Alan Coleman

There was a certain amount of momentum leading up to the 2007 FA Cup final. Scores to be settled from the Premiership, a new and long awaited national stadium, and with that a general acceptance that football was finally coming home – sort of. The scene was set, the predictions made and the obligatory case of Carlsberg lugged back from the Offy in time for kick off. I was even looking forward to the pre match banter and pundity so essential to such an occasion.

The Empire all over again for 90 minutes as the world tunes in and sees how great we are – the romance of the FA Cup.

So where did it all go wrong? For me, it probably started at the point where Mike Summerbee walked onto the pitch to a chorus of Abuse from the Man Yoo fans. I asked myself what a man has done to deserve such treatment after dedicating his life to the game, representing his country and playing over 400 games for Manchester City. The sight of parents with dirty fingernails booing an elderly man in front of their children is probably everything you need to know about Man Yoo and its glory hunting support.

It’s a shame that those same supporters, probably from the Home Counties, couldn’t find it in themselves to abuse the balding heir to the throne as he delivered an entirely predictable speech as President of the FA. Who really deserves our praise? At least Mike Summerbee understood the offside rule.

So even before one of the most tedious games in the history of the sport kicked off, the day was tarnished. Perhaps that’s what happens when things get built up too much. Reality has a habit of biting us on the arse.

I’m glad Man Yoo lost, the only down side being that it was to Chelsea, the team of choice for fake football violence and its student flirtations. A team that has become synonymous with the brutality of greed, and cheating players like Michael Essien. A team that’s as ugly as the part of London from which it derives its name.

Apparently it was a good goal, but by then we’d stopped watching, the overwhelming anti climax being enough to make the Karen Carpenter story sound like a night on the piss with Roy Chubby Brown.

But should I be surprised? Maybe it’s not just the FA Cup, maybe it’s the game itself that is changing. It’s no secret that all those London Taxi drivers that used to go and watch the Arsenal have been priced out of their sport. Replaced by gaggles of women and Russian men with too much money to burn. Thus, changing one of the tenets of working class life into just another spectator sport like Rugby, or horse racing. But that’s for another day.

I love football, but the 2007 FA Cup final was crap.

Me and Mand went for a curry in East Dulwich the other night, it’s only been a few months since I was last there but even in that time the change has been startling. We used to go there a lot when we first moved to London and were living over that side of Peckham, now it’s just occasionally when we’re hungry or when I want to piss myself off.

I suppose what I’m talking about here is what used to be called gentrification, the idea that the influx of wealth pushes up houses prices and thus the quality of facilities like shops and pubs. Gentrification itself is a strange word, conjuring up images of Victorian men with canes and top hats, witty one liners and the odd slap for the good wife.

‘The gentry, gentlemen’

In fact any phrase or word involving ‘gent’ reminds of people under the age of forty who still hold the door open for women, and then do that little bow in that side parting accountant sort of way.

East Dulwich has been well and truly gentrified. Every shop must have changed hands within the last week, changing from something useful like a newsagent, in to a useless hobby business, probably run by a permanently terrified hippie woman who drinks herbal tea and does veggie farts. The sort of place that sells traditional wooden toys that kids get given because some relative read in the Guardian that they’re good for development. You can see it now, the child ripping open what it thinks is yet another PS2 game but is in actual fact a hand painted wooden car.

“Thanks Aunty Verity, that’s about as much use as a chocolate fucking ashtray!”

And then there’s the pubs. Stripped of any character or meaning they’ve all been refitted to look exactly the same. Sneering over the pumps of faddish drinks and floppy hair, overpriced to afford affluence to the willing customer. No familiar sign to welcome you up the road, no cosy furniture, dart board or fruit machine. The minimalist interior design makes for an echoic canteen experience, a candlelit half way house between the Students Union and the NAAFI. The lead windows of coloured glass that used to give the pub it’s warmth and security have now made way for huge expanses of gawping shopfront, these suck the life out of what has become little more than a marketplace.

‘Locals not welcome, no football shirts, caps or dirty cash’

But as the rebranded name would suggest, they’re not really pubs anymore, just bars and restaurants with stupid chalk boards and obscure Belgian beers to compliment the Sunday supplement lifestyle. The restaurants are full of tedious writers like Brian Viner or Mathew Fort who write about Sea Bass when they’re not waffling on about how great their children are.

‘The world is your oyster sweetheart, let nothing stand in your way’

The stripped and signless bars are patronised by students, past and present, hugging glasses of Chilean Merlot and smiling inanely at the, ‘Good food and friends’ mood of warming smug. As toothy conversations of cool irreverence cover the real agenda of self, I can’t help be feel let down by the lack of humility and vision. It feels like a members only playground for grown ups that will soon become a deserted ‘last year’ scenario.

I walk past these places feeling a little more than intimidated by the aggressive culture of laughter and educational importance. The glancing that looks me up and down know full well that I don’t belong, and my panicking expression must be very reassuring. Most of the people that go to these places would pride themselves of living in a multicultural city, and would probably make an embarrassing point of trying to join in at the Notting Hill Carnival. Yet the irony of the situation is that on a day to day level they choose to socialise and surround themselves with the safety of their own type. In this sense, it’s like Glastonbury or skiing, almost exclusively white and very middle class. Diversity at arms length that sounds great amongst friends at work, but in reality is representative of a society that is more polarized than it’s ever been.

The whole area has about it a cool well to do sort of feeling, the kind that goes down well on idiot Channel 4 property programs. To me it feels selfish and short term, a modern gold rush of smug congratulation and trend. As History stands by staring hopelessly at the need breed and their inbred arrogance, I can’t help but get the feeling the bubble will one day burst, and I hope it will too.

The thing is, I wonder what will be left of the place once the market forces move on and take the market with them, now that the history and community have been left out in the cold.

I was verbally abused by two teenage girls on Wednesday evening whilst taking my evening exercise around the local park. There I was, jogging away minding my own business, enjoying the birdsong and damp air when peace was shattered.

I could see them sat on the bench a way off, waiting for my arrival, considering the most appropriate abuse for a bloke in his thirties with skinny legs. There were three of them, a boy and two girls all about the same age, sat around smoking and more importantly, waiting for me. As I got closer I started to see their eyes, bulging with Redbull and nicotine, watching me. The spectacle of me running around the park was simply too good to be true.

Then one of them is running next to me, so close that I can smell the biological soap powder on her tracksuit and see the red swelling of teenage life under her skin. I feel quite intimidated, but that turns to embarrassment when she stops and shouts,

“You look like an ugly version of the 118 man!”

I turn round and call her a Chav, then instantly regret it when I see her smile that smile people do when they’re putting on a brave face, like when you tell a colleague that you’ve been promoted and they haven’t (how would I know?).

I called her a Chav, which in my eyes is as bad as calling their friend a Nigger, it’s no less acceptable because both of us are white. I want to apologise but she shouts more abuse and I jog on, grumbling about spending my life defending people like that against the moral outrage of the middle class, and this is what I get in return.

But, as Mandy pointed out, it doesn’t work like that. What should I expect, to be hailed as some kind of working class saviour? No that would be stupid, and more than just a bit embarrassing, probably a cross between Billy Bragg and character from a Zadie Smith story.

And like Mandy also suggested, joggers get abused because the whole point of jogging makes people that do it think they’re better than everyone else. There’s a certain amount of truth to that. When I go out for lunch, I usually get barged aside by some sweating investment banker with far too much body hair, thundering along the pavement in too little Lycra. The whole point of going out at lunchtime for a run in the city of London can mean only one thing – look at me. I’m getting there quicker than you, and I probably drive a Lotus 7 in a sheepskin flying jacket.

This whole situation reminds me of an incident I witnessed a couple of years ago whilst jogging along the Thames at Hammersmith. Now I never liked the local rowing club. Not just because it was a rowing club, but because they used to block the path with their boats with an astonishing self importance. Also they used to walk around with their scruffy canvas training tops on, collars turned up like young officers, yuk. So there was this bloke rowing up stream, all healthy and smug, in what they call a skeleton or a skull or something like that. He was close to the far bank probably because the current isn’t so strong there, bearing in mind that the river is quite wide at that point.

A little further up stream a parapet type thing jutted out from amongst the trees, the perfect position from which to launch an unprovoked attack on an innocent rower, which is exactly what happened.

They appeared like a pack of Baboons, leaping around with delight at the perfection of the opportunity. Even from the other side of the river I could see the Burberry check, and hear the verbal abuse that rained down along with the clumps of mud and half full cans of lager (if you’ve ever thrown half a can of lager you’ll know how satisfyingly it glides through the air, especially with the foamy trail that it leaves in its wake). The bloke on the river was probably quite terrified, an experience he wouldn’t have forgotten in a hurry.

From the other bank I thought the whole episode was quite amusing, a proper bit of class war, I thought it was great that the rowing club, and everything that it stood for, was getting some.

But now I’m not so sure, I neglected to consider the individual that in this instance was a front for the institution. So pleased was I to see a group of young people getting one over on the rowing club, that I failed to see that at the sharp end was probably just a friendly bloke out doing some exercise.