Greenwich Blade
Hitch-Hike General
As I troughed away at my free Slutty Rutty Butty in the Rutland, generously sharing my chips with anyone who could get past my jutting elbows, it was pointed out to me more than once that if I’d not spent so long chatting up those two 75-year-old dears on the Gillingham Fan Coach, or trying to prise In-The-Know information from the driver who usually drove Sheffield United to away matches (he denied he was Sunjihi by the way), I could have secured a lift back down south after the game. With a nil-nil result this would have been ideal too as nobody could have gloated over anybody else.
As I meandered down Shoreham Street towards the station I was feeling a bit miffed at my missed opportunity, but upon arrival at the pedestrian crossing I noticed that very same Bayliss coach picking its way slowly towards me. Seeing a chance to rectify my earlier lapse I wandered into the road, something I was quite blasé about now, and chatted to the driver through his wound-down window. He told me he was going back down the A1 and then onto the M25 so he’d be no good to me, besides which the two Kings Ferry coaches behind were going straight down the M1. Maybe it was the Shingles but this totally confused me. “I live near the M25,” I pointed out, “right near Heathrow.”
“Yeah, so the Kings Ferry coaches would get you nearer because they are going straight down the M1,” replied the Scottish driver.
“Okay,” I frowned as the lights turned to green and he moved off, closely followed by the Kings Ferry buses which never looked like stopping to see what I wanted. I really was confused as I had no idea what the difficulty was until 15 minutes later as I was squashed into the train to Meadowhall; if you are going to Gillingham from either the M1 or the A1, you go around the M25 the complete opposite way I’d be going to Heathrow. What really annoyed me was that all three coaches would be going past South Mimms Services on the northern-most tip of the M25 and this would have been ideal for hitching a lift to Heathrow back the other way. Ah well; I’d know the next time I had a conversation with a Gillingham Fan Bus in the middle of a street in central Sheffield.
The brief train ride to Meadowhall was brightened up by one woman asking a Junior Blade, “Did United win?”
“No,” he replied.
“Did they lose?” she tried again.
“No,” said the JB shaking his head.
“Did they draw?”
“Yes.”
Don’t really know why but it made everyone laugh.
Once at Meadowhall I had the pleasant walk through roadworks to the Tinsley Viaduct junction of the M1, 34 for those who need to know these things, breathlessly trying to update The Lomax over the phone of my day so far, with particular emphasis on the free Slutty Rutty and the Old Dears on the Gillingham coach. Once arrived I had to curtail the conversation (is it a conversation if it’s all one way?) as I needed to concentrate. To my dismay I noticed that someone had carefully replaced the two cones from the hard-shoulder that I had pushed into the side the last time I was there in order to make room for vehicles to pull in. Tutting under my breath I pushed them back again and then decided moving a third one would be even better for potential lifts to coast into.
Just like the last time it proved totally pointless so my apologies to the Sheffield Works Department employee who will have had to move the cones back again; the vehicle that stopped just after Easter had done a tricky manoeuvre to get between two tightly bunched cones further up the sliproad and this time it was the same, except today’s van was even further up towards the M1 itself so I had to pant, puff and wheeze my way a good few yards before collapsing wearily into his front seat just about able to mutter a thank-you between gasps for air.
Once again it was Eastern Europe to the rescue, this time Romania; the driver lived in Nottingham and spent 90% of his working life going between there and Sheffield so as I got out at Trowell Services I told him to look out in future for the yellow shirt as chances are our paths would cross again.
In the services I saw two Gillingham fans, presumably a father and son, so I engaged them in conversation by starting out with, “Well I think you’ll have to admit that we played a lot better today than we did when you stuffed us 4-0 on the first day of the season.”
They agreed and then as we discussed the finer points of the game including the two penalty shouts, which they thought we should have had and they shouldn’t, I slipped in a question about how far down the M1 they were going. Before they knew it I was settling into the back seat of their car and entertaining them with tales of other nil-nil draws against Gillingham, as well as about the occasion when I was paid £200 by a media company to make an on-the-road film about my hitch to Gillingham and the Priestfield Stadium in 2004 when we won 3-0 and Peschisolido scored a hat-trick.
I wrapped things up by recounting the Battle of Bramall Lane, a proud achievement that sits comfortably high in my personal Sheffield United history. They were most amused by my comment of, “It was the best 81 minutes of football I’ve ever seen at Bramall Lane,” and also by my determinedness to keep the record of being the first and only team to have a match abandoned because they haven’t got enough players left on the pitch; “Whenever I hear someone’s had three players sent off I find myself desperately hoping nobody else gets their marching orders; I want that record to be OURS.”
By now we were approaching Toddington Services, a service station that really should be named after me; not now, but one day in the future. This was where I bid farewell to my new-found friends from Gillingham and headed off indoors to use the facilities as is traditional at any service station as you never know when the next time will be that you get the chance to wring out a kidney.
As I approached the Gents a chap coming the other way spotted my Blades woolly hat and incredibly bright goalie’s away shirt from several seasons ago and asked, “How did we get on?”
Aha, a fellow Blade AND a potential lift. Anyway, we had a good old moan about what a rubbish season it has been before establishing that he was going around the M25 in the same direction as all the Gillingham fans so I said thanks but no thanks.
The irony is that is exactly the way I ended up going due to a bit of a brain-fade from a truck driver. When I arrived at Toddington it wasn’t even half-past-eight so there was a smidgen of daylight left; excellent progress I thought, although I did have a tough choice to make. Do I use my LONDON sign and potentially become stranded in the centre or do I go for my brand-new HEATHROW sign in the hope that it will get me near enough to home to walk the last little bit?
In the end I made a bit of a fudge of it by trying HEATHROW first and then switching to LONDON when it had gone dark. Eventually I settled on a nice compromise of HEATHROW for the trucks and LONDON for everyone else, a ruse that finally paid dividends just as I was comforting myself that if I’d found myself at Toddington at gone-9pm on any other Saturday night I’d be well chuffed. As I hauled myself gratefully into a welcoming lorry cab I heard those magic words from the driver; “Yeah, I can drop you at Heathrow.”
When I asked exactly where he was going he said, “Lakeside.” Um, never heard of that.
“Right,” I hesitated, “well, there are lots of lakes near where I live (see any map) and I suppose they all have sides so…”
We were well on our way chugging down the M1 by now so my stomach lurched a bit when the driver said, “Hang on, you want Heathrow don’t you?”
“Erm, yes.”
“Sorry, I thought you meant… well, erm, I’m going the other way on the M25, towards Southend.” Blimey, I’d been there last week and I really didn’t fancy it again.
I remained calm and said, “Not to worry; we can work our way around this.”
It was then that the driver redeemed himself with, “How about South Mimms Services?”
Okay, if I’d jumped aboard the coach full of Gills fans I’d have been there an hour earlier but even so, beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
It was ten-o’clock by the time I’d put lots of extra layers on, bright orange goalie shirt on the top this time, and positioned myself on the M25 sliproad off the roundabout at South Mimms, and if that proved to be rubbish I had the option to switch to the A1 going into London, a route I’d successfully used a few times in the olden days. It was cold and I was feeling the effects of my Shingly virus a bit so really I just wanted to get home; surely my HEATHROW sign would come up trumps here?
For half-an-hour it didn’t, but as a hitchhiker you get a vibe about a place sometimes and this felt good, although the darkness meant I couldn’t see the reactions of the drivers as they sped past. The traffic was steady enough for me to decide it was worth sticking with past the thirty-minute mark rather than stroll back to the A1 junction. At this point I received a text from the long-suffering Helen (well, suffering since she picked me up at Toddington on my way to Scunthorpe away last December and was foolish enough to enter into a relationship with a United fan who listens to music in bizarre time-signatures) asking if I was all right. I replied that I was cold and a bit rundown but was hanging on in quiet desperation for a cab running empty to Heathrow.
Before my “rundown” comment could induce anxiety owing to misinterpretation on Helen’s behalf I heard that glorious sound behind me of a car slowing down and coming to a halt so I grabbed my bag and legged it up the sliproad as fast as my wheezy, achy frame could take me – quite rapid surprisingly. As I put my seatbelt on the driver of the minicab – for it was thus – said, “Heathrow?” and then thankfully didn’t follow it up with an OTT fare quote. After my affirmative answer I hastily dashed off a text to Helen simply saying, “Got one! Minicab!”
The M25 is an absolute joy to whiz around at 10.45 on a Saturday night; even the Dot Matrices warning us of “QUEUE AFTER NEXT JUNCTION” were proved to be nothing but vile empty lies. Before we knew it we were coasting along the Southern Perimeter Road at Heathrow and I was frantically checking Google Maps to see where it was best for me to be offloaded. The realisation suddenly hit me – all right, the blue dot on Google Maps indicated – that right here right now was the best place so not for the first time that day I was chucked out of a vehicle in an outside lane at traffic lights. Once I’d negotiated the traffic and scampered safely to the right side of the road I don’t mind admitting that I did a full-blown fist-pump and exclaimed out-loud a mighty, “YES! YES! YES!” a bit like Billy Sharp does.
I was right on the junction of Bedfont Road and Long Lane which meant a casual stroll home of around 20-minutes, once I’d dealt with the formality of taking a selfie by the Long Lane road-sign, a rare photo where I was actually smiling.
I think that’s what Helen found so difficult to understand as we chatted on the phone during that casual stroll; we’d not won, we SHOULD have won, we were denied a stone-wall penalty, our season was as good as over, I had felt grotty all day, plus I’d stupidly passed up a guaranteed one-lifter to South Mimms, and yet I was still elated.
Beats me; it must be a hitchhiker thing.
Below: A tribute to United's current custodian
As I meandered down Shoreham Street towards the station I was feeling a bit miffed at my missed opportunity, but upon arrival at the pedestrian crossing I noticed that very same Bayliss coach picking its way slowly towards me. Seeing a chance to rectify my earlier lapse I wandered into the road, something I was quite blasé about now, and chatted to the driver through his wound-down window. He told me he was going back down the A1 and then onto the M25 so he’d be no good to me, besides which the two Kings Ferry coaches behind were going straight down the M1. Maybe it was the Shingles but this totally confused me. “I live near the M25,” I pointed out, “right near Heathrow.”
“Yeah, so the Kings Ferry coaches would get you nearer because they are going straight down the M1,” replied the Scottish driver.
“Okay,” I frowned as the lights turned to green and he moved off, closely followed by the Kings Ferry buses which never looked like stopping to see what I wanted. I really was confused as I had no idea what the difficulty was until 15 minutes later as I was squashed into the train to Meadowhall; if you are going to Gillingham from either the M1 or the A1, you go around the M25 the complete opposite way I’d be going to Heathrow. What really annoyed me was that all three coaches would be going past South Mimms Services on the northern-most tip of the M25 and this would have been ideal for hitching a lift to Heathrow back the other way. Ah well; I’d know the next time I had a conversation with a Gillingham Fan Bus in the middle of a street in central Sheffield.
The brief train ride to Meadowhall was brightened up by one woman asking a Junior Blade, “Did United win?”
“No,” he replied.
“Did they lose?” she tried again.
“No,” said the JB shaking his head.
“Did they draw?”
“Yes.”
Don’t really know why but it made everyone laugh.
Once at Meadowhall I had the pleasant walk through roadworks to the Tinsley Viaduct junction of the M1, 34 for those who need to know these things, breathlessly trying to update The Lomax over the phone of my day so far, with particular emphasis on the free Slutty Rutty and the Old Dears on the Gillingham coach. Once arrived I had to curtail the conversation (is it a conversation if it’s all one way?) as I needed to concentrate. To my dismay I noticed that someone had carefully replaced the two cones from the hard-shoulder that I had pushed into the side the last time I was there in order to make room for vehicles to pull in. Tutting under my breath I pushed them back again and then decided moving a third one would be even better for potential lifts to coast into.
Just like the last time it proved totally pointless so my apologies to the Sheffield Works Department employee who will have had to move the cones back again; the vehicle that stopped just after Easter had done a tricky manoeuvre to get between two tightly bunched cones further up the sliproad and this time it was the same, except today’s van was even further up towards the M1 itself so I had to pant, puff and wheeze my way a good few yards before collapsing wearily into his front seat just about able to mutter a thank-you between gasps for air.
Once again it was Eastern Europe to the rescue, this time Romania; the driver lived in Nottingham and spent 90% of his working life going between there and Sheffield so as I got out at Trowell Services I told him to look out in future for the yellow shirt as chances are our paths would cross again.
In the services I saw two Gillingham fans, presumably a father and son, so I engaged them in conversation by starting out with, “Well I think you’ll have to admit that we played a lot better today than we did when you stuffed us 4-0 on the first day of the season.”
They agreed and then as we discussed the finer points of the game including the two penalty shouts, which they thought we should have had and they shouldn’t, I slipped in a question about how far down the M1 they were going. Before they knew it I was settling into the back seat of their car and entertaining them with tales of other nil-nil draws against Gillingham, as well as about the occasion when I was paid £200 by a media company to make an on-the-road film about my hitch to Gillingham and the Priestfield Stadium in 2004 when we won 3-0 and Peschisolido scored a hat-trick.
I wrapped things up by recounting the Battle of Bramall Lane, a proud achievement that sits comfortably high in my personal Sheffield United history. They were most amused by my comment of, “It was the best 81 minutes of football I’ve ever seen at Bramall Lane,” and also by my determinedness to keep the record of being the first and only team to have a match abandoned because they haven’t got enough players left on the pitch; “Whenever I hear someone’s had three players sent off I find myself desperately hoping nobody else gets their marching orders; I want that record to be OURS.”
By now we were approaching Toddington Services, a service station that really should be named after me; not now, but one day in the future. This was where I bid farewell to my new-found friends from Gillingham and headed off indoors to use the facilities as is traditional at any service station as you never know when the next time will be that you get the chance to wring out a kidney.
As I approached the Gents a chap coming the other way spotted my Blades woolly hat and incredibly bright goalie’s away shirt from several seasons ago and asked, “How did we get on?”
Aha, a fellow Blade AND a potential lift. Anyway, we had a good old moan about what a rubbish season it has been before establishing that he was going around the M25 in the same direction as all the Gillingham fans so I said thanks but no thanks.
The irony is that is exactly the way I ended up going due to a bit of a brain-fade from a truck driver. When I arrived at Toddington it wasn’t even half-past-eight so there was a smidgen of daylight left; excellent progress I thought, although I did have a tough choice to make. Do I use my LONDON sign and potentially become stranded in the centre or do I go for my brand-new HEATHROW sign in the hope that it will get me near enough to home to walk the last little bit?
In the end I made a bit of a fudge of it by trying HEATHROW first and then switching to LONDON when it had gone dark. Eventually I settled on a nice compromise of HEATHROW for the trucks and LONDON for everyone else, a ruse that finally paid dividends just as I was comforting myself that if I’d found myself at Toddington at gone-9pm on any other Saturday night I’d be well chuffed. As I hauled myself gratefully into a welcoming lorry cab I heard those magic words from the driver; “Yeah, I can drop you at Heathrow.”
When I asked exactly where he was going he said, “Lakeside.” Um, never heard of that.
“Right,” I hesitated, “well, there are lots of lakes near where I live (see any map) and I suppose they all have sides so…”
We were well on our way chugging down the M1 by now so my stomach lurched a bit when the driver said, “Hang on, you want Heathrow don’t you?”
“Erm, yes.”
“Sorry, I thought you meant… well, erm, I’m going the other way on the M25, towards Southend.” Blimey, I’d been there last week and I really didn’t fancy it again.
I remained calm and said, “Not to worry; we can work our way around this.”
It was then that the driver redeemed himself with, “How about South Mimms Services?”
Okay, if I’d jumped aboard the coach full of Gills fans I’d have been there an hour earlier but even so, beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
It was ten-o’clock by the time I’d put lots of extra layers on, bright orange goalie shirt on the top this time, and positioned myself on the M25 sliproad off the roundabout at South Mimms, and if that proved to be rubbish I had the option to switch to the A1 going into London, a route I’d successfully used a few times in the olden days. It was cold and I was feeling the effects of my Shingly virus a bit so really I just wanted to get home; surely my HEATHROW sign would come up trumps here?
For half-an-hour it didn’t, but as a hitchhiker you get a vibe about a place sometimes and this felt good, although the darkness meant I couldn’t see the reactions of the drivers as they sped past. The traffic was steady enough for me to decide it was worth sticking with past the thirty-minute mark rather than stroll back to the A1 junction. At this point I received a text from the long-suffering Helen (well, suffering since she picked me up at Toddington on my way to Scunthorpe away last December and was foolish enough to enter into a relationship with a United fan who listens to music in bizarre time-signatures) asking if I was all right. I replied that I was cold and a bit rundown but was hanging on in quiet desperation for a cab running empty to Heathrow.
Before my “rundown” comment could induce anxiety owing to misinterpretation on Helen’s behalf I heard that glorious sound behind me of a car slowing down and coming to a halt so I grabbed my bag and legged it up the sliproad as fast as my wheezy, achy frame could take me – quite rapid surprisingly. As I put my seatbelt on the driver of the minicab – for it was thus – said, “Heathrow?” and then thankfully didn’t follow it up with an OTT fare quote. After my affirmative answer I hastily dashed off a text to Helen simply saying, “Got one! Minicab!”
The M25 is an absolute joy to whiz around at 10.45 on a Saturday night; even the Dot Matrices warning us of “QUEUE AFTER NEXT JUNCTION” were proved to be nothing but vile empty lies. Before we knew it we were coasting along the Southern Perimeter Road at Heathrow and I was frantically checking Google Maps to see where it was best for me to be offloaded. The realisation suddenly hit me – all right, the blue dot on Google Maps indicated – that right here right now was the best place so not for the first time that day I was chucked out of a vehicle in an outside lane at traffic lights. Once I’d negotiated the traffic and scampered safely to the right side of the road I don’t mind admitting that I did a full-blown fist-pump and exclaimed out-loud a mighty, “YES! YES! YES!” a bit like Billy Sharp does.
I was right on the junction of Bedfont Road and Long Lane which meant a casual stroll home of around 20-minutes, once I’d dealt with the formality of taking a selfie by the Long Lane road-sign, a rare photo where I was actually smiling.
I think that’s what Helen found so difficult to understand as we chatted on the phone during that casual stroll; we’d not won, we SHOULD have won, we were denied a stone-wall penalty, our season was as good as over, I had felt grotty all day, plus I’d stupidly passed up a guaranteed one-lifter to South Mimms, and yet I was still elated.
Beats me; it must be a hitchhiker thing.
Below: A tribute to United's current custodian
