joined by everybody else within ten minutes. We'd shown our support, it didn't mean we had to watch it all!

And thus it was a rather RELAXED Hibbett who wandered back to the train station and home. The general consensus was that it looks like being an "all right" season for Posh, probably mid-table once again, but I must say that if all MY visits are like this one it's going to be DELIGHTFUL!

posted 27/7/2016 by MJ Hibbett

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