Blown Away

Only the ladies are braving it for the trip up today – Jenny, Joy, Julia and myself. Joy was hoping to bump into a few of her Southend-supporting CAMRA chums, but massive engineering works on the C2C line have prevented them from travelling (well, would you trundle through Essex on a replacement bus unless you absolutely had to?).

Even the Fat Cat is pretty quiet, giving the resident cat the opportunity to stretch out in front of the fire. It’s obviously a position it adopts on a regular basis, as the bench it’s sitting on is decorated with a painting of a cat in exactly the same pose. Or maybe the Fiery Fox cider’s a bit stronger than I thought and I’m seeing double...

As soon as we get to the DVS, it’s obvious the wind is going to be a problem today. Securely tied as the flag is, it’s soon flapping loose of the railing. And the team are flapping, too. Or thinking about something other than football, because they give the ball away straight from kick-off, and seconds later Don’s picking it out of the net. It would be nice to think that Southend have PTE’d (which reminds me of Ted receiving a text from a friend suggesting that they’d peaked too early in a game and replying with, ‘At least we peaked’...). Unfortunately, Southend are using the wind to their advantage, and score a headed second fifteen minutes later. They’re also displaying more of the sly ‘professionalism’ we saw at Roots Hall. No one gets seriously damaged by them this time, but their attitude is summed up when Don has to retie his bootlace before he can take a goal kick and Barry Corr hangs around in the goalnet, hoping Don will forget he’s there so he can nip in and steal the ball off him. That mindset may help you win games, but I’m still glad we don’t play like that.

Someone vaguely important appears to be doing the half-time draw, but I’m not really paying attention. The half-time six-a-side is so much more compelling.

We get back into the game early in the second half, with a really scrappy bundled effort from Nick Fenton, but at times like this who cares how you score them? There are chances for an equaliser, but we don’t make the most of having the wind in our favour. The ref should add on a couple of minutes more for Southend’s time-wasting tactics, but it probably wouldn’t help.

Julia’s staying over, so Jenny, Joy and I make our way to The Old Queen’s Head. We’re in the process of trying to find out how Darlo have got on in the FA Trophy, as their result wasn’t included in the classified read-through, when Ted rings to let us know they’ve won. So at least he’s happy.

The journey back is quite sedate, though I do find myself trying to persuade Joy to have a session in a flotation tank. It’s an amazing eperience, enabling you to examine all the deepest corners of your inner self, although you might find yourself needing the mental equivalent of scary Kim off How Clean Is Your House? to give it a good dusting, particularly after a game like today’s...