I was actually dreading tonight. Not in seeing Nicktor, obviously. I managed to finish reading Slab Life 3 and wanted to discuss it with him. As well as enjoying his company, of course. And going for a beer in the Wishing Well, which is now called the Good Companion. No, I wasn’t looking forward to watching yet another abysmal display of football by the rarely Mighty Aldershot Town Football Club.
The trip to Borehamwood was long and littered with various bumper to bumper traffic which gave us plenty of time to discuss the merits of the book. I gave Nicktor my constructive criticism and heaps of praise. I think it’s the best of the three. His writing has definitely improved. Reducing the amount of football helped. Though he said most of the games were so bad there wasn’t a lot to write about. Which is fair.
We also hit a bit of rain. Yes, it rained today. Finally. It seems the drought has broken.
Not the super scary, life-threatening thunderstorms we were promised, mind. No, we had some rain which dampened everything, including the sheets I had on the line; the vomit ones from yesterday. The thing I liked though was the drop in temperature.
I had been a bit concerned with standing, watching the football with a fiery sun beating down on me. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t happen. It was actually quite pleasant, which is not what can be said for some of the Aldershot fans.
I understand getting excited and bouncing around a lot when your team scores a goal, but is that an excuse to throw wholesale, sweary abuse at the stewards? It’s the ugly face of football that I don’t like. I also didn’t like the ugly football face that decided to have a cigarette right next to me at half-time. That was very unpleasant. Though he was so ugly, I wasn’t brave enough to tell him where to shove his cigarette. I just sidled over to where Heather was standing and chatted to her.
However, all of that aside, the game was excellent. It was exciting, had goals, was physical without being violent and both teams felt like they really wanted to win. It was an absolute joy to watch, something I didn’t think I’d get to say about Aldershot again.
It really was exciting, especially the last 15 minutes when the score was 1-2 and they were fighting to equalise. But we held our nerve and the backs did their job. We won and the players were ecstatic.
I have to mention the Borehamwood goalie, who was amazing.
It was a great night of football and I am so glad I went. Cheers, Nicktor.
Interestingly, before the game, we headed off up the high street in order to have a beer. Remembering from last time that the Wishing Well was the only non-Wetherspoons in the town, we bypassed the raucous noise and entered the…well, Good Companion. It was the Wishing Well but had had a complete refurb since last year. It was a vast improvement.
We both enjoyed a pint before heading back down to the ground.
You can read about the Wishing Well here. We were returning from our yearly cricket weekend and popped in on the way home.
