As predicted, my tunnel crossing yesterday was comically timed such that we drove onto the train with 5 minutes to go, Barnsley at 2-2 and Peterborough 2-1 up. As I’d predicted this problem I had contingency plans in place and had 2 people on standby to send me the final outcome as soon as it was known. But 10 minutes later, SMS came there none and we were about to head into the tunnel so I sent out a couple of panicky messages to Turvey Tyke and my sister-in-law to try to get final confirmation before we went under. I’d left it too late, though, and so started what I thought was going to be the most agonizing half hour of my life but turned out to not even be the most agonizing half hour of the afternoon. Thus it was we emerged onto the continent with Barnsley living some kind of “Schrödinger's Football Team” existence: neither dead nor alive until I opened the box. Not a moment too soon for Mrs Burgundy Red either as she was beginning to tire of my “It’s not the despair: I can live with the despair – it’s the hope!” routine. Then the first text arrived: from my sister-in-law (Dirty L**ds fan), confirming that the game had finished 2-2. Imagine finding out from a Dirty L**ds fan that you’ve been relegated. No word of the Peterborough result but that was a long shot and it hardly even entered my mind. Seconds later followed one from Turvey, again confirming our result. I knew Turvey would have told me if anything else had changed so we headed off the train and onto the next leg of the journey in the sure and unhappy knowledge that we were relegated. Mrs Burgundy Red tried to cheer me as we drove along the A26 (“L’Autoroute des Anglais”) by asking who we could go to visit close to away matches in division 3 but it wasn’t working. Bristol City was the best away game I could come up with on that front. Oh dear. Then a strange thing happened. Another text arrived from my mate who’s a Man Utd fan saying that Bristol, Wolves and Peterborough were down and we were staying up. Mrs Burgundy Red read it out as I was driving. He’s not a close follower of the “lower leagues” but he’s usually reliable so I asked her to reply to confirm but she couldn’t get to grips with my phone. I turned on the radio and could still get Radio 5 MW but they were doing the Prem thing. It was a full 20 minutes before they recapped the afternoon’s Championship outcomes and I heard it with my own ears. Even then they didn’t tell us the scores and as they’d got it wrong several times during the afternoon I didn’t really believe it until Sports Report (I’m not even sure I believe it now). Then the second text from Turvey arrived, sent 2 minutes after his first, telling me about what had happened at Palace. So for a sizable part of yesterday afternoon Barnsley were consigned to division 3 in the Burgundy Red household (well, vanhold). It was awful and I’d be very grateful to all at the club if they can ensure that it never happens again. If the worst comes to the worst though and we’re ever in this position again I’m never going to migrate on a matchday again.
You're not the first to point that out. My colleagues at the mobile phone company where I work, for example, suggest it from time to time.
Ha ha ha - serves you right what a dumb time to book a tunnel crossing for - I think if I had been doing that I would have booked the crossing for half time and then known when I popped into france all I needed to do was look up the scores on my inernet enabled phone to see where we finished - oh you dont have a phone that can browse the web either oh dear..... for what its worth I thoght we were down for about 10 mins after Hudds equalised
OK, I know what I wrote last year but I've decided that it's time to employ the "lucky tunnel" technique which worked so well before. I'll be doing the crossing at around the same time as the Dirty L**ds game. Football Gods, please take note.
Don't know if I read this at the time, or if I did, whether or not I was drunk. But it's very good. I like that.
Laura's actually got a Schrodinger's Cat t shirt. The design is one half the cat normal, the other's a skeleton.
