In our beginning was our end

8th August 2009: 16th May 2010.

[The above photo is © Lewis Outing LRPS CPAGB, and reproduced here with his kind permission. See more of his photography here: http://www.mainlyfax.fotopic.net]

Journey to our heart of darkness

'There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream...'

- Heart of Darkness

Going to the ground that day was like travelling back to seasons past, when supporters crowded the bars and clustered round the stadium. Yet, like a visit to the past, a silence seemed to lie over the area. An as-yet-empty terrace, a great silence, and impenetrable crowd of people. The air turned cold, time slowed. When the clouds occasionally parted, there was no joy in the brilliance of the sudden sunshine. The meandering groups of supporters who had stayed with us for the whole journey wandered into the gloom of over-shadowed distances, eyes cast down, avoiding the excited glances of others who had just joined us now.

You lost your way that day as you would in a desert, and batted all day long against shoulders, trying to find your way through, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away – in another existence perhaps.

There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of faces, and grey, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it after a while; I did not see it any more; I had no time. The game started and I had to keep guessing at our course; I had to discern the dangers that lay ahead, the signs of mistakes; I watched for a moment of inspiration to visit the players in yellow in front of me; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out when a speculative shot would stray towards our goal, only to be gathered safely in. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades. The purpose for our journey, the inner truth, is hidden – luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching us after we’d paid the entrance fee, not to forget the heartache which makes up the rest of the price.

But what, indeed, does the price matter, if the trick is well done?

[Image credits: Image from Apocolypse Now courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; match image courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Play off semi final, first leg: A call to the colours at Rushden

Sunshine brings Us back to where we were at home to Mansfield

1-0 away at Altrincham

A chill wind blowing across the terraces at Hayes

'Just a game': Gateshead at home

(The thoughts in James Constable and Paul Farman's heads as far apart as could be: their reaction, identical)

Grays 0 - 4 Oxford

After the snow, defeat at home to Tamworth

(Oxfordshire had started to look familiarly unfamiliar under its sheet of snow, but the world hasn't changed. There's a campaign to fight.)

The sublime followed by the ridiculous at home to Ebbsfleet

Back on the march at Crawley

A light gleams an instant at the New Lawn

Winter grind drawing in at home to Barrow

Oxford 5 - 0 Grays

(Is it possible to talk at the moment about this Oxford United squad without sounding messianic?)

Dark clouds shroud the sky at Mansfield

(A first defeat of the season for Oxford; they go down fighting.)

Oxford 4 - 0 Eastbourne

History is quietly cast to one side as Oxford win at the Racecourse

Oxford through the looking glass at home to Luton

(Luton show us how we looked three seasons ago)

[Sir John Tenniel's illustration from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Oxford 4 - 0 Chester

(Sometimes it's hard to see much other than the players on the pitch)

Through a glass darkly at Histon