Greenwich Blade
Hitch-Hike General
They say you should never Google your symptoms, but when your right ankle has gone from being irritatingly itchy to nasty red lumpy rashes, followed a couple of days later by your right buttock then it really is the sensible thing to do. What wasn’t sensible was putting “ankle rash” and “buttock rash” into the afore-mentioned search engine at 11pm on a Friday, the night before an early rise and potential hitchhike to-and-from Sheffield all in one day, something I haven’t attempted for several years.
The good news was, everything pointed to my ailment being Shingles. The bad news was; I was struggling to get to sleep - not because I was worrying about my malingering disease but rather the rash on my bum in particular was giving me hell. Still, at least I now knew why I’d been feeling a touch ropey for the past week and why my appetite had dwindled to most people’s level.
Nevertheless, my alarm went off at six-o’clock the following morning and half-an-hour later I finally took it off ‘snooze’. I wearily looked out of the window and observed that it was raining; if this was set then I had a ready-made excuse to skip my second Sheffield United match in a row – Shingles and rain is surely a bad combination.
But missing two games on the trot is not what I do, and neither is being sensible about illness, or anything else for that matter. Thus I began the slow crank-into-gear and by eight-o’clock the rain had stopped anyway, so off into the fresh air I tentatively ventured.
My three-mile walk to Junction 14 of the M25 via Stanwell Village and Stanwell Moor has now become quite familiar and not entirely unpleasant if you ignore the ‘planes taking off from Heathrow – hardly ideal for someone who suffers a mild phobia of low-flying aircraft. I did try a slightly new route by checking out the subway which as it happened took me under the M25 (where else did I think it was going to take me?) meaning no more death-defying sprints across sliproads and second-guessing of traffic lights.
Junction 14 of the M25 has been something a revelation this season, on average providing a wait of around ten minutes if you ignore the near-two-hour nightmare of Good Friday. This time it came up trumps again when around the ten-minute mark a van stopped and whisked me off around the M25 and up the M1 to Hemel Hempstead. The chap driving was insistent that Junction 8 would be a good place to hitch from, and despite my misgivings I figured I had no choice but to give it a go.
Those misgivings about Junction 8 and Hemel Hempstead were based entirely around one incident in 2002 (ish) when I’d found myself there at one-o’clock on a Sunday morning, thus remaining there for a dizzy two-hours, the only thing of note being a car that swerved in my direction in an attempt to scare me – my policy of unmoved-unflinching remained intact although inwardly my heart quickened up a touch.
Today’s van driver pointed out that the early hours of a Sunday morning was perhaps not the best basis on which to hold a long-standing grudge against Hemel Hempstead. As it turned out he was spot on, the sliproad leading to the M1 being much busier than it had been that distant Saturday night/Sunday morning, and once I’d taken in the delights of the BP Garage toilets and some modern-art sculpture monstrosity on the Breakspear Roundabout, I was on my way again thanks largely to my “TODDINGTON SERVICES” sign and a rather cheerful Polish van driver.
Toddington was bathed in sunlight and as progress had been rapid so far I was ignoring the Shingles and filling myself with the joys of being alive. Once again I spent more time hanging around in the services themselves than standing by my favourite lamppost near the exit, for within perhaps fifteen minutes this time I was squeezing myself into the back of a chunky sort of part-pick-up part-four-wheel-drive-monster with a trailer on the back which was transporting a rather splendid red VW Beetle (no emissions when it’s being towed).
The occupants were a father-and-son team who worked together towing cars all over the place. By the father’s admission he was a “country bumpkin” from Derbyshire, his chief reason for describing himself thus being he didn’t like London: “Been there once; hated it,” he grinned. Despite his dislike for my second favourite city and his lack of interest in football, we had a good laugh throughout the journey to Leicester Forest whilst the son spent most of the time piecing together a roll-up which he finally got to smoke just south of Crick, although only after his father had chastised him for not asking me if a) I smoked and b) I minded him lighting up.
“Do you mind me smoking?” asked the son, turning around to fix me with a grin as wide as the M1 will be once they’ve finished rebuilding it.
“Nope,” I laughed back, “and don’t worry, I don’t smoke myself.”
“Neither do I,” chipped in the father, “now make sure you open that bloody window.”
I was dropped off at Leicester Forest because of my preference for it as a service station over Donington (sorry Donington) and as I took my usual stroll around the place it was indeed rather busy, including a plentiful supply of Gillingham fans, Sheffield United’s opponents that afternoon. However, rather than ask any of them if they fancied knowing where all the decent parking spots were and which pubs allowed away fans in “and oh by the way can you give me a lift?” I decided to let nature take its course. After all, it was only midday, the sun was shining, and there was no shortage of vehicles trundling out onto the motorway.
Ten minutes again and this time I was clambering into a lorry’s cab. The driver looked like Lou Macari’s skinny brother and he even had a Scottish accent to match. Well, I say “to match”; this accent matched no-one I had ever come across before – quite comfortably the broadest Scottish accent imaginable making Kenny Dalglish sound like the Queen and Prince Charles all rolled into one.
The driver’s accent took some getting used to but by Donington I was pretty well tuned in. By this time, he’d already asked me (twice) if I was hungry, to which I eventually replied that I was always hungry, this despite my Shingle-induced lack of appetite. He then chucked a KFC Bargain Bucket my way and told me to tuck in to the remaining hefty lump of batter and (presumably) chicken.
By my feet were two small bottles of water which he told me to stick in my bag because “it must be affa thirsty gooin’ up and doon the M1” (except it was much broader than that).
Stocked up and well-fed we then proceeded to have a very entertaining conversation, much of which I will not be sharing here just in case any of you have been to Thailand. So entertained was Macari’s Brother that he announced he was changing his route and carrying straight on up the M1 rather than veer off along the M18 before hitting the A1 there.
He asked me which junction I preferred so I decided we’d go for Junction 33 this time and a hitch into town down the Parkway, largely because I was too early to bunk the train from Meadowhall as it wouldn’t be packed enough. As we approached 33 I noticed the coach in front was from Deal in Kent. “That coach is going the same place as me,” I observed with a slight increase in excitement.
“D’ya wannae lift wi’em?” Macari’s Brother asked.
“Well, it’d be nice but I’ve got plenty of time and it’s not urgent so…”
“I’ll flag ‘em doon!” he shouted whilst flashing his lights incessantly. As both we and the coach came off the motorway he started to honk that hooter that all trucks have, you know, the one where you pull on a bit of string and off it sounds.
“If the lights turn red we’ve got him!” he said excitedly, and at that moment those traffic lights went and did exactly that. With a glint in his eye Macari’s Brother spotted that the sliproad was now splitting into three lanes with the coach from Deal gently easing up on the inside to turn left onto the Sheffield Parkway. “I’ll pull up beside him,” he said before slamming his foot down and speeding up alongside the coach.
As we did, my Scottish friend encouraged, “Show him yer sign.” One thing he’d not forgotten was that as he was going straight on he needed to be in the outside lane but as there was nothing big enough in the middle lane to obscure the view, the driver of the coach was able to clearly see my long-serving SHEFFIELD sign.
In return the coach driver just gave me the thumbs up. “He just thinks I’m being funny,” I said disappointedly, but then a combination of me pointing at the Sheffield United badge on my goalkeeper’s shirt and Macari’s Brother standing up in his seat and shouting, “Give him a lift! Give him a lift!” whilst pointing frantically at me suggested we were being more than just “funny”.
“Just get out and go up to the door,” suggested MB. The lights had gone green by now but it was quite obvious that the truck wasn’t going anywhere until I got out so I grabbed my rucksack (the small one thank goodness), opened the door and plummeted down to the tarmac whilst cars in the middle lane went past me and vehicles in lanes one and three honked their hooters. My chief concern was that the coach would drive off as would the truck leaving me stranded in the middle of the sliproad, especially as there seemed to be one heck of a lot of vehicles going past me up the centre, not to mention the inordinate length of time the lights seemed to be spending on green. In the end I dodged between two cars and accompanied by a sea of car-horns I leapt through the coach door which had rather satisfyingly glided open for me.
Of course, the lights had now gone back to red so as we waited I looked across to Lane 3 and there was Macari’s Brother waving frantically and giving me the thumbs up. As the coach driver was telling me to hurry up I noticed he too had a Scottish accent. “That bloke,” I said, nodding in the direction of the grinning Scot-in-a-truck , “has got the broadest Scottish accent I’ve ever heard!”
“Well, strap yourself in and make yourself comfortable there,” said the coach driver motioning towards the low-down seat at the front usually reserved for the tour guide, “and watch out because this lot are Gillingham.”
“I’m just going to strap myself in, sit here and keep quiet,” I smiled before looking up to see the only two Gillingham fans visible to me in my lowly position, two old dears who can’t have been a day under 75.
Meanwhile the driver was telling me that the police might be waiting for us down the Parkway to escort us into Bramall Lane, but then they might not too; “It all depends…” he trailed off.
“I don’t suppose South Yorkshire Police are expecting too much trouble from Gillingham,” I ventured, “I mean, you two don’t look like your about to storm our Kop and take on United’s bravest,” looking up to the Old Dears.
“Don’t you believe it!” shouted a disembodied male voice from further back.
As the coach made the short journey into Sheffield along the Parkway I had a most pleasant and entertaining chat with the Old Dears and the coach driver. The coach belonged to Bayliss who I happened to know supplied the team bus for Sheffield United, and as it happened the driver usually drove that very bus to United’s away-matches which is why the Old Dears had said, “When we win and end your season we’re going to make his life hell on the way back.” Yes, it would seem that despite his north-of-the-border roots, the act of driving the Blades around had led to our Scottish Coach Driver friend adopting Sheffield United as his very own. As a precautionary measure I did ask him to not pass on my observations to certain individual members of the squad on the next away trip.
As I suspected, the police weren’t too worried about the Gillingham invasion meaning I was free to be dropped off at the train station, a short walk to the Rutland. After all the excitement of yet another five-lifter to get up to Sheffield and all those tales of derring-do dashing across three lanes of a motorway sliproad, the afternoon was going to struggle to keep up. However, in the end it did a pretty good job of it, what with a free Slutty Rutty Butty in the pub and United absolutely battering Gillingham in what Dave Bassett might have described as a “nil-nil massacre”.
At the final whistle though, a goalless draw was not really good enough for us and even though our season was not mathematically over, it was as good as.
With that in mind I trooped disconsolately out of the ground and headed in the direction of the M1; I just had to get home now.
The good news was, everything pointed to my ailment being Shingles. The bad news was; I was struggling to get to sleep - not because I was worrying about my malingering disease but rather the rash on my bum in particular was giving me hell. Still, at least I now knew why I’d been feeling a touch ropey for the past week and why my appetite had dwindled to most people’s level.
Nevertheless, my alarm went off at six-o’clock the following morning and half-an-hour later I finally took it off ‘snooze’. I wearily looked out of the window and observed that it was raining; if this was set then I had a ready-made excuse to skip my second Sheffield United match in a row – Shingles and rain is surely a bad combination.
But missing two games on the trot is not what I do, and neither is being sensible about illness, or anything else for that matter. Thus I began the slow crank-into-gear and by eight-o’clock the rain had stopped anyway, so off into the fresh air I tentatively ventured.
My three-mile walk to Junction 14 of the M25 via Stanwell Village and Stanwell Moor has now become quite familiar and not entirely unpleasant if you ignore the ‘planes taking off from Heathrow – hardly ideal for someone who suffers a mild phobia of low-flying aircraft. I did try a slightly new route by checking out the subway which as it happened took me under the M25 (where else did I think it was going to take me?) meaning no more death-defying sprints across sliproads and second-guessing of traffic lights.
Junction 14 of the M25 has been something a revelation this season, on average providing a wait of around ten minutes if you ignore the near-two-hour nightmare of Good Friday. This time it came up trumps again when around the ten-minute mark a van stopped and whisked me off around the M25 and up the M1 to Hemel Hempstead. The chap driving was insistent that Junction 8 would be a good place to hitch from, and despite my misgivings I figured I had no choice but to give it a go.
Those misgivings about Junction 8 and Hemel Hempstead were based entirely around one incident in 2002 (ish) when I’d found myself there at one-o’clock on a Sunday morning, thus remaining there for a dizzy two-hours, the only thing of note being a car that swerved in my direction in an attempt to scare me – my policy of unmoved-unflinching remained intact although inwardly my heart quickened up a touch.
Today’s van driver pointed out that the early hours of a Sunday morning was perhaps not the best basis on which to hold a long-standing grudge against Hemel Hempstead. As it turned out he was spot on, the sliproad leading to the M1 being much busier than it had been that distant Saturday night/Sunday morning, and once I’d taken in the delights of the BP Garage toilets and some modern-art sculpture monstrosity on the Breakspear Roundabout, I was on my way again thanks largely to my “TODDINGTON SERVICES” sign and a rather cheerful Polish van driver.
Toddington was bathed in sunlight and as progress had been rapid so far I was ignoring the Shingles and filling myself with the joys of being alive. Once again I spent more time hanging around in the services themselves than standing by my favourite lamppost near the exit, for within perhaps fifteen minutes this time I was squeezing myself into the back of a chunky sort of part-pick-up part-four-wheel-drive-monster with a trailer on the back which was transporting a rather splendid red VW Beetle (no emissions when it’s being towed).
The occupants were a father-and-son team who worked together towing cars all over the place. By the father’s admission he was a “country bumpkin” from Derbyshire, his chief reason for describing himself thus being he didn’t like London: “Been there once; hated it,” he grinned. Despite his dislike for my second favourite city and his lack of interest in football, we had a good laugh throughout the journey to Leicester Forest whilst the son spent most of the time piecing together a roll-up which he finally got to smoke just south of Crick, although only after his father had chastised him for not asking me if a) I smoked and b) I minded him lighting up.
“Do you mind me smoking?” asked the son, turning around to fix me with a grin as wide as the M1 will be once they’ve finished rebuilding it.
“Nope,” I laughed back, “and don’t worry, I don’t smoke myself.”
“Neither do I,” chipped in the father, “now make sure you open that bloody window.”
I was dropped off at Leicester Forest because of my preference for it as a service station over Donington (sorry Donington) and as I took my usual stroll around the place it was indeed rather busy, including a plentiful supply of Gillingham fans, Sheffield United’s opponents that afternoon. However, rather than ask any of them if they fancied knowing where all the decent parking spots were and which pubs allowed away fans in “and oh by the way can you give me a lift?” I decided to let nature take its course. After all, it was only midday, the sun was shining, and there was no shortage of vehicles trundling out onto the motorway.
Ten minutes again and this time I was clambering into a lorry’s cab. The driver looked like Lou Macari’s skinny brother and he even had a Scottish accent to match. Well, I say “to match”; this accent matched no-one I had ever come across before – quite comfortably the broadest Scottish accent imaginable making Kenny Dalglish sound like the Queen and Prince Charles all rolled into one.
The driver’s accent took some getting used to but by Donington I was pretty well tuned in. By this time, he’d already asked me (twice) if I was hungry, to which I eventually replied that I was always hungry, this despite my Shingle-induced lack of appetite. He then chucked a KFC Bargain Bucket my way and told me to tuck in to the remaining hefty lump of batter and (presumably) chicken.
By my feet were two small bottles of water which he told me to stick in my bag because “it must be affa thirsty gooin’ up and doon the M1” (except it was much broader than that).
Stocked up and well-fed we then proceeded to have a very entertaining conversation, much of which I will not be sharing here just in case any of you have been to Thailand. So entertained was Macari’s Brother that he announced he was changing his route and carrying straight on up the M1 rather than veer off along the M18 before hitting the A1 there.
He asked me which junction I preferred so I decided we’d go for Junction 33 this time and a hitch into town down the Parkway, largely because I was too early to bunk the train from Meadowhall as it wouldn’t be packed enough. As we approached 33 I noticed the coach in front was from Deal in Kent. “That coach is going the same place as me,” I observed with a slight increase in excitement.
“D’ya wannae lift wi’em?” Macari’s Brother asked.
“Well, it’d be nice but I’ve got plenty of time and it’s not urgent so…”
“I’ll flag ‘em doon!” he shouted whilst flashing his lights incessantly. As both we and the coach came off the motorway he started to honk that hooter that all trucks have, you know, the one where you pull on a bit of string and off it sounds.
“If the lights turn red we’ve got him!” he said excitedly, and at that moment those traffic lights went and did exactly that. With a glint in his eye Macari’s Brother spotted that the sliproad was now splitting into three lanes with the coach from Deal gently easing up on the inside to turn left onto the Sheffield Parkway. “I’ll pull up beside him,” he said before slamming his foot down and speeding up alongside the coach.
As we did, my Scottish friend encouraged, “Show him yer sign.” One thing he’d not forgotten was that as he was going straight on he needed to be in the outside lane but as there was nothing big enough in the middle lane to obscure the view, the driver of the coach was able to clearly see my long-serving SHEFFIELD sign.
In return the coach driver just gave me the thumbs up. “He just thinks I’m being funny,” I said disappointedly, but then a combination of me pointing at the Sheffield United badge on my goalkeeper’s shirt and Macari’s Brother standing up in his seat and shouting, “Give him a lift! Give him a lift!” whilst pointing frantically at me suggested we were being more than just “funny”.
“Just get out and go up to the door,” suggested MB. The lights had gone green by now but it was quite obvious that the truck wasn’t going anywhere until I got out so I grabbed my rucksack (the small one thank goodness), opened the door and plummeted down to the tarmac whilst cars in the middle lane went past me and vehicles in lanes one and three honked their hooters. My chief concern was that the coach would drive off as would the truck leaving me stranded in the middle of the sliproad, especially as there seemed to be one heck of a lot of vehicles going past me up the centre, not to mention the inordinate length of time the lights seemed to be spending on green. In the end I dodged between two cars and accompanied by a sea of car-horns I leapt through the coach door which had rather satisfyingly glided open for me.
Of course, the lights had now gone back to red so as we waited I looked across to Lane 3 and there was Macari’s Brother waving frantically and giving me the thumbs up. As the coach driver was telling me to hurry up I noticed he too had a Scottish accent. “That bloke,” I said, nodding in the direction of the grinning Scot-in-a-truck , “has got the broadest Scottish accent I’ve ever heard!”
“Well, strap yourself in and make yourself comfortable there,” said the coach driver motioning towards the low-down seat at the front usually reserved for the tour guide, “and watch out because this lot are Gillingham.”
“I’m just going to strap myself in, sit here and keep quiet,” I smiled before looking up to see the only two Gillingham fans visible to me in my lowly position, two old dears who can’t have been a day under 75.
Meanwhile the driver was telling me that the police might be waiting for us down the Parkway to escort us into Bramall Lane, but then they might not too; “It all depends…” he trailed off.
“I don’t suppose South Yorkshire Police are expecting too much trouble from Gillingham,” I ventured, “I mean, you two don’t look like your about to storm our Kop and take on United’s bravest,” looking up to the Old Dears.
“Don’t you believe it!” shouted a disembodied male voice from further back.
As the coach made the short journey into Sheffield along the Parkway I had a most pleasant and entertaining chat with the Old Dears and the coach driver. The coach belonged to Bayliss who I happened to know supplied the team bus for Sheffield United, and as it happened the driver usually drove that very bus to United’s away-matches which is why the Old Dears had said, “When we win and end your season we’re going to make his life hell on the way back.” Yes, it would seem that despite his north-of-the-border roots, the act of driving the Blades around had led to our Scottish Coach Driver friend adopting Sheffield United as his very own. As a precautionary measure I did ask him to not pass on my observations to certain individual members of the squad on the next away trip.
As I suspected, the police weren’t too worried about the Gillingham invasion meaning I was free to be dropped off at the train station, a short walk to the Rutland. After all the excitement of yet another five-lifter to get up to Sheffield and all those tales of derring-do dashing across three lanes of a motorway sliproad, the afternoon was going to struggle to keep up. However, in the end it did a pretty good job of it, what with a free Slutty Rutty Butty in the pub and United absolutely battering Gillingham in what Dave Bassett might have described as a “nil-nil massacre”.
At the final whistle though, a goalless draw was not really good enough for us and even though our season was not mathematically over, it was as good as.
With that in mind I trooped disconsolately out of the ground and headed in the direction of the M1; I just had to get home now.
