Alan Coleman

For some reason the train had terminated at Woking and we had to change to get to London, it was a wet Friday evening in early November. We brought some warm lager from the newsagent outside and sat about waiting for a train, happily contemplating what we where going to do with the weekend.

The little gathering was heading all over the country; Mike Hughes was going back to Leicester, Ross Abbott to Milton Keynes, Dave Maddocks all the way to Manchester with Danny Hall tagging along for the weekend.

I pointed out the next train was five minutes away but Mike, Dave and Ross said that there was a faster one afterwards that would get to Waterloo quicker. They’d asked one of the British Rail guys while Danny and me where getting the warm lager. I was having absolutely none of it and insisted that we get the next train, thinking that the bloke who worked this station every day of his life must be mistaken.

I new best.

The first train arrived and I begged everyone to get on, my persuasion quickly turning into abuse and mockery. Losers, fools, so long you bunch of dickheads. As the train moved out of earshot I was hanging out of the swing door window, laughing and sticking my fingers up like Rick from the Young Ones, up and down movement from the wrist. Mike Hughes stood on the platform with his feet shoulder width apart, leaning back slightly with his arms folded he slowly shook his head. He was wearing a lemon coloured jumper tucked into a pair of ripped jeans, around one knee was a red spotted handkerchief and on his clumpy shoes where Grolsh bottle tops, it was still the eighties. The others argued amongst themselves about what train would be quickest, Manchester was a long way and every minute counted.

I sat down to enjoy being right, they would be having a load of this on Monday morning you’d better believe it.

I laughed out loud.

Gazing out of the train window was something I’d gotten in the habit of, and it wasn’t long before I became hypnotised by the suburban landscape moving past across the tracks. Soon I became aware of something moving into my peripheral vision on the tracks next to me, my heart sank as I quickly realised the scale of my calamitous mistake.

Please no. Please. No.

My worst fears where confirmed as the yellow fronted locomotive slowly but surely started to overtake, the inevitable wouldn’t be long and as soon as the others realised what was happening they would start working themselves into a frenzy of excitement. I considered hiding, but that would be a poor show and ungraceful in denying them their moment of glory.

I faced forward trying to ignore the train slowly moving past, after what seemed like ages I could see them out of the corner of my eye banging desperately on their window like there was no tomorrow, out of my lonely carriage through the darkness into theirs. I turned to face them and ignited what can only be described as a volcanic explosion of laughter; they were simply rolling around on their seats like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Mike Hughes was so overcome with joy that he was stood up doing a dance, holding his can aloft like a trophy spilling the contents over the others, a proper little party. Danny Hall doubled up, eyes closed and shaking his head in disbelief. He was wearing a suit with heavily pleated trousers, the double-breasted jacket was cropped to the waist with a paisley shirt underneath and the effect was topped off with a pair of cowboy boot shoes.

With the trains moving apart one of the lasting images was the sight of Dave Maddocks with tears on his cheeks, smiling, giving the thumbs up.

As I looked at their faces it dawned on me that although like me, individually they might have had faults, they were some of the finest people I’d ever met. Even if I could have done so I wouldn’t have changed that moment of unbridled joy for anything, the lasting memory of young men with the world at their feet laughing uncontrollably still makes me happy.

To this day it remains one of my fondest memories.

At 6:30 pm two men at London’s Victoria station were wearing blazers, medals and maroon berets. The Parachute Regiment, WW2. They had been manning their little stand collecting money since before 9:30 when I passed them on they way to work. Behind them are photos of men at war, smiling, exhausted and bloody.

They are well presented, confident and happy as Larry, back in their day they’d have eaten suicide bombers for breakfast, they are not scared. Looking around they are seemingly happy with what we’ve done with the place, content with pride and achievement.

Whilst commuters like me scurry to the safety of the suburbs, the veterans stand around bold as brass collecting money for comrades not as fortunate as themselves, one of them sits in a wheelchair.

People hurry past with mobiles clamped to ears, treating the old soldiers as invisible like they do Big Issue vendors. I give them some money, they smile with a genuine warmth and wish me a happy weekend. As I walk away the emotions of the last few days combined with their humility start me welling up.

I fight the tears on the 6:46 with all the other miserable self obsessed lemmings listening to ring tones, flinging rubbish to the floor whilst trying to look harder than the next. All of a sudden my book on Web Standards doesn’t seem so interesting, I wish I’d taken some time to talk to them about what they were doing, about their medals and lives.

I hope they’ll be there on Monday.

I have fractured my ankle, not seriously but enough for it to be in a cast for the next four weeks. And a great cast it is too, bright orange plastic set off with a smart little black bootie. Nice. The handiwork was carried out by a nurse at Kings College Hospital in Denmark Hill, London.

In the last four days I’ve been to a Doctors surgery, two A&E departments and a fracture clinic. On every occasion I have been afforded the highest level of service, efficiency and kindness. The experience was genuinely touching and has confirmed what I’ve always thought about the NHS, that it is a fantastic institution staffed by great people.

I’m always amazed at why something that should be a source of national pride falls prey to the tabloid press on a daily basis, along with another great organisation, Transport For London. Negativity, very much like conservatism, is the easy way out of appraising the positivity in any area of our society. It also underpins the current fashion of turning the nose up at anything British, a term referred to by George Orwell as negative nationalism.

The thing with the tabloids is that their form of negative nationalism only applies to those institutions that are not traditionally conservative, the NHS or TFL for example. They would never apply it to what they consider to be mainstays of strength and decency like the police, armed forces or the royal family.

The Broadsheets go in for negative nationalism too, but for them it’s the more liberal concerns of culture, food and sport that are always better somewhere else.

I spent most weekday evenings during the mid eighties glued to the Nine O’clock News and Panorama. The news seemed to be full of stories about miners and apartheid whilst Panorama, with its terrifying theme tune, tended to focus on nuclear war and apartheid. The last sentence forms the basis of my argument that the eighties was a tragic, and for me at least, a dark and foreboding decade. It’s not that I was above the whole New Romantic thing, just that there were far more important issues showing on the world stage.

One of those was the South African apartheid regime, a brutal experiment in social engineering that dominated eighties media and needs no introduction from me. I recall watching the demonstrations and state sponsored violence unfold on a nightly basis, the beatings, chaos and primeval nature of humanity was as morbidly fascinating as it was terrifying. The surroundings of that front room scene in suburban Essex are as crystal as those occurring on television, the image of a white South African policeman thrashing a shirtless black teenager with a bull whip. For some reason I’ve always remembered that moment, and after the news blackout soon after I never watched any more violence like it. The Phillips television had wood surrounds and no remote control, the chair in which I was sitting was made of a green velour material and I was wearing adidas tracksuit bottoms. I usually watched on my own or with mum – she had a habit of leaning forward intently, holding a tea towel and biting her nails. Reading this book took me back to those Nine O’clock days as all the familiar names re-appeared, F.W. De Klerk and P.W. Botha spring to mind.

I worked abroad for the first two years of the nineties so missed the beginnings of that power transfer from the minority white racist government to a free and democratic one. The Bang-Bang Club covers that period in which townships erupted in violence during the rush to power and influence. It wasn’t until I started this book that I realised just how bad it had been, and what had been missed while away from papers and TV. Two South African photographers, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, became known in journalistic circles as The Bang–Bang Club along with two others, Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter. The four of them risked life and limb to document in pictures the township wars that raged in the early nineties.

It is a gripping read that holds no punches, the graphic description of hate fuelled violence accompanies those of poverty and oppression in a shocking manner. The story is littered with heartbreaking stories of the destruction of human life and innocence in the most barbaric manner.

Along with the adrenaline seeking excursions into the townships the authors describe the political and social climate of a South Africa on the verge of a radical change. The corruption of white government controlled security forces, and the underhand dealings with white supremacist and black parties alike is documented in a fascinating manner.

There is a personal element here too, as they weave a trail of failed relationships the club struggle with conscience, drugs and inner demons. Their life of exhilaration and journalistic glamour is set against a nagging backdrop of racism, petty jealousy and elitism. It all amounts to a furious journey that ends with as much inevitability as it does happiness and sadness.

The Twenty 20 cricket on Friday night at Edgebaston was superb entertainment, loads of noise and action washed down with plenty of lager. Okay it’s cricket for people that don’t know about the sport, like me, but hugely enjoyable all the same. It was nice also to see so many dads there with their kids.

On Saturday we drove up to the Lake District and camped at a wicked site in Crowden outside Manchester. A few cans of the newly discovered Strongbow, then to the City of Manchester stadium for the Oasis gig. First of all, what a magnificent space, we must have spent the first hour or so wandering around gazing at the sheer scale and beauty of it. A fantastic curving roof held up from the outside to offer full visibility, light blue seats throughout and internal floodlights. I remember going to Wembley as a kid and being sorely disappointed with its shabby concrete exterior and poor visibility, by comparison this place is definitely part of a new generation.

For one reason or another I’ve never been to a stadium gig before and it’s never really appealed to me either. However I wasn’t disappointed here, the closed design of the building and steep sides provided for a fairly intimate space that sounded really good.

The Coral appeared on stage to huge applause as a well respected band with plenty of great songs, the prefect warm up to the consistently good and much loved Oasis. The trouble with the barriers down the front gave Liam and Noel the perfect opportunity to indulge as the comedy duo – utterly hilarious, and it was good to hear their voices again too. Their performance and sound was as good as it’s ever been and this occasion probably the best I’ve ever seen them. Blinding from start to finish – surrounded by funny people in the stands, stumbling around sloping lager and having a great time.

Life is made of times like these, bring on Saturday and the same again at Milton Keynes.