TT GROUNDHOPPING

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive discusses the trip to London

HORNCHURCH (A)

After midweek glory up north, Friday had brought a journey home from hell and just 12 hours later we found ourselves in the capital in a vain search for 3 points.

Ultimately Upminster was a bridge too far.

The midweek glory wasn’t the Yellows sneaking past a good Worthing side. It was Matty and Byehorse driving into a One Horse Town (Kirkby Stephen) and strolling off with the pub quiz jackpot (£12, and yes, we have spent it all at once).

The drive back to Devon should have been about 8 hours, but it finished up north of 11 as a lorry fire on the M5 and half term holiday traffic caused chaos and an unexpected drive around Langford and several other hamlets near Bristol Airport.

I Group-Saved it up to London with Dan and Karis, Andy and Ethan, and via Bedwyn and Paddington we arrived at The PrInce of Wales near Charing Cross, where the bacon sandwiches were good but the plastic beakers were irritating. The glass was being hidden because Yaxley-Lennon’s fascists were planning a rally nearby. We didn’t see any knuckleheads, thankfully, and Finn Craske provided the only, admittedly modest, right wing threat all day.

Next stop on the trek east was Whitechapel. The station has clearly had some major investment, and is now a handy interchange with the excellent Elizabeth Line. We emerged opposite Tower Hamlets Town Hall (which has been a great source for Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column over the years). The High Street is akin to a bazaar, with dozens of stalls offering all the pashminas and hijabs you could ever need. I also noticed a couple of banging street food stalls, along with fishmongers and okra-offering greengrocers. Every nationality and language of South Asia was on view.

The clientele in The Blind Beggar just down the road was very different. Almost exclusively white, with many people taking a keen interest in the macabre history of the place (for those who don’t know, it was where Jack “the hat” McVitie met his end at the hands of The Krays in the 1960s). The Guinness was fine, but in common with every other pub the ambience was somewhat spoilt by Halloween Spiders Web decorations. We really should take a stand against this sort of nonsense.

There was still a lot of District Line awaiting us, so we chambered back on the tube for a trip through West Ham, East Ham, Smoked Ham and Bromley by Bow. Dagenham (and Hornchurch) came and went, and just as I was expecting to see the distant skyline of Vladivistok we rolled into Upminster Bridge.

A five minute walk brought us to the 6 lane athletics track which Hornchurch FC calls home.

Torquay did not rise to this frankly underwhelming occasion. Jordan Dyer’s woeful early clearance was punished, and the first half was most notable for Torquay’s substitutes raking it in turns to use the portaloos next to the £9 burger stand. We were 2 down after an hour, which caused Paul Wotton to vent his spleen on a pallet of water bottles. Cody Cooke’s goal did not spark us unduly, and it was a “take your medicine” sort of an afternoon.

So a bad day at the office. Very much the sort of day when your computer won’t start, you forget your password, break the photocopier and somebody nicks your sandwiches out of the fridge.

I resisted the urge to protest against the playing of “Sweet Caroline” by setting fire to the hammer cage and retraced my footsteps to the South West.

Despite being considerably less the worse for wear than one of our party, it was a night when I jumped into bed with alacrity and the extra hour’s sleep was a godsend.

We will have better days. A poor performance in unromantic surroundings did bring back some horrible memories of Johnson’s final months, but it hurts less now because we have that invaluable and lethal commodity: hope.