Dens Park, Dundee - #11

Another month gone by and still no new grounds to report on.  What can I say, life intervenes.  Sometimes its just difficult to fit everything in.  You people just have no idea of the staggering range of exciting offers fred and I have to juggle everyday.  Artists, poets, movie stars - they all come knocking on our door over here at fortytwogrounds mansions, they all want a piece of us (I mean, sure its usually to ask us to put their rubbish out for them or make sure we water the azaleas properly next time, but still).  And then, of course, things like this keep happening and your heart breaks and all the joy and hope seeps out of the world and you’re left an empty, broken man who can no longer even imagine ever enjoying anything ever again.  That can make it difficult to get up for a game too.

Anyway, to fill in the time till the next game (hopefully in May.  Probably in May.  Maybe in May), here’s another dip into the archives.  Seeing as how Dundee have just been pipped to the first division title this season, I thought it might be a good time to revisit ground number 11 -  Dens Park.

Here’re are few things we learned during our trip to see Dundee vs Livingston on 27^th October 2007.

• Dundee taxi drivers are totally mental.  No, seriously.  Really worryingly scary.  Like the guy we had who made us promise not to walk back into town after the game because the Hilltown is far too dangerous for the likes of us (I think because fredmadison confessed to having a copy of the Guardian in his bag) and we’d totally, definitely get knifed.  Way to promote your town, by the way.
• Dundee’s stewards are even more totally mental.  Particularly the guy with the mad, empty eyes (much like Dick Campbell) who spent the whole game staring us out (looking for all the world as though he was imagining what our intestines would look like wrapped around his neck) and shuffling menacingly over to intimidate the young boys sitting along from us.
• Livingston don’t have many fans.  We sat in the away end for this one (partly so we might have some company on our dangerous, daredevil walk back to the train station after the match).  The Bob Shankly stand was pretty sparsely populated that day, I can tell you.
• Fredmadison’s polo fetish continues unabated.  Maybe time to add another product to the growing list of controlled substances around here (along with haribo space mix, kettle crisps and, oh, too many, many things to mention in a public forum like this)
• Dundee were a decent side this season, or so it seemed to us.  They went behind to a breakaway goal early on (which had the two or three livvie fans around us dancing in joy), but still kept passing the ball around quite nicely.  Kevin Mcdonald in the middle of the park did look just about as good as some of his press says he might be.  Bob Davidson was not too shabby either, scored with a screamer just after livvie’s goal (although, as I recall, the Livingston keeper (huge bloke, he was, huge) left a lot to be desired all the way through the game).  All in all, Dundee weren’t flattered by the score at all and seemed to score just about every time they went forward during the second half.  Livingston were just a bit rubbish all round, by contrast - all long punts and no composure. 
• Dens park is another one of these slightly depressing places.  One of these grounds that’s been developed in bits and pieces over the years as the club bounced around between the top two divisions.  The result is a lopsided sort of a feel with two clean, but pretty characterless stands behind either goal and a couple of ramshackle old stands running along each touchline.  The North stand also has a very odd curve to it that makes it feel as though it’s a long way away from the action.  Odd all round, though the view we had over the badlands at the outskirts of the city was quite striking.  Not pretty in anyway, mind you, but ‘striking’.
• On the way back after the game we ignored the advice of our taxi driver mentalist and braved the walk down Hilltown to the city centre.  Its not so tough.  We’ve seen worse.  We might be bourgois, middle class, Guardian-reading men in suits these days, but we’ve been around.  We’ve seen worse.  I have some scars I could show you (not all of which are mental), if you want the proof.

Here’re a couple of match reports dundee-4.

And here’s somebody else’s flickr site with some more pictures taken at the game.

Vital Match Statistics

Saturday 27^th October 2007

Scottish Football League Division One

Dens Park, Dundee

Dundee 4 (Davidson 20, Zemlik 61, Davidson 68, Lyle 73) - Livingston 1 (Pesir 14)

Attendance: 3,639

 

Ground #2: the best stadium announcer in the world

Time for another quick dip into the archives, I feel.  Mr Fredmadison has now returned from his travels (and is sporting the least convincing texas drawl you ever heard in your life.  Honestly, think Tommy Lee Jones mixed in with a bit of…I don’t know…Jerry Lewis (which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of the man himself, actually.) so there’s a decent chance we’ll get around to organising another game fairly soon.  Maybe by October or so.

Anyway.  On to the second ground on our schedule, and probably one of the highlights of our travels so far.  Really, we’ll have to go a long, long way before we have a day as good (and as weird) as this one.  The date was 8^th February 2003.  The ground was Firs Park, Falkirk, and we were there to see East Stirlingshire vs Elgin City.  Here’s what we remember about that day:

• Walking along what seemed like a perfectly normal residential street, thinking ‘this can’t possibly be the right place’ and then stumbling across the turnstiles to the ground jammed, or so it seemed, right in between two big blocks of terraced flats.  Not the sort of ground you see for miles before you arrive at it, then…
• Having a mild panic when we realised that neither of us knew what colours either side played in.  Swallowing our pride and asking the guy who was selling the programmes (It’s black and white for East Stirlingshire, by the way (I think).  Just like Juventus).
• The programme.  Wow, the programme.  Might have mentioned this before, but this was just great.  A kind of photocopy and tippex job that looked like it had been run off in someone’s back room the night before.  Great stuff.
• The ground itself.  Well.  Here’s what we scribbled about it at the time:

“On the one hand it has to be said that this is a desperately, desperately sad place.  A horrible, delapidated (never was a word more appropriate) muddy hole; the ground consists of two sides of open terracing (fenced off and unsafe for use), one bank of shallow, ash covered, railway-sleepered terracing roofed over with a stretch of rusty, pigeon infested corrugated iron and one rickety-looking, wood constructed main stand - you don’t know what to worry about more, what you’re stepping in or what you’re standing under.  All this is hemmed in on all sides by housing developments and retail parks - never did a ground seem more out of place, out of time and unloved.  I tell you, I have been in some holes in my time but this place took my breath away.”

• On the upside, the ground does have the best stadium announcer in the world.  Bar none.  Honesly, this guy was amazing.  Starting a good fifteen minutes before kick off we were treated to a constant stream of tightly scripted, dry witted, self-deprecating gags the like of which might have seemed not out of place in one of woody’s niteclub routines, like, from the sixties or something (had woody allen been born a middle aged football fan from central Scotland, obviously).  Reluctantly stopping himself just as the game kicked off, he then proceeded to do the same thing all over again all the way through half time.  Totally Captain Fantastic!
• And the game itself?  Well, 90 minutes of pretty mundane fare from 2 struggling sides (this was the ‘shire during their ‘haven’t won a game for two years phase, not the relative success of recent times) brightened up by four fantastic goals (actually I can only clearly remember one of them, but I’m pretty sure they were all just great).

Other sundry recollections:

• Some guy getting ejected from the ground (around 0.5% of the attendance) in the first half and having a fight with the steward.  We think that  he had tried to steal the takings. Hey, we could have lent him a tenner if he needed it so bad.
• The substitute striker who kept standing at least two metres off-side at all times, then shouting at the linesman and his team-mates every time he got flagged.   Sometimes you go to a football game (especially down the divisions) and you just know you’re better than someone who’s playing - this was definitely one of those occassions. He must have been caught offside on about 25 occasions.
• The announcer giving the official attendance as “179, or 178 if we don’t count the guy who was thrown out in the first half” (which will always make me laugh until I die)
• The deaf/dumb guys who stood at the side of the pitch bellowing incoherently at the linesman all the way through the second half.  The word you’re looking for is ‘surreal’.  That’s ‘surreal’.

Here’s a link to another blog covering a trip to the shire just a few years after us.  all good stuff, i think.

Vital match stats:

Saturday 8^th February 2003

Scottish Football League Division Three

Firs Park, Falkirk

East Stirlingshire 2 (Maughan 26; McAuley 54) - Elgin City 2 (Ross 8; James 50)

Attendance: 178

 

Station Park, Forfar - #1

In the absence of any new trips to report on, here’s one from the archives…

On 9^th of November 2002  - so far back in the distant mists of time that a loaf of bread only cost 2d and you could get 6 pints, a new suit and a bag of chips and still have some change left from a pound note - fredmadison and I first set out on this grand tour around the footballing theatres of Scotland.  First game up was Forfar Athletic versus Brechin City at Station Park, Forfar.  Why we chose this as a starting point is still not quite clear even to me, but I suppose it was as good a place as any.  A reasonable road trip for us, an Angus derby, a chance to see lower league goal machine Roddy Grant before he hung up his boots…this was always going to be a good day out.  Here are some things we remember about the trip:

• A long, long drive, or so it seemed, to Forfar in fredmadison’s little car (for, primitive though it seems to us now, back in those days people still used petroleum fuel and the internal combustion engine as a principal form of transport.  How barbaric!). 
• Getting to Forfar and realising neither of us had done the necessary research to find out where the ground was.
• Stopping in a local butchers shop to ask directions.  Feeling nauseous and declining politely when he (rubbing his bloody hands on his apron all the while) offered to sell us some pies for after the game.
• Walking into Station Park and having an instant, overwhelming feeling that this was going to be a great day, that this ‘round the grounds’ thing was a brilliant idea and that all was right in the world.  Here’re some notes we made about the ground at the time:

“Classic, reasonably well maintained old school football ground.  Nice main stand on one side of the ground, with 3 banks of narrow terracing around the other sides.  The walls around the back of the terracing were just low enough for us to make out the hills in the distance and catch the last of the afternoon sun dying behind them.  Great crowd - really good numbers of away fans behind the goal where we were standing, all passing banter with the players and the home supporters walking past to get to the main stand.  Very, very weird toilets (weird here being a polite way of saying ‘horrid’).  There’s a little wall at an end of the ground - you simply turn around this and pee against the back of it.  Note to self - remember not to wear trainers if we go back.”

• Decent game all round. Brechin City ended up that season being promoted as Division 2 Champions and you could see that they were the most accomplished side all round. They always looked like they had a plan (we like sides who look like they know what they’re doing. We like order. We despise chaos.) and stroked the ball around quite nicely. Having said that, Forfar went and won the game with two goals on the breakaway, so what do we know…

Other sundry recollections:

• Roddy Grant (playing for Brechin at the time) being probably the fattest professional footballer we’ve ever seen, but having a great game and finding time for some brilliant banter with the crowd. The stuff that legends are made of.
• Dick Campbell (Brechin manager at the time) having mad, mad eyes, the likes of which have to be seen to be believed and looking like the hardest man in the universe, bar none.
• Seeing Neil Cooper (Forfar manager at the time) in the car park looking glum.
• Driving back to Fife afterwards, almost ending up in Perth and having a lovely morroccan chick pea stew thing at Ms Tagomi’s mother’s place afterwards (and getting a bit scared by her dog, who was having one of it’s ‘mad’ days).

Vital Match Stats:

Saturday November 9^th 2002

Station Park, Forfar

Scottish Football League Division 2

Forfar Athletic 2 (Bavidge: 15, 73) - Brechin City 1 (Templeman: 70)

Attendance: 868

Epilogue:

It was a couple of months after this game that Stevie Paterson embarked on his ill-fated reign as Aberdeen manager and took Neil Cooper with him as under-21 coach.  The early months of 2003 were filled with extremely disturbing (for dandy don fans, anyway) rumours linking Aberdeen with Forfar strikers Paul Tosh and Martin Bavidge.  I’d have rather had Roddy Grant, myself.

Here’s a match report(forfar.doc), by the way.  Stolen from ‘the courier’, i do believe.

 

Holding pattern

The sharp eyed amongst you, our happy band of merry readers, will have noticed that there hasn’t been a whole load of a lot of fortytwogrounds type action over here in the past month or so.  Truth be told things have been a little busy.  February sort of buzzed past in a blur of tricky deadlines, missed cultural events and other such stuff.  March hasn’t been too much different.  Now one of our number (hey, let’s name names - it’s fredmadison) has only gone and zipped off on holiday for three weeks!  (important information for stalkers - its Rekyavic, New York, Austin, New York, London…or something like that)

Anyway.  Upshot of all that is that we haven’t been to any games since January and it doesn’t look as if we’ll make it to anymore until April.  So it goes.  Good thing is that there should be some cracking games to look forward to when we get back on the road again.  I’m thinking title deciders, meaty, old fashioned relegation battles, end of season play offs…all that sort of thing.

In the meantime we’ll be aiming to fill in the gap with a few notes on the games we made it to in the days (so many, many long years) before this blog/journal/scrapbook thing was up and running.  Look out for those coming up in the next few days.

 

“We’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”

I thought it might be amusing to step back a little and give ourselves a quick rundown of the stuff we’ve seen on the pitch in the 13 grounds we’ve been to so far.  That’s “amusing” in a sort of ‘playing about with statistics, giving me an excuse to construct excessively elaborate spreadsheets of the sort that makes everyone around me go a bit quiet and shuffle their feet’ kind of a way, i know, but bear with me.  honestly, some of this is quite good…

13 games

37 goals

2 penalties (both converted)

3 sending offs (one, at East Fife, for the finest right hook in front of the referee i’ve ever seen)

6 home wins

5 away wins

2 score draws

No 0-0 draws at all (its thrills every time in our experience)

Highest attendance = 13,461 (at Tynecastle)

Lowest attendance = 178 (at Firs Park)

A total game going audience of 38,785 people (or an average of 2,983 per game…or a pretty poor CIS cup attendance at Parkhead or Ibrox))

A total of 23 different teams (hey, that’s more than half!).

We’ve seen two teams both home and away (Dundee & Forfar Athletic) and one team away from home on two occasions (Peterhead - both of which they’ve won…).

Given the incestuous nature of Scottish Football teams (”um…are you sure you want to say that?”- nervous legal editor) we have the general sneaking suspicion that we’ve probably seen loads of players turning out for different sides.  Without getting toooo train-spottery (like pouring over match reports and cross-checking stats at soccerbase) about it we do know that we’ve definitely seen four players more than once.  They are:

Elliott Smith (no.  not that one.) - Berwick Rangers & Forfar Athletic

Ludovic Roy - Ayr United and Dundee

Mark Cairns - Queen’s Park & Forfar Athletic

Steven Craig - Aberdeen & Livingston (and, yes, he did look surly and adolescent for both of them)

um…what else…

We’ve seen 4 or more goals scored on 4 seperate occasion…we’ve seen 3 games with only 1 goal.  Of the 26 sides who’ve started games in front of us only 5 have kept clean sheets (we are not good omens for defences and goalkeepers, i think)…on average we see 2.85 goals a game…we’ve seen 2 SPL games, 4 each from SFL Divisions 1 & 2 and 3 from Division 3…

…oh, crikey, i could keep doing this all day, i really could, but i can see that you’re beginning to drop off a bit at the back there so i’d probably better stop. 

More interesting posts coming soon, i promise.

 

the curious case of the hesitant linesman

Yes well, off to Cowdenbeath with more than a passing interest in the result. Having a bona-fide fan of one Team with us was something new. The only time I’ve ever really supported one of the Teams on our visit was when I felt intimidated by Tagomi’s description of the Campbell brothers at Brechin. I felt I HAD to support them that day or else. 

Well, I went from not knowing exactly Cowdenbeath was to knowing it is slightly less colder than than Montrose. As I was sitting (next to a man of the cloth I’ll have you know), my feet could not pull off the amazing dance moves still being talked about in hushed tones at Links Park. At least I was slightly more protected than the youngest and smallest Ball Boy I have ever seen. Poor lad - no-one laughed when his Mother stepped onto the Speedway track and made him put his hood on and motioned he should move about a bit to stop from keeling over.  

Saying that, there wasn’t much laughter at the football on show especially in the first half. We’d just sat down at the start of proceedings when a Cowdenbeath defender decided to head a cross into his own goal. Not the best start but luckily lightning never strikes twice. Oh, but it did actually - as another cross was turned in past the home keeper by an embarassed colleague AND a goalkick was allowed to squirm out of the goalkeeper’s grasp and onto the feet of one of the 10 on-rushing County players (it was like watching Zulu).

Ho hum. I believe County have been described as a “big, physical team” but this doesn’t really do the County players justice. Being full time football players obviously means they were quicker (in thought and deed) but doesn’t explain the difference in height between the two teams. Only when a slightly taller than average Cowdenbeath substitute come on did the home side win a header (well, own goal aside).  The SFA should investigate this as a matter of urgency.

Six goals but the football on show wasn’t as good as previous games. If you’d cut out some of the catastrophic defending - it would have been a lot more closer but a lot less entertaining. Saying that, the freezing conditions and the driving rain were not conducive to free-flowing football. The ground as well maybe didn’t help - it was one of the more quieter grounds I’ve been to. This is mainly because the Speedway track means that fans are really far apart. We could hear the odd shout (and comedy swearword) from across the other side of the pitch but not much banter. One thing that did unite the dispersed masses was the one of the linesmen. Far be it from me to criticise these people (my dad used to be a referee) but I loved the way he’d take a quick glance at the referee before giving a throw-in. Some of the time, he was clearly in the wrong but he couldn’t take his cue from the ref so he just picked a direction at random. Great stuff - a good trip and much obliged for being granted access to the Boardroom. I’ll go back there - in the Summer - I may also renege on the Vegetarianism as well. The Cowdenbeath pies looked the nicest we’ve seen at the 13 Grounds we’ve done so far.

 

Heraldry, Cowdenbeath, untamed beasts

There’s no other way to put it, Central Park is just a bit of an odd place to watch football.  Its mostly the racetrack around the pitch, I think, and the way it means that even when you’re right up in the front row of the stand it still feels as though you’re standing well away from the action.   The main stand’s a bit odd too.  Even sitting right bang in the middle in the director’s seats you still have two big pylons almost perfectly positioned to obscure your view of either goal.  very strange.

Compared to most other grounds in the lower division the whole place seems really huge too.  It’s big and open and on an ordinary matchday the couple of hundred spectators scattered across the terracing feel like they’re miles away from each other.  Having said that, like anywhere else it does come to life when its full.  I remember being here a few years ago for a promotion decider when the whole place was packed to capacity (there were scuffles breaking out over seats in the stand and kids being pushed back over the wall to the terracing) and the atmosphere was tense and fizzing.  That day it felt like a mini version of old-style Hampden on a cup final - a great untamed beast of a stadium.

Anyway, we were snug and safe in the main stand for this one - just as well given the way the rain came pouring down all through the second half.  Highlights of the day: the Germans on the train … fredmadison’s sandwich rants … tea in the boardroom (yay!) … laughing at the ball-boys … making great tactical switches … failling to win the half-time draw again…

…oh, and the programme.  I have to say something about the programme!  This was genuinely great, I though.  Look, it has all sorts of really interesting stuff in it.  It has a running column on heraldry, for goodness sake!  Heraldry!

Great, great, great stuff.  True, it doesn’t have the photocopy and tippex charm of an East Stirlingshire, but its got way more character than the faceless stuff you get in the SPL.

 

Up for the cup

As an aside, every year fredmadison and i decide that a nice addition to this whole 42 grounds thing would be to concentrate on the cup for a bit, to pick a first round game and then follow the winners through every subsequent round ’till we get to the final.  That’d be great, we think.  We’d get around loads of grounds, including some non-league ones we’re unlikely to otherwise see, have fantastic adventures and get into all sorts of mad scrapes…it’d just be great!

Trouble is, whenever we think of this and bother ourselves to start choosing fixtures it usually turns out that, oh, the first round was three weeks ago…or it’s next saturday and i can’t go ‘cos i promised my sister i’d…etcandsoon.

Anyway, it seems there are other people out there who have had the same idea but are not nearly so feckless and disorganised as we are.  This chap here seems to be making quite a good fist of things and is being jolly entertaining about too as he goes along. 

We are impressed.

We will continue to watch with interest.

 

Central Park, Cowdenbeath #13

Cowdenbeath vs Ross County

26/01/08

SFL Division 2

Ground number 13 was Central Park, Cowdenbeath.  Another great day for us but not quite so lucky for our hosts who went down to a 4-2 defeat against Ross County thanks to two own goals in the first half an hour followed up by a defensive aneurism and a goalkeeping blunder in the second half. 

An odd sort of  game all round really - County (whose nickname, i understand from their website, is ‘the staggies’, which makes me smile for some reason) look like they’ll probably win the second division title this season but they didn’t look particularly impressive on this showing.  While they’re a big, physical team and much quicker to the ball than Cowdenbeath (cue much resigned, muttering along the lines of “well, they are a full time side” from the home supporters), i don’t recall seeing much in the way of flowing, passing football from them during this game.  In fact, neither side seemed to knock the ball around nearly so well as either Montrose or Forfar (both a division below) did during our last outing - though the pitches might have had something to do with that, i guess.  It was a horrid, wet and windy day in Cowdenbeath yesterday and i’m sure the pitch wasn’t running anywhere near as sure as Links Park’s artificial grass.

Cowdenbeath look a frustrating sort of a side.  John O’neill still looks like a player, Jay Sheils is feisty and good to watch (so long as you don’t expect him to pass the ball to his own players) and the two goals they scored were both terrific finishes.  If only they could keep the ball a bit better and not be so outrageously rubbish at the back they might be ok…

Anyway, we had a fine old time as usual.  Met up at lunchtime and took the train over to Fife where we hooked up with our guest fortytwogrounder of the day - a venerated non-executive officer of the club, no less, who was on hand to provide us unworthy liggers with a tour round the club’s boardroom (complete with real, honest to goodness trophy cabinet) before the game, not to mention a free cup of tea and french fancy at half time.  Great stuff.  We should so try this at every game - way more civilised than shivering on the terraces and spilling your tea on your shoes.  Maybe we could tell clubs we’re doing a michelin star thing on their catering departments.  Would that work?  Surely there’s got to be a way to make that work!

Anyway, more thoughts to come during the week no doubt.  In the meantime, here are some photos.  Pay especial attention to this one, which was taken literally seconds before the last goal went in - this is as close as i’ll ever come to an exciting action shot.

Here are some very dull match reports written by journalists.

And here are some much, much more interesting match reports written by people who sound like they actually care - one from the home side’s perspective and one from the away side.

 

How to go about organising a fortytwogrounds type trip of your very own

Here at fortytwogrounds we like to think of ourselves as a pretty inclusive sort of an outfit.  We don’t like to sit in our ivory towers hoarding knowledge to ourselves, we think that everyone should be able to share in the warm-glow-inducing glories that are Scottish Football grounds.  As a part of this free-range, open source attitude we have, todays post provides a detailed, easy to follow guide on how to go about organising a fortytwogrounds type outing of your very own, illustrated with recent examples drawn from our own experience.  Think of this as the football going example of the cover of that punk fanzine from ‘77 that keeps getting mentioned on the bbc’s ‘pop music’ season at the moment (”here’s a chord, here’s another chord etc and so on…now form a band”).  That’s exactly the kind of cultural impact we’d like to think we’re aiming for with this.

1) Pick a ground to visit from the hundreds (ok, 30) you still have to choose from:

From: Tagomi

To: Fredmadison

13/12/2007 15:48

Subject: Pastoral Paternilia

…incidentally, we totally have to go see cowdenbeath sometime soon.  just found out that my father has been appointed club chaplain!

 The job description apparently includes - being called ‘club chaplain’… going to games every now and then…providing spiritual guidance to the players and staff should any of them ask for it (none so far)…and…um…that’s it, i think.

he does gets the whole drinks in the boardroom treatment every matchday, however, and free entry to every game (although he says he’s been too embarrassed to claim that and just ends up paying anyway).

i’m trying to persuade him to go out and bless the pitch (and the crowd and the ball) before every game, but he’s not having it…

From: Fredmadison

To: Tagomi

13/12/2007 16:02

Subject: RE: Pastoral Paternilia

superb!

seriously. i’m up for a trip to cowdenbeath.

i’d love to go and heckle your dad - would he find that amusing or would it start some family rift causing untold distress to you and your kin? has anyone ever heckled the chaplain before? could this be a first in scottish football?

i’m up for the corporate hospitality though - i’m up for anything that grants me access to the corridors of power.

january’s game then?

2)  Flick through your crowded calendars and busy social schedules to find a date on which you’re both available to go to a game.

From: Tagomi

To: Fredmadison

13/12/2007 16:45

Subject: Hmmm…

I just had a message from our “mail control administration service” saying that they’d quarantined an email from you…

message subject is ‘ta dah!’

you have a spam score of 9.5.

would you like to explain yourself?

From: Fredmadison

To: Tagomi

13/12/2007 16:57

Subject: RE: Hmmm…

ah. did that go to you?if you never want to see me suggestively posing in a dressing-gown - please delete the email. it’s a homemade calendar not meant for your eyes.actually - it was a list of the cowdenbeath games in january which i looked up and which your company clearly doesn’t want you to go to. here is the list in an non-threatening manner:

sat 5th jan (irn-bru league) - cowdenbeath vs ayr (15:00)
sat 12th jan (cup) - livingston vs cowdenbeath (15:00)
sat 19th jan (league) - brechin vs cowdenbeath (15:00)
sat 26th jan (league) - cowdenbeath vs ross county (15:00) - made sure i spelt county properly.
sat 2nd feb (league) berwick vs cowdenbeath (15:00)

my favourite is probably the 26th as the 5th may be too soon after new year? you know what you’re like with a drink inside you.

apologies if i’ve caused you any problems.

From: Tagomi

To: Fredmadison

14/12/2007 10:42

Subject: RE: Hmmm…

Tell me…is it a nice satin gown that shows off your curves or one of those plump, towelling ones with ‘cute’ cartoon characters on it?
 
actually, don’t answer that.  probably best we just move on…
 
26th january.  yes.  ross county.  yes.  is good.
 
and is that apology for problems you caused me yesterday (none) or ever during the long course of our association (innumerable psychological traumas.  10 years of counselling on the NHS)?  is it a standard apology i can call upon whenever i need it?  i don’t like to ask, but my analyst is insisting.  she thinks we might be having a breakthrough (unless she said ‘breakdown’.  that’s possible too.  its sometimes so hard to hear her properly from underneath the table.  why doesn’t she enunciate properly?)

3) Once that’s all sorted spend at least a month not mentioning the trip at all, not even once, to the extent that one or both of you begin to worry that the other has completely forgotten about it and arranged to go to Prague that weekend with some people from work instead.

4) Eventually get around to tentatively checking whether the trip is still on.  For best results this should be done in a sudden panic as late as the day before the game but this is not proscriptive.  Users should feel free to adopt whatever schedule they are most comfortable with. 

From: Tagomi

To: Fredmadison

17/01/2008 09:58

Subject: RE: Day in pictures

… hey!  26th January! Cowdenbeath v Ross County!  i’m still in if you are…i’ll email my dad to see if he’s free…

From: Fredmadison

To: Tagomi

17/01/2008 14:32

… Yes, I’m still up for the cowdenbeath trip although i still don’t know exactly where it is. it must be close to embra as it’s £5.60 for you on the train i think. i could get to waverley and meet you there or could meet you in “the beath”. let me know as you are the local expert.drinks in the boardroom is a must - i can get tipsy on wine and call the chairman all sorts of rude words and and make it so that everytime your dad speaks to you he’ll have a mental picture of me being sick in the cowdenbeath boardroom’s bin. i would do that for you man - i won’t lend you money or take a bullet - but you need someone to mis-behave - i’m your man.let me know your thoughts on this. i’ve just found out where cowdenbeath is man - not a bad place to get to. have a look at their website - it’s pretty pretty good:

http://www.cowdenbeathfc.com/index.shtml

5) Spend untold tedious hours discussing all the possible ways of meeting up and doing the trip by train (Aberdeen-edinburgh-cowdenbeath-inverkeithing-kirkcaldy-thornton-and-back-again?).  Devise a plan of such complexity that the working out of the ticket price is likely to break the internet when you try to buy them.  Once a final decision is made and everyone is happy then, and only then, should you go and actually check the Scotrail website.

From: Fredmadison

To: Tagomi

22/01/2008 10:05

just checked the trains.for one day only - you have to get a bus between here and dundee. guess which day that is? erm…. you got it.so i’ll drive down in betsy for that day. i can’t sit on a bus - i won’t do it you hear. let me know what you’re plans are for that day (i.e. before or after we meet):

a) i can swing in by your gaff (the locationof which is a mystery to me) and pick you up
b i drive to edinburgh - we get the train to and from cowdenbeath and i make my way home
c) i meet you in cowdenbeath (the location of which is a mystery to me)

my favoured options would be b and then a with c following miles behind it.

6) Completely lose the will to discuss things any further.  Make final arrangements to definitely make final arrangements sometime when you can both bear to think about it again.

7)  Despite the complete lack of organisational capabilities you’ve both display thus far, somehow manage to still meet up on the day of the game.  Drink coffee (or tea if you’re feeling a bit too caffeinated already).  Eat scones.  Have a jolly time talking about podcasts and comics and things.  Go to the game and thoroughly enjoy yourselves.

This is, of course, all just a very, very roundabout way of saying that the next trip on our schedule is:

Cowdenbeath vs Ross County

Irn-Bru (and doesn’t that just make you laugh everytime you say it) Scottish League Division 2

3pm 26^th January 2008.

All of which is very exciting since it means we get to go to Central Park (um, sorry, not that one.  i meant this one) for the first time under the aegis of this trek/odyssey/tour thing we’re on.  Very exciting.  Look forward to news, reports and miscellaneous nonsense from Sunday onwards…