Heather McKinlay recalls a rebellious Boxing Day football outing forty years ago.
Charlton were in unstoppable form. My full debut in the Covered End, a second round FA Cup tie against Bournemouth in December 1980, was shaping up to be the Addicks’ sixteenth unbeaten game in a row. Once they scored one goal, you knew they would win, such was the confidence coursing through Mike Bailey’s team. No such confidence was coursing through me as I paid my way through the usual turnstile.
“Right, Dad, I’ll see you back at the car.”
“OK, Heather, be careful now – hope you can find these new friends of yours, but you know where I am if not.”
With that we parted company. Dad turned left to head up the East Terrace. I turned to the right and made my way tentatively into the raucous corrugated iron shed. My instructions said I’d find my new friends towards the front, just to the right of the goal, far enough back to see over the high fencing recently-erected to prevent any unlikely hooligan pitch invasions. I edged my way past the huddled groups of overcoated strangers on this cold afternoon. With relief I spotted a crowd of familiar faces, just where they had described to me when we hatched this plan at the recent Supporters’ Club do. They were smiling and joking in anticipation of another good performance, and I was nonchalantly absorbed into their midst. A few brief nods to those I hadn’t met before, and then it was game on. Outside my normal comfort zone, it took me a while to find my voice. I was encouraged to hear one of my new pals screaming at the referee and impatiently urging on the players. Soon I found myself relaxing and joining in, much to the surprise of some of my new-found mates. Until then they had been under the impression that I was a rather quiet and shy grammar school girl, which I still was during the rest of the week, of course.
At half-time the chat turned to the trip my Covered End gang were planning to the next away game at Oxford on Boxing Day. “You’ll come, won’t you, Heth?” One of them had taken to shortening my name, a sign of acceptance, I hoped. I hesitated to reply, in the back of my mind knowing that I’d need to clear it with the parents first, seeing as it was right in the middle of Christmas.
A week later, same time, same place in the Covered End, same old Charlton winning again, this time against Carlisle in the league.
“Have you got your ticket for the Oxford coach?” The burning question greeted me as I jostled into position on the narrow terrace step before the start of the match.
“Not yet,” I answered, half truthfully.
I had mentioned the idea to Dad in the car on the way home the previous week, and all he would say was, “You’ll have to ask your Mum about that.” So I had and wished I hadn’t. Mum rarely refused me anything but this time I was out of luck and out of order and all because of Grandma.
My Mum’s Mum was a portly lady – about a size 22 or 24, I believe – outsize in any case. Born at the last gasp of the nineteenth century on 27th December, she had done her bit in the First World War effort as a teenage girl in a London munitions factory. Hard to imagine that was her life at the age I was now. Shortly after the war, her own mother succumbed to Spanish Influenza, leaving her as maternal head of the household at the age of 19. This vocation clearly suited her: having raised her five siblings she went on to marry and give birth to three of her own girls, my Mum being the middle one. Her husband, my Granddad, died when I was six – I remember it being deemed that I was far too young to go to the funeral. I picture him in the back parlour in Lower Belvedere ensconced in his high-backed armchair, smoking a little roll-up cigarette clasped between tobacco-stained-fingers. He still boasted a thick, but neatly swept back, mane of white-grey hair, which also had a yellow tinge at the front from the perpetually rising smoky fumes. I never remember him saying much while the rest of us sat round the table a few feet away nattering with Grandma. Sometimes he’d be reading the newspaper, other times gazing into space and listening to the radio. At the end of our visit, he always called me over and gave me a sixpence – I still have them collected in a tiny copper pot somewhere. Although not a football fan at all, it had been Granddad who recommended Charlton as the local team to my Scottish Dad when he settled in London after the war. The only outing I recall with him was a family trip on a cold winter’s day to open-air Woolwich market where he bought me a ‘Father Christmas’ tree decoration. Made of red and white cloth and felt, the huge round head with swept-back pointy hat sits atop a tiny body, a miniature tinsel tree perched on one of the minute arms. Looking at it now, it is clearly of some exotic foreign origin as it bears little resemblance beyond the colour-scheme to our ho-ho-ho image of Santa. The protruding shiny red nose is a bit battered and the pupils of the eyes have fallen off but I still traditionally hang it up every year and think for a moment of the quiet old man sitting upright in his chair by the fire.
My image of Granddad’s character, if not his looks, contrasts sharply with that of older members of the family. By accounts other than mine, he was strict, stern, dour, bad-tempered - you name it - and I’ve even heard that he could raise his hand to Grandma. I now wonder if the weight she put on from middle-age onwards was her way of padding and protecting her frame a little from any blows. Despite her tough life, Grandma somehow retained a cheery and kindly nature.
After Granddad died, Grandma continued living in her own home (well, it belonged to the landlord, but she paid the rent) in Lower Belvedere. It was a firm tradition that she spent Christmas with one of her three daughters in rotation. And whomever she stayed with hosted her birthday party on the 27th December, to which all of the extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and great aunts and great uncles were invited. This year it was Mum’s turn to lay on the party. I had thoughtlessly neglected to realise that this would mean Boxing Day was going to be a hectic day of house cleaning, food preparing and tidying. Who did I think I was to imagine I could swan off to Oxford for a football match? That seemed to be the end of that.
But I was tempted. I was coming of age as a proper football fan. I’d found the courage to leave Dad’s side on the vast East Terrace to join the hurly burly behind the goal. As the half-time whistle blew, the others headed off to the toilets or to get a drink. I dashed halfway round the ground to the Supporters’ Club cabin and bought my ticket for the Oxford coach. Sorry Mum, sorry Grandma.
Now all I had to do was find a way of breaking the news of my rebellion. I said nothing about it to Dad on the way home in the car this time. As usual, Mum had tea waiting on the table for us as soon as we came in the door. The TV was on, and we arrived back in time for the end of Grandstand and the re-reading of the classified results. The dulcet voice intoned success for our local rivals - not something I would normally cheer:
“Millwall two, Oxford United one.”
“Let’s hope we can beat Oxford as well, when I’m there on Boxing Day,” I announced into thin air and to no-one in particular. There was no great anger or outcry from either Mum or Dad but the atmosphere in our little house was more frosty than usual that winter’s evening – and not just because we had no central heating.
It was a day or two later that I realised I had a problem. For the first time in many years, there wasn’t going to be any public transport on Boxing Day – no buses and no trains. Yet I was going to need to get to The Valley, six miles away, for eleven o’clock in the morning to catch the coach. I thought about my bike at the back of the shed somewhere but I’d had it since I was twelve and had really outgrown it. I wondered how my new friends would be getting there but I only saw them at the match so didn’t have a phone number to contact them. It seemed I would be facing a very long, cold, early morning walk.
Now that school had broken up I was trying hard to help Mum out with all the preparations for Christmas and gradually the frostiness was thawing. On Christmas Eve we were busy making mince pies and sausage rolls in the afternoon in the cosy kitchen while Capital Radio counted down their festive top 100 of the past goodness knows how many years. I was quietly humming along to 10cc, one of my favourite bands. “The things we do for love…like walking in the rain and the snow when there’s nowhere to go and you’re feeling like a part of you is dying…” Crikey, I knew I was in love with Charlton but was I really prepared for this walk on Boxing Day?
“So what time do you have to be at the football to catch this coach?” asked Mum, taking me by surprise.
“Umm, eleven o’clock, Mum”.
“And how are you going to get there?”
“Err, I thought I might walk.”
“That’s ridiculous. Can’t one of your new friends come and pick you up? No? Well, I suppose I’ll have to give you a lift to The Valley then.”
Boxing Day dawned. Dad barely met my eyes as I got wrapped up for my big day out. "Give 'em a shout for me," was all he muttered as I trotted off after Mum, true to her word with the lift. I clambered aboard the Lewis’ coach for the first time without Dad as my guardian. I headed towards the back to find the gang. This was a boys’ day out, full of football songs and beer, and I was welcomed into the thick of it as one of the lads, a privilege for a teenage girl.
Charlton had the best away record in the league, Oxford the worst home record. We were unbeaten in seventeen games, a club record run. We were top of the league, Oxford were bottom. So, as Addicks across the generations would inevitably predict, Oxford won 1-0. To make matters worse, we were treated like hooligans for the day, with a strict police escort to and from the ground and barb-wired pens to segregate us of which prisons would be proud. No Christmas cheer on display at the Manor Ground. Darkness descended and the mid-winter chill crept into my bones, barely relieved on the draughty return coach where we all sat quietly with our own thoughts. One defeat could transform a mood just as dramatically in those days.
Mum knew better than to say much after collecting me in the car for the short trip back from Charlton to Belvedere. The all-enveloping darkness was in keeping with my sullen mood, a keen contrast to the sparkly Christmas tree lights punctuating the suburban windows. At least Dad would understand.
"Oh well, never mind, Heather. It's just a game of football." He knew just how much that phrase wound me up. It dawned on me that Dad was remarkably jovial: his lack of rebellion vindicated while mine had gone unrewarded.