Your at the airport and you remember that you only have 10 pages of your current book left and you haven’t brought another with you so as to beat Ryanair’s add on’s, you panic and head to W H Smiths because two weeks without a book is a major disaster.
A quick browse throws up no football books so you will have to give up your sequence of a football book followed by something else and back to football. Tension is rising and you need to be heading for the gate. Your wife passes you a book and says you’ll enjoy that one and a quick glance means you can’t make up your mind or refuse.
The book Prisoners of Geography, written by Tim Marshall on how geography has shaped the politics of the world and it’s largest nations turns out to be one of the best written and interesting books read for a while.
So back home and looking for the next book I notice on my shelf of charity shop unread football books a book by the same author, £2.99 from Oxfam, “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!”, published by Elliot and Thompson Limited, 2014.
The style of writing was the same but the third chapter seemed to drag and I became a bit bored. However the next two chapters came alive and I was looking for more by the time I had finished. The humour of Football chants and songs came through as well as putting in context some of the now politically correct condemnation of earlier songs. It showed that football fans have evolved at the same pace as society with regards racism, homophobia and swearing. The stereotyping of Football fans portrayed by some are shown to be caricatures of a past age.
This was a delight to read and I will look out for others by the Author as these on diverse subjects enthralled me and kept my attention.
Payonthegate 