Cod Almighty | Article

by Alistair Wilkinson

6 March 2017

Al fears the circumstances of Wycombe's winning goal last week may have been symbolic

Early on a grey Sunday and I remember that something
died yesterday. Sit with black coffee and a black
notebook, eldest stares again and again at a memory of
pain. We ignore the window, streaked with rain; it dulls
the note book's blank white pages and dampens our
rages. Calm acceptance while the child suffers remembrance.
I didn't like it, he said, thinking back to that lifeless head.
He shuffles out of the warmth of the room, shrouded in
gloom. I watch him go and listen as he holds back tears
that will never glisten.

Smile, little man; it's all part of being a fan. Players play
and all we can do is have our say: that while a few will
stare, not enough will ever care.

Not like us. Not when it's ours. Not in the hours when
everything's grey and we remember Saturday.

A man Gunned down in the middle of the Town. Four
thousand witnesses and four thousand hypnoses.
We froze.

Watched him.

That's more than a doze. A broken toy left limp and ragged,
its limbs spilled and spread, fingers jagged. A sunken boat,
heavy as lead, a body and a drowned head, its face pale
against the mud and grass, the time slows but it goes so fast.

Get up; they're still playing. No point saying and saying that
there's a man down; the man in yellow shades his eyes, stands
like a clown. Four thousand frown and forget the rest of the
show, let the yellow man have it and tell him to go!

And Bignot tries to focus on the first half show.

Because it seems that death becomes him. We talk of
nothing but this. We shout, we cry, distracted from the
hope we saw die. We try to see a hero stretched out in
the mud. But I can't see that many could. The heroes have
been shot, dropped potatoes - too hot! And as the team
ran out of steam, I fell like a trekkie without a beam and
closed my eyes to dream, at least to try, of days gone by
and imagine Disley as Buffy and Gowling as howling, a
Wycombe slayer and wolf-man player. Those Chair Boys
wouldn't stand a chance and the Pontoon stares askance
and stamps and fill the Town with chants and Bogle and
Amond would dance...

But it died.

There are no heroes, just new faces that aren't at the races,
that can't keep their paces.

Something died yesterday. Or was it killed?

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