“Taking The Plunge?”

a.k.a. “To Buy (a Season Ticket) or not To Buy?”

Started thinking about this at Christmas last year. Then time dragged on and it wasn’t worth it …

This year it started niggling me again and we have been playing well and I’ve been to so many games (home and away) and it’s cheaper and it would mean I didn’t have to keep ringing up and queuing at the box office “window 5 for collections” and, and…  and … and … it’s possible to put “and” into a sentence too many times.

Talked it over with other regulars before the recent Crawley game, decided which would be the seat to go for …

… and we lost, playing badly. And didn’t get back onto a good and winning track … but I kept going to the matches.

So got into the car today, drove along the blossom (flowering cherry, almond and blackthorn) lined lanes and roads , past a sunlit garden with flags of smoke escaping from a dying bonfire and past the re-furbished Walsall Arboretum to the ground. Bescot Stadium! Into the car park. Lots of fancy big cars there and men walking around in impressive suits. The young lady in the box office was both extremely pleasant and efficient.

“Taking the plunge are you?” is how she opened up the conversation/sale.  I had already filled in my application form and we talked over the choice of seat. She was kind enough to take the trouble to check it was where I thought it was (although she had to move a “staff member” who previously had the seat)

“Is it you?” I asked.

She smiled, warmly.

“No,” she said, “I don’t put myself through the pain.”

I was expecting to have to wait to get the season ticket, thinking it would have the names of the teams we would be playing and corresponding dates – and that is not sorted yet: after all there is still a (very outside) chance we will be in the Championship.

But no, a few strokes of the keyboard fingers, the printer whirred and checked my card details, found them acceptable and swallowed my let’s say hopefully “investment”. She then handed me the little wallet, each match numbered; no team/date details. How efficient!

As I type this I still haven’t done more than leaf quickly through  it and decide which safe place to keep it so that I forget where it is less often.

I also bought a ticket for the game on Saturday, at home to Leyton Orient (currently lying third in the League. Promises to be a good game – and we are due for one aren’t we?

Then I travel to Austria on Sunday. Flying Lufthansa to Linz and to take something like “an English Easter” to a school there. I do not often go back to places but there is something restful and enervating about this quiet area of the world – and people I have come to respect and call friends.

Into Walsall to do a little bit of pre-trip shopping. Not much luck there, but nipped into the New Art Gallery in Walsall (one of my favourite local drop-in places). A cappuccino and a look at the Independent newspaper.

News that the MotoGp season* starts this weekend. Sadly I will not be able to watch the season unfold as the TV rights have gone to BT and we do not wish to pay for the coverage. But Mark Marquez, the young rookie who took the season by the scruff of the neck last year will riding the floodlit round at Dohar with a broken leg (injured in training- riding an off road scrambling bike, by the sound of it). Still slightly disillusioned, but do not doubt the truth of it, by the words of the course leader at Stoke Rochford Hall who said he can corner so brilliantly because he has done it so often it is now in his “zombie memory”. Supreme athletes and artists do that, he explained. It takes a away a little of the mystique about performers like Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Morse. I would like to think there is a little more to it than that.

   

There is a new exhibition in the gallery. Born-in-Japan artist, Chiharu Shiota, who now lives in Germany has some interesting work there. Abstract to be sure. One piece is a whole room full of old suitcases suspended from a net by red cords which begins near to the floor and escalates towards the back top of the exhibition room. Intriguing and something similar to some of the works we saw while in Venice at the Biennale.  I spent a good twenty minutes chatting with a guy in there about the meaning of art and such installations. He was very interesting. We talked about poetry, meaning, abstract art versus representational works and logos. He is, he told me, an illustrator.

I should have done two things, I realised as I was getting into  the car.

First asked his name and secondly given him my poetry blog address.

*Would like to wish all the riders an exciting, successful and, above all, safe season.

Images: Build It … www.bescotbanter.net

Marquez: www.edition.cnn.com

Blackmore: www.last.fm

Artwork: http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=2265