By Sleepy Hollow
October 29 2002

A wise person enquired of me once, “What we would do if a game got called off after we had set sail?”. I replied, “We’d make the best of it!”. On Sunday we did.

Having left a windswept Stoop (showing some signs of damage it must be said) we headed west to Bristol and the mythical nirvana of the Lamb Inn.  For the second year running we failed to arrive.

We got the dreaded call about forty minutes into our journey. Our glorious team manager Saint Michael had rung Medusa. Unfortunately nobody believed her!  But hearing the grim and not totally unsurprising news confirmed from the Shoguns we swiftly altered our plans.  Texting and calling everybody we thought was going to the game, we headed for a little village with a nice pub.  However, before we got there, there was just enough time for the carpet story.

This was passionately told to us by one of the Simons. The fable was a cross between a J K Rowling story and an episode of Minder. The magic carpet involved the Police, golf, porkies, CCTV, the entire male staff of a bar, lashings of rain and a punch-line that means that the lot of us can never go into M & S again without smiling! Well at least it stopped the singing for a few minutes. Regulars would note at this point, that the singing, up until now normally the preserve of the journey home, had started very prematurely. Thus disproving the myth that it was only bad because we all were tired and emotional. Here it was not good because, sorry lads, none of us knew what a decent note sounded like! I know this has come as a shock to a few of you, but it had to be said. Although it wasn’t helped by Innuendo Andy and myself giggling through most songs. Lunch was now on the agenda, a deep thirst also required immediate attention.

We arrived for a brief reccy of the Madejski Stadium. As we rolled in the looks we got were priceless! You could see one steward’s jaw dropping. It was about the only thing that wasn’t photographed all day - principally because we were all laughing so much.  You could hear what he was thinking ….. “What the fe*k are those b*st*rds doing here!”

Lunch was beckoning. A quick dash across that big road thingy (sorry I’m not a driver, why can’t roads have names instead of numbers!?) and into the quaint village of Swallowfield. We arrived at our pub, which I won’t name because it was still a tad early.

We were thirsty. It’s situations like this that shape your destiny.  Seize the day and all that. The landlord came out to enquire what a coach was doing in his car park. I explained.

“How many of you are there?” he asked.

“About forty” I replied.

“SH**!” he exclaimed.

Grasping the moment I said “Put it like this, you could do a week’s business in the next two hours!”

“I’ll be open in ten minutes!”

So with the pool, the juke box (or whatever those new fangled music thingies are called), the food and the odd lemonade takings were quite good. The leisurely lunch gave us the chance to get to know some of the first time travellers.

The couple of local lads who were London Irish supporters got quite a shock when they walked in. A bar full of Quins supporters was not the usual view. They were even more surprised when they were offered a free lift to the game. The declined, shame really!

So onto the game. Shocker. That’s enough about that.

Except some of our throng were complemented by the Saints mob for supporting them. How much that must have hurt them, we will never know. Even Digger had an off day. He kept indicating to us that he was having a problem with his backside. Perhaps Digger has haemorrhoids? As the temperature dropped the beer seemed to be getting colder and colder. The time between bladder empty and bladder full exponentially decreased.

Reading is a great stadium. Great viewing lines, good scoreboard, plenty of leg room, a roof, seats that don’t sway and some of the best fans in rugby. But I just don’t like drinking in a bar that has all the character of an under storey car park. I don’t care how good the company was and how good the band was (and they were good). We met up with all the usual suspects (I met OxonRob for the first time) and it was certainly interesting viewing a game as a neutral. The ref still had a bit of an off day. And I thoroughly enjoyed their talk of the “r” word. Fear has a green shirt at the moment!

A slight observation on my part is that it’s obvious why people support Saints in the Midlands. They hate the Tiggers! Fair enough. But with London Irish their fans mainly split into two groups. The older lot who mainly have a genuine Irish connection, this usually involves more than drinking copious amounts of Guinness. It’s the younger lot that make me laugh. The whole lot deep down are really closet Quins fans, they’re just in long term denial. One morning they’ll wake up and be really sorry. You’ll see.

Having walked around the stadium four times we found the coach for the short journey back. Of course, the raffle was next. But calling it just a raffle is a bit like calling the Lottery a lucky dip. Prizes galore! The odds were favourable. Someone won a bottle of champagne, someone else one of Midge’s unique DG mugs and the star prize “The American Dream, The Florida Experience” was won by The Prof, thus ending a great week for him. I wonder who he will share it with? Perhaps he’ll write an article about it. He’ll probably have to take out dual citizenship now.

In profit, happy, tired, but still surprisingly sober we arrived back. So it was off to the Patch. Where the Quins’ Ladies were going through some of their set moves. It was an incredible day. Shame Quins didn’t play, but it just shows you if you’re prepared to make an effort anything is possible. For the few who’s first trip this was, everything after this is going to seem like an anti-climax.

I should also mention aardvarks at this point, I’m not sure why, I just should. In closing there was just time for Lou to block my phone, even though she was trying to alter the time. Thanks Lou! And thanks to Mike Scott, how many other team managers would so readily consider the fans? Oh and well done our magnificent driver from Westbus. Can I say thank you to everybody for being so flexible, running a coach under these conditions is very easy. Being associated with such supporters is both a pleasure and a privilege