The Show Must Go On
Jul. 21st, 2024 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiffel_71Went to Norwich on Friday the 12th for the England v Republic of Ireland Women’s Euro qualifier. At the Gosport ferry I heard a familiar voice say hello. It was Ann. We kissed and renewed our commitment to going for a jar some time. I joined her on the open upper deck of the ferry and she told me how her lad Harrison, never previously a particular fan of football, had been getting into the men’s Euro 2024 to the point where he thought he knew tactics better than Southgate.
The Free Lionesses had organised a joint meet-up with the Irish fans at the Coach and Horses pub. Rachel was already there when I arrived, of course. Over the course of the afternoon Crystal, Sue, Leanne, Maisie and Ash all arrived. I chatted with them, some of the Irish, and Lynsey and her friend for whom I’d got tickets, over tasty dirty fries and a steady procession of ciders.
In the queue to get into the stadium I met my old friend Katie Poore, former player and manager of Portsmouth Ladies, and legendary women’s football pioneer Vanessa Raynbird.
England raced into an early lead through Alessia Russo from a neat Beth Mead pass. The Lionesses dominated the first half but inspired goalkeeping from Courtney Brosnan kept us down to the one goal. A Georgia Stanway penalty on 57 minutes doubled our lead, but after that the Lionesses seemed to take their foot off the pedal. In the closing minutes lackadaisical defending allowed the Irish to score. Their fans in the corner went bananas. Mercifully the whistle went and England had the precious three points. A draw in Sweden needed to qualify automatically.
Rachel had set the post-match meet-up for the Queen of the Iceni pub. When I arrived there, no-one else I knew was in evidence. I guessed people had decided to give it a miss because of low spirits due to the Lionesses’ low-key performance. Then Crystal approached me and I hung out with her and her friend, and a group of fellow England fans they fell in with, drinking Kopparberg for about an hour, till I said my goodbyes and wandered back to the Premier Inn as I had an early start next morning. It turned out I missed a treat.
A detour on my way home on the Saturday, to Walthamstow for FC Romania’s friendly at West Essex. On the bus ride from Stratford to Walthamstow, my fan group’s Messenger chat was alive with interesting messages. It seems that after I left the Queen of the Iceni, Crystal, who was wearing her green England goalkeeper’s shirt with EARPS 1 on, met a young man who took her for Mary Earps! Maisie had seen him post on Instagram that he’d met Mary; she, recognising Crystal in the photo, had been highly amused, but had disillusioned the chap - much to Crystal’s regret.
Walthamstow High Street is strangely devoid of coffee shop chains. Not a Costa, Starbucks or Caffe Nero in sight. I found a nice little café and got a good decaf mocha there.
Alas, FC Romania’s game, a 1pm kick-off, had been shunted to the 3G cage. Seeing the main stadium apparently deserted I didn’t see why we couldn’t play there, though later people from Walthamstow and their opponents arrived and it became clear that their 3pm kick-off was being played on the main pitch.
I headed over to the FC Romania camp, said hello to Ion the manager who thanked me for coming, and met George the assistant manager, Chris the new chairman and his wife Louise, and John the former chairman and his wife Barbara. An official came round to say everyone apart from players and occupants of technical areas would need to watch from outside the cage, for insurance reasons. We non-coaches pottered around the edge of the pitch to the gate and out onto the grass bank.
We were joined by Scott, a fan of FC Romania’s landlords Cheshunt FC who now also follows FC Romania - the ‘Roms’ as he calls them. Scott had a wicked sense of humour and kept us entertained through the afternoon. On learning I was a new fan, Scott said to me “If you’re going to support the Roms, you have to be aware, you’ll see yellow cards, red cards, and plenty of goals - both for and against. They’ll win some and lose some, but it’ll never be dull.” All the FC Romania people were friendly and welcoming.
True to Scott’s analysis, FC Romania went 2-0 in front but ended up losing 3-2. At the final whistle I said goodbye to the others. In the main car park I passed George who said “See you Tuesday”. I explained I was tied up for the next fortnight and would see them in August.
Then on the Sunday it was the dress rehearsal with the amdram group. All seemed to go well.
Tuesday I watched the first half of the vital Sweden v England Women’s qualifier, then it was plain-clothes rehearsal of key scenes. Before and after my first scenes, I refreshed BBC Sport until, following six agonising minutes of time added on, and reports on the text commentary told of Swedish near misses, the magic letters FT appeared under the 0-0 scoreline, allowing me to rehearse in a relaxed - and relieved - frame of mind for the rest of the evening.
We opened at a local hotel on Thursday. In the room assigned to us for changing, organisers Ian and Glyn had left us a greeting card thanking us for our efforts and saying “You are all ‘Heroes’,” together with a box of Heroes. There was a problem with the technical equipment which meant we started late, and at this venue we had two intervals to allow for patrons ordering food and drink, so it was past 11pm when we took our curtain call. By then the audience had thinned somewhat.
On Friday evening at Sway, before the performance Ian told us the previous night had been fabulous. The people at Sway looked after us, with a handsome buffet including cheese and pickle sandwiches on brown bread, cheese straws, satsumas and some excellent Rocky Road. It was a warm evening, just right for outdoor theatre, though back indoors after the play the heat had some of us gasping. Our Touchstone needed a prompt during his speech about the seven degrees of the quarrel, but between them he and Carol, on prompt duty, sold it so well that it got belters.
Yesterday evening we performed at Buckler’s Hard. It was a 6pm start. Unexpectedly, at 5pm the heavens opened, necessitating us shifting our gear from the wooden outbuilding we’d been in and us all cramming into the tiny gazebo, allowing the audience’s chairs to be placed in the outbuilding to give them, and us, cover. By ten to six the rain had eased to intermittent, and we had the audience move their chairs forward onto the veranda area while we performed on the grass right in front of them. Those of us not onstage at a given time mostly all crammed into the gazebo, though a few braved the elements from time to time to watch the action from the wings. There were no refreshments provided here, but Carol’s daughter Anna who’d come to see the play was a lifesaver, coming round to the gazebo at the interval to say she had a generous array of crisps, sausage rolls, chicken satay skewers, biscuits and sweets for us and inviting us to meet her in the front row to help ourselves. At the end of the interval she left her leftover nibbles with us, then at the end of the play she, and Ian and Glyn’s daughter Emily, both former members of the company, came to have a chat with us, Anna bearing a tub of sweets and inviting us to tuck in.
I travelled with Jan, Eddie and Jo. As we pulled away we all agreed we prefer these 6pm starts, as we get to leave at a decent hour instead of arriving home after midnight.
And now we have a couple of nights off.
The Free Lionesses had organised a joint meet-up with the Irish fans at the Coach and Horses pub. Rachel was already there when I arrived, of course. Over the course of the afternoon Crystal, Sue, Leanne, Maisie and Ash all arrived. I chatted with them, some of the Irish, and Lynsey and her friend for whom I’d got tickets, over tasty dirty fries and a steady procession of ciders.
In the queue to get into the stadium I met my old friend Katie Poore, former player and manager of Portsmouth Ladies, and legendary women’s football pioneer Vanessa Raynbird.
England raced into an early lead through Alessia Russo from a neat Beth Mead pass. The Lionesses dominated the first half but inspired goalkeeping from Courtney Brosnan kept us down to the one goal. A Georgia Stanway penalty on 57 minutes doubled our lead, but after that the Lionesses seemed to take their foot off the pedal. In the closing minutes lackadaisical defending allowed the Irish to score. Their fans in the corner went bananas. Mercifully the whistle went and England had the precious three points. A draw in Sweden needed to qualify automatically.
Rachel had set the post-match meet-up for the Queen of the Iceni pub. When I arrived there, no-one else I knew was in evidence. I guessed people had decided to give it a miss because of low spirits due to the Lionesses’ low-key performance. Then Crystal approached me and I hung out with her and her friend, and a group of fellow England fans they fell in with, drinking Kopparberg for about an hour, till I said my goodbyes and wandered back to the Premier Inn as I had an early start next morning. It turned out I missed a treat.
A detour on my way home on the Saturday, to Walthamstow for FC Romania’s friendly at West Essex. On the bus ride from Stratford to Walthamstow, my fan group’s Messenger chat was alive with interesting messages. It seems that after I left the Queen of the Iceni, Crystal, who was wearing her green England goalkeeper’s shirt with EARPS 1 on, met a young man who took her for Mary Earps! Maisie had seen him post on Instagram that he’d met Mary; she, recognising Crystal in the photo, had been highly amused, but had disillusioned the chap - much to Crystal’s regret.
Walthamstow High Street is strangely devoid of coffee shop chains. Not a Costa, Starbucks or Caffe Nero in sight. I found a nice little café and got a good decaf mocha there.
Alas, FC Romania’s game, a 1pm kick-off, had been shunted to the 3G cage. Seeing the main stadium apparently deserted I didn’t see why we couldn’t play there, though later people from Walthamstow and their opponents arrived and it became clear that their 3pm kick-off was being played on the main pitch.
I headed over to the FC Romania camp, said hello to Ion the manager who thanked me for coming, and met George the assistant manager, Chris the new chairman and his wife Louise, and John the former chairman and his wife Barbara. An official came round to say everyone apart from players and occupants of technical areas would need to watch from outside the cage, for insurance reasons. We non-coaches pottered around the edge of the pitch to the gate and out onto the grass bank.
We were joined by Scott, a fan of FC Romania’s landlords Cheshunt FC who now also follows FC Romania - the ‘Roms’ as he calls them. Scott had a wicked sense of humour and kept us entertained through the afternoon. On learning I was a new fan, Scott said to me “If you’re going to support the Roms, you have to be aware, you’ll see yellow cards, red cards, and plenty of goals - both for and against. They’ll win some and lose some, but it’ll never be dull.” All the FC Romania people were friendly and welcoming.
True to Scott’s analysis, FC Romania went 2-0 in front but ended up losing 3-2. At the final whistle I said goodbye to the others. In the main car park I passed George who said “See you Tuesday”. I explained I was tied up for the next fortnight and would see them in August.
Then on the Sunday it was the dress rehearsal with the amdram group. All seemed to go well.
Tuesday I watched the first half of the vital Sweden v England Women’s qualifier, then it was plain-clothes rehearsal of key scenes. Before and after my first scenes, I refreshed BBC Sport until, following six agonising minutes of time added on, and reports on the text commentary told of Swedish near misses, the magic letters FT appeared under the 0-0 scoreline, allowing me to rehearse in a relaxed - and relieved - frame of mind for the rest of the evening.
We opened at a local hotel on Thursday. In the room assigned to us for changing, organisers Ian and Glyn had left us a greeting card thanking us for our efforts and saying “You are all ‘Heroes’,” together with a box of Heroes. There was a problem with the technical equipment which meant we started late, and at this venue we had two intervals to allow for patrons ordering food and drink, so it was past 11pm when we took our curtain call. By then the audience had thinned somewhat.
On Friday evening at Sway, before the performance Ian told us the previous night had been fabulous. The people at Sway looked after us, with a handsome buffet including cheese and pickle sandwiches on brown bread, cheese straws, satsumas and some excellent Rocky Road. It was a warm evening, just right for outdoor theatre, though back indoors after the play the heat had some of us gasping. Our Touchstone needed a prompt during his speech about the seven degrees of the quarrel, but between them he and Carol, on prompt duty, sold it so well that it got belters.
Yesterday evening we performed at Buckler’s Hard. It was a 6pm start. Unexpectedly, at 5pm the heavens opened, necessitating us shifting our gear from the wooden outbuilding we’d been in and us all cramming into the tiny gazebo, allowing the audience’s chairs to be placed in the outbuilding to give them, and us, cover. By ten to six the rain had eased to intermittent, and we had the audience move their chairs forward onto the veranda area while we performed on the grass right in front of them. Those of us not onstage at a given time mostly all crammed into the gazebo, though a few braved the elements from time to time to watch the action from the wings. There were no refreshments provided here, but Carol’s daughter Anna who’d come to see the play was a lifesaver, coming round to the gazebo at the interval to say she had a generous array of crisps, sausage rolls, chicken satay skewers, biscuits and sweets for us and inviting us to meet her in the front row to help ourselves. At the end of the interval she left her leftover nibbles with us, then at the end of the play she, and Ian and Glyn’s daughter Emily, both former members of the company, came to have a chat with us, Anna bearing a tub of sweets and inviting us to tuck in.
I travelled with Jan, Eddie and Jo. As we pulled away we all agreed we prefer these 6pm starts, as we get to leave at a decent hour instead of arriving home after midnight.
And now we have a couple of nights off.
