The dying of the light?

(We could certainly have done with a bit more rage away at Lewes)

Dark day ends with victory at home against Cambridge

(Oxford, United,..)

Defeat at home to Crawley

Image courtesy of Image*After.

(A wounded London Road bellows defiance: We ARE the London Road)

As I walked out one matchday morning

‘It becomes increasingly easy in urban life to ignore their extreme humours, but in those days winter and summer dominated our every action, broke into our homes, conscripted our thoughts, ruled our games, and ordered our lives.’

- Cider With Rosie

It was a clear morning in September, and the sun was establishing the little grip on the day it would hope to exercise. As I walked along the streets with their close houses toeing the pavement, I scented the sharp cut in the air that comes when Summer finally surrenders the struggle to Autumn, its waste and indifference giving way to acute attention, undercut with the promise of cold.

It becomes easy to ignore, but for those who tramp through this ritual, the seasons have always ruled The Season, with their own marks and measures for these followers. High sulky summer marks the beginning and the end, the early days when you bask in the pleasure of a return to a habit given up, lolling in the activities of matchday, with the luxury of games ahead to make up for points carelessly mislaid in these drowsy days. Winter is the season of anxiety, a sense of something slipping, or something slippery, a just-melting icicle held in mittens, sliding through your grasp before you press your hands together and it flies up almost uncontrollably. Spring is the season when we start to see the signs of growth, the things we will reap according to that which has been sown, before the final few days when we briefly see summer again, and surprise is all too rare.

And autumn: autumn is the season that reminds us that this is to come, that these summer days are over, and we are here again; but that this is not enough, and that there is purpose at hand.

On the way to the ground I paused to take a drink. The pub was a murmur of other football supporters, their folded newspapers, their beer, their darting eyes, and sudden shouts. The pool table was covered, and a pair of policemen completed a circuit of the bar, gloved hands tucked into belts. Laughter came from where the crowd closed again behind them. A solemn-faced man watched his boy scuffle with a friend, before haring between the legs of tables and drinkers. As kick-off time neared, and the bar queue adopted a quiet new urgency, the talk was of games gone and the game to come.

‘Should’ve taken three points last time out.’

‘We’ll do it today, just you see.’

Autumn had arrived, and this talk had assumed a seriousness.

Waiting in vain for the Us to go steaming in at Kidderminster

(I still want to be in that number)

Murray lays down the captaincy

Image courtesy of the Wikipedia Commons.

('Far off he stands / In sunset land, and on his shoulder bears / The pillar'd mountain-mass whose base is earth, / Whose top is heaven, and its ponderous load / Too great for any grasp.'

- Aeschylus, 'Prometheus Bound')

A moment of joy at home against Kettering

Listening to Oxford win at Northwich

(Cheshire seemed a long way away last night, but by the end of the evening there was a shade of light visible on the horizon)