The Phantom Goes To A Football Match

As part of my New Year's Resolutions, this year I'm going to be widening my experience of cultural stuff - from ballet to tennis, opera to darts, comedy to circus, you name it, if I haven't done it before or haven't done it for a long time, I'm going to be giving it a go this year.

I'd long been embarrassed that I'd never been to a Charlton match - never even visited the Valley. My problem was that I have no interest at all in any kind of sport. Football no more or less than any kind of sport - it wasn't that I don't like it, I don't actually think about.

This state of affairs needed to be remedied, so on what has to have been the coldest Saturday of the year so far (I'm sure someone will tell me it was positively balmy in comparison to such-and-such a day...) I trudged over to Charlton to see them play Tranmere Rovers.

What follows is not an account of the match as a football enthusiast would see it; more from the point of view of a curious observer.

I made a couple of beginner's errors, mainly concerning alcohol (though another mistake was simply not wearing enough clothes - my socks weren't nearly thick enough under my thigh boots, I didn't wear enough vests under my cloak and I would have been better served with a bobble hat than a tricorn... )

Firstly, all the local pubs seemed a bit full so I decided that the Antigallican was close and comparatively empty...

Aw, c'mon - as a football virgin, I wasn't to know which pub is the away team pub, and in the event, the Tranmere fans were friendly enough chaps. Besides, I was only nominally a Charlton supporter - given I'd never been to a match, couldn't have told you which division they're in (I know now...) and had no idea what constitutes offside, it was all a bit academic anyway. But just for interest - was I right? Is it an 'official' thing to have an away-team pub, or was it just coincidence?

We trudged over with plenty of time to start, and I began to notice stuff.

Now, good football fans, you're going to have to forgive an ignorant Phantom, but most of the stuff I noticed was surprising to me because of my own ill-informed prejudices.

As I have only the vaguest awareness of what's going on in the sporting world, for some reason my image of football seems to hover somewhere circa 1980. So the stuff that surprised me was to do with the crowd behaviour. Everyone filed down towards the Valley in a quiet and orderly fashion. There were loads of families. I mean - heavens - there were women. The police on horseback seemed totally superfluous.

I am well aware of just how ignorant this makes me sound - but the only time I had ever been to a match before was sometime around the mid 80s, standing on the home team terrace at West Ham on a particularly bad-tempered day, where I'd been, frankly, terrified. And I'd never been since there were actual seats.

Tickets easily bought and paid for. Check. Friendly, helpful staff. Check. Clean areas in and outside the stadium itself. Check. Alcohol available. Check.

Again - I was quite surprised to see alcohol allowed in the ground. Of course, this piece of information went to my head and I recklessly bought what was probably the only glass of wine sold in the entire stadium that day - only to find that it's not allowed on the actual stands and there were three minutes to go to kick off...

My guide was a Tranmere fan, who graciously condescended to sit with us in the Charlton side (it was our conditions of agreeing to come.) He told me that Tranmere, at the bottom of the division, would be happy just to get a draw; Charlton, at the top, really expected to do better.

Just before kick-off, there was a minute's silence/applause for people associated with the club who'd passed away during the last year, which I found very touching. I liked all the stuff beforehand too, with the clubs' mascots looking after the freezing kiddies who'd been chosen to come on to the pitch beforehand (maybe someone can tell me what the kiddies actually do?)

From what I could tell, much of the first half was a glorified kickabout. The ball spent quite a bit of time down the south end, but no actual goals were scored. I'm not entirely sure what happened to the Charlton goalkeeper that saw him writhing in agony, as all the action was going on the other end at the time, but it must have been serious enough as he was substituted.

I was quite amused at both sides' attitudes to injury - basically if anyone fell over, he rolled around squalling, looking like he was done for until the ref had decided whether or not to book the other side, but since this happened every single time, it was hard to tell if someone was really hurt or just hoping for a spot of retribution. There was less rolling around for sympathy after all the substitutions had been made and there was no hope of getting replaced.

Much passing of the ball seemed to be between members of opposing teams - I thought that the idea was to pass it to members of your own side, but hey, what do I know...

Oddly, although even I don't think I was watching great football, I found myself really rather getting into it. I know they say that it's different when it's live, but it really is. I started to be interested - and to actually give a damn what went on. When the half-time whistle went I was quite surprised at how quickly it had all gone, despite there not having been much in the way of memorable moments.

I hung around during the break to see what would go on - a attendance number of 16,168 (which meant there were 16,167 people who understood what was going on) birthday announcements, certificates for junior achievers, a raffle. It really stuck me how much this is a family club. I know I was sitting in the family stands, but it goes further than that. There's a real feeling of bringing along both the players and the supporters of tomorrow.

There was a slightly surreal advert on the screen, telling people not to swear in front of the children, but presumably it was also implicit that it meant Phantoms too, as the only rude word I heard in the entire afternoon was 'plonker' - from a small child behind me, who then collapsed into hysterical giggles for having said a Naughty Thing...

Second half, seen through a steam-haze of sundry beef-based products, was more interesting, though I'm still not convinced that either team was playing at its best. I missed the first goal, as it was a total mess - but as far as I can see it was an own-goal from Charlton (the announcer failed to mention it, for fairly obvious reasons, and the scoreboard only admitted to a goal a good three or four minutes after the unfortunate event.)

Still the Tranmere fans did their best at celebrating - and given how few of them there seemed to be, they made a decent noise.

The equaliser was much more lively and from then on a strange thing started to happen. While Charlton got more animated, Tranmere slowed down. The goalkeeper especially, took his time - pulling his socks up, spending ages trying to decide which angle to kick the ball, checking distances. Even I could tell what was going on - and he did eventually get booked for time-wasting, if memory serves.

The most interesting bit of the game was definitely extra time, when both teams suddenly decided to make an effort. No extra goals were scored but both teams could have. And there was a sending-off, which for me, who had just gone to see football happening, was an interesting thing.

I got the feeling that Charlton fans weren't wildly happy about the outcome of the game. The man in front of me, who looked like he'd been cut-and-pasted from an old 1930s photo - long mac, flat cap, scarf tied up round his neck - shouted 'rubbish, rubbish, rubbish' for a full two minutes as the players left the field.

But for me, who'd gone to experience what it would be like, it had been great fun - and - you know what, I think I might be going back rather more quickly than I had assumed. Since I went, I've - goodness - looked up the divisions, looked up the team, found out who was playing that day and started looking out for what's going on next.

I'm not a diehard fan (yet) but I'm probably going to be back sooner rather than later...

Short Spins Round London South

Arthur C. Armstrong & Harry R. G. Inglis

Oh, the joys of scrubbing around the cheap sections of dusty old bookshops. The pickings may not always be in top condition, but what they lack in bookshelf glitz they make up for in charm and quirk.

I got this fire-damaged, spineless 1907 cycling guide to South London for 50p. Admittedly it has to be tied up with a ribbon to prevent its spilling its guts all over my desk, but I was as excited by discovering this as any of the glossier bling-books on my shelf.

It's clearly spent some time in the back pocket of an intrepid early bicyclist as he discovered the joys of a twenty mile radius of Charing Cross, his tough tweed trousers tucked into thick woollen socks, deerstalker-peak tipped jauntily towards the horizon. Or maybe it spent sunny Sundays nestled in the basket of a doughty Edwardian traveller in her Jaeger 'health corset' and stout wasp-waist skirt, leg o' mutton sleeves billowing and the cherries on her straw boater nodding in the headwind as she pedalled furiously up Shooters Hill.

It is an intensely practical guide, warning that "the small portion of Kent included in the eastern boundary of this volume is the hilliest section described in it, but at the same time its scenery is the finest."

It's also 'of its time' - "a revolution of vital importance to cyclists is the conversion of the metropolitan tramway systems to electric traction" including a stiff warning to look out for "electric wires carried in a slotted groove." But some things never change: "The approaches either side of the Woolwich free ferry are bumpy, with some traffic; the Blackwall Tunnel is very rough."

The gentlemen who wrote this book, like myself, are obsessed by gradient. I hate anything steeper than the Thames Path, and can't even begin to imagine what those old butcher-boy bikes of 1907 must have been like to ride up Maze Hill...

Woolwich Road is described as "uninviting at first, then hilly," the Dover Road merely as "very steep." Greenwich Park is "exceedingly beautiful, and much frequented by cyclists, who are, however, permitted to ride only on certain roads." Reading the slightly complex instructions about what's allowed and what's not, I gather there was some kind of one-way system.

Route One goes from the General Post Office in the centre of London, via Greenwich, out to Dartford. One of these days I'll give it a try, so I won't go too much into the detail for now - I wouldn't want to peak too soon on the tram lines and rough paving, Greenwich's grimy suburbs and ugly brick buildings - and Blackwall Tunnel's greasiness.

In case anyone fancies a historic jaunt before I get round to it, though, here it is:

I've noticed a couple of old London tour guide reprints in Waterstones recently. I could see a market for Short Spins Around London. In the meanwhile, though, the best I can suggest is fighting me for pole position rootling round the 'everything 50p' boxes in dusty secondhand bookshops...

Charlton Lido

Toby asks:

"I wondered whether you knew what was happening to Charlton Lido. We spent a lovely day there on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in 2007 (perhaps 2006) and have been keen to return. Last year, I discovered that it was closed but the Greenwich Council website reported that it was being developed as a Diving Centre.

Looking again to see whether it had re-opened, I discover that, 1984-style, it seems to have been excised from history. The relevant pages on both Greenwich Council and Greenwich Leisure's website lead nowhere. There are some oblique references in Council minutes in 2008 - including a spirited defence by the Council for not running a public consultation on its future - but otherwise it seems to have disappeared. It all makes me rather suspicious."

The Phantom replies:

You're right, Toby, in that it's hard to find out information about the chequered fortunes of the 1939 lido - the council page is broken - but, happily, wrong that the place is dead. It took a bit of snaffling out, but a lease has been signed between the council and a private company, Open Waters (who don't seem to have a website, which seems a bit odd in this day and age.)

There is an article about it here but the gist is that

"when complete, the four-storey dive centre will have a 22m-deep, 25m-dive pool, a gym, treatment rooms, exercise studios and a crèche. It will also include a restaurant, bar, conference facilities, and a sports retail area with a dive shop that will link with the lido. The lido will be refurbished and will retain all its current facilities."

My one thought, looking at that list, then looking at the picture, is - how on earth will they fit all that into that area? But hey - I'm sure the council have it all in hand and they won't be encroaching on the park...

It looks as though it will be open all year, so get larded-up for those chilly Christmas Morning swims - Serpentine eat your heart out...

Slightly worried that the article was written last year, and that when I went there to check the place was locked up with some scary-looking modern razor-wire stuff all round it (apparently the vandalism around there is punishing) I sent out some emails.

I understand from someone who doesn't want to be named that the lease has been signed, an understanding has been reached and that they will be on site soon. Because it will be a bit late in the season, they've decided not to open it this year.

So - cautiously optimistic, and not entirely mothballing my stripey one-piece, armbands and rubber ring, I'll be keeping an eye on this...

John Evelyn's Top Crown

Walking past Rangers House the other day (has anyone else noticed that you only seem to be able to go on 'guided tours' there now, instead of wandering round at will?) it occurred to me that I don't know much - if anything - about the bowling green just outside it. I always think it looks very nicely kept (a friend of mine who plays says it looks a bit uneven - can't see it myself) but I rarely see anyone playing there.

Turning to my long-suffering copy of Hasted (the poor old thing is now kept in an old boardgame box to stop it falling to pieces entirely. It definitely needs rebinding, but I shudder to think how much that would cost...) I find a page that is just four lines of actual Hasted-text long. The rest of the page is taken up with Drake's notes, which are often the best bit about this fab old book.

Immediately after a protracted ramble about hermits (well - he couldn't resist - and who can blame him?), Drake tells us that Sir John Evelyn notes in his diary on May 1, 1683:

"I went to Blackheath to see the new faire, being the first procured by the Lord Dartmouth. This was the first day pretended for the sale of cattle, but I think, in truth to enrich the new tavern at the bowling green erected by Snape, His Majesty's farrier, a man full of projects."

Evelyn's being generous here. As we've seen before, Andrew Snape nibbled a load of land from Greenwich Park, and then, on a dodgy 60-year lease, built sundry semi-legal-to-downright-illegal projects, the most famous of which is Rangers House, which is, of course, next door to the bowling green.

Then I get a bit confused, as Drake says the tavern in question is the Green Man.

Hang on. Wasn't that in the middle of Blackheath?

Either there were two bowling greens or two Green Men. I like to think two taverns. Just think - if there had been two pubs and the one at the top of Crooms Hill had survived, wouldn't that have been somewhere good to drink of a Sunday afternoon?

But I digress. A newspaper ad of 1703 might or might not be talking about our bowling green. "The Bowling Green on Blackheath, near Greenwich, which is now very fine and in good order, where all sorts of provision are to be had for gentlemen, their attendants, horses and coaches, besides a very good ordinary." It doesn't say 'ordinary' what...

The venerable Blackheath and Greenwich Bowling Club wasn't set up until July 1903, but it was on the bowling green outside Rangers House. Or at least on the old one. They're responsible for getting us the one there today - the London County Council rebuilt it in 1923. Even then it doesn't seem to have passed muster, so the club moved to its current home at Brooklands Park in 1926. You can read the rest on their history page. Try not to blush too much at the unfortunate typo.

So who meets there now? It took me some time to ferret out The Blackheath Bowling Club (which is absolutely not the same thing as the Blackheath & Greenwich Bowling Club, okay?) They don't have a website that I can find, but their rates are almost low enough to make me want to join.

If you fancy a go, you need to be free on Thursday afternoons (which may explain why I never see them play) and prepared to stump up a whopping 20p per session (after the extravagant £10 joining fee...) Email gfneville@aol.com.

The season is just beginning...

James Peters Jnr.

I love you guys. I no sooner ask than I receive. The young man that our anonymous friend has spotted dragging the tractor tyre up Greenwich Hill is James Peters Jnr. And Virginia has sent me pictures of our new sporting hero.

I can't find much about him online - sadly 'James Peters' is a really common name. But Virginia spoke to him last September and says:

"While training for the GB Olympic Trials 2 years ago he suffered an injury so has been training to go for 2012. His ultimate goal is to achieve a world record in the 100 meters. How he trains is this: runs uphill dragging the tire, then rests for 5 minutes. He does this 12 times. The routine may have changed by now since that was a while ago."

Rather him than me. But I really hope he gets his dream. Suddenly I'm all interested in the Olympics. Don't worry - it won't last. Well - only until after the 100 metres...

Give him a cheer if you see him, guys...

Feeling Tyred

I have a great Ask The Phantom today, folks. A lot of people seem to think that I'm absolutely anti the Olympics. And I confess I have been ambivalent. I have grave concerns about the placing of the Equestrian and Shooting events in unsuitable venues merely so that LOCOG can avoid getting egg on their faces.

But I'm not completely against the whole affair - I'm rather looking forward to seeing how the main stadium turns out, and I'm really quite upset that the gymnastics won't be held at the O2 any more, which is, after all, currently London's only purpose-built arena with adequate public transport.

And an anonymous question has made me even more intrigued about the athletics part of the event - a question about something I'd seen but never joined the dots before in my mind.

My anonymous friend asks:

"Do you know who the athlete is who trains in Greenwich Park with a rather large tyre attached to him? I'm sure you've seen him, as he's training there all the time.

Last week curiosity got the better of my young daughters, who dared their mother to ask him what he was doing. So I did.

He told us he is training for the 100m, five times a week. We wished him good luck and went on our way but then we became even more curious to know who he is.

Tyrone Edgar? I don't really want to stop and harass him with more questions, but would be interested to follow his progress leading up to the Olympics and show some support. so we wondered if you know...?"

Well. Actually, of course, I don't know. But it's entirely possible and it would be fantastic if it was true. Tyrone Edgar was certainly born in Greenwich and yes, he specialises in the 100 metres. And he looks like a thoroughly decent chap. He suffered an injury in February, so he's having to do extra-tough training to get himself fit enough to compete (personally I'd settle for a nice cup of tea and a sit down), though he'll probably miss the next bunch of championships in Turin.

According to the magazine, he's now LA based and lived in Somerstown anyway, but it's possible that he's moved since the interview.

Can anyone confirm that this guy is Tyrone Edgar? I mean - anyone who's doing that is either very, very dedicated or a complete nutter. Either way, I'd like to know who he is. I like both types of people (except when the latter variety harasses me on the internet, natch...) And if our tyre man isn't Edgar, who is he?

Why is it that suddenly I'm much more interested in the Olympics just because I see some guy dragging a tractor tyre up the most punishing bits of Greenwich Park on a regular basis? There's no real logical reason, I know. I'm not interested in sport per-se, but somehow seeing a guy train that hard in Greenwich park, makes him Ours.

I feel all warm inside. I suspect he does too, if he's been dragging that tyre again...

Running Groups

Kirstie asks:

"Do you know of any running or jogging groups in Greenwich? Or even the nearby areas? I see hundred of joggers every day, but can't find a group to join!"

The Phantom replies:

Regular readers will know that I am allergic to all forms of exercise, but I've found a couple of suggestions.

Serpentine look pretty serious stuff - they do hill training every Saturday up Greenwich Park's most punishing-looking bits. I don't find their website particularly inviting - but then unless I'm being offered a ride uphill in a comfy chair (and we all know that Old Father Thames has already nabbed Greenwich's comfy chair) I find all sports websites scary.

If you're feeling a little adventurous,The Greenwich Tritons are a local triathlon group - swimming, biking and running. Their website suggests novices are welcome.

I DID suggest this fledgling group - a women's pre-work jogging group for non-marathon runners. Until eagle-eyed Anon pointed it was in Greenwich CTT.

So I'm blushing furiously, but - hey - it's not such a bad idea. Why not start a group of happy joggers, Kirstie. If you like the idea, let me know and maybe people can email, I'll pass them onto you and you can all meet up for a run first thing in the morning? 'Fraid I won't be joining you though...

Inline Woes

A red-faced Nigel has raised the issue of rollerblading in Greenwich Park:

"I have just walked back from Greenwich park after being told by the local plod, that Roller Blading was 'banned in the park'. I asked since when; he replied 'Since forever, we have been told that any offenders must be reported.' WOW!

He didn't report me as I believe he felt a bit stupid telling me, but that's it, all the kids, families who bought their shiny blades have nowhere to go. Unless you can suggest somewhere?"

The Phantom replies:

You know I've always had a sneaking desire to have a go at rollerblading. I haven't, of course, having a) no sense of balance b) no sense of co-ordination c) no level of personal fitness, but all the same it looks fun.

I can understand why they don't want people bombing around Greenwich Park (especially people like me - I really would be a danger to myself and others) but it does seem a shame that there isn't anywhere to play safely.

The Thames Path would be one option - though please - not the bit outside the Royal Naval College - I'm always being buffeted by cyclists who insist on ploughing their bikes through the people walking there when it's only five foot wide, and rollerblades would just make it worse. That really narrow bit's only about 100 metres long for heaven's sake - can't they just walk that little distance? The rest is fine - I cycle myself there - but that tiny path's crazy.

For the moment, I reckon that the Peninsula has wide enough paths and few enough people for you to be able to work up a bit of speed without too many problems.

I've always thought that that bit under the Woolwich Road Flyover could be adapted to make a skateboard park - though the fumes would, naturally, hasten an early death for the participants.

Any other suggestions?