The Kids would have played better!

After the excitement of Litup on thursday at the Albany, or ‘Apples and Snakes Place’ as it is really…. and seeing Baba Israel, Lemn Sissay, Aiofe Mannix, Stacy Makishi, Zena Edwards and Polarbear amongst others all in a few hours – my brain is a bit squashed with words, talent and ideas. It’ll all file away in a few days but is confettied at the moment!

Yesterday I shadowed the Mascots at WBA, the four little boys who were full of excitement at meeting their heroes and getting to walk out onto the pitch hand in hand with the players before kick off. One pinched the player’s belly to see if he was real – luckily he giggled and didn’t throw a footballer’s strop – they’re not like that at WBA:) Once the kids were having a kickabout on the pitch in front of over 30, 000 fans they forgot all about being nervous and were just enjoying the best bit of footy of their short years, and oblivious to the famous players trying to walk past their goal attempts.

The cakes were equally top drawer – they got me a chocolate one specially, thanks to Jan for that…. and the lemon and blueberry ones rocked…. sadly it was just the game that sucked as WBA lost 0-1 to Crystal Palace:( Talk at the train station afterwards largely settled on – ‘Well Middlesborough must have been really rubbish if we beat them 5-0 the other week!’  True.

In the stand I got talking to one of the women who work at WBA about her second battle with breast cancer and how being at the matches helped her cope with  treatment this year as a complete escape from worrying about the future. It’s the zen of  just focusing on the 90 minutes of play and getting lost in the action and atmosphere with the other fans. I want to ask her if I can write more about this, as the ground is where she used to come on dates with the man who’s now here husband and they used to kiss at the back of the stands…. so I want to tell her story of how her life entwines with WBA in many different ways. I’ll report back…… and there are so many strong, funny and kind women who work at the club including one who told me about the ‘bathwater’ code….. if they think a player is cute they say ‘bathwater’ as in … he’s so cute, you’d even drink his bathwater! I stood in front of the manager Roberto Di Matteo and Filipe Teixeira, both very cute….. almost ’showerwater’ even:)