Destination: Old Trafford, Manchester.
Date: 1st August 2007.
Reason: Taking the mick out of northern people...and watching Man Utd take on Inter Milan.
Participants: Ross "Petrol" Adams; Ben "Gullaver" Alcorn; Jez "Pineapple" Baker; Martin "Doesn't really have a nickname that isn't 'Bish'" Bishop; Matt "Rocket" Miller and Kev "Also doesn't really have a nickname - but Kez will do" Ward.
Oh yes. After the epic trip to Alton Towers, and the previous trek to Manchester in March - the six of us embarked on a trip that wasn't short of incident in either car. It started off late...naturally, because Ben was driving. Once all were onboard, our rendezvous at McDonalds with Ross and Bish saw all involved stock up on stuff to eat/drink. Many took up the generous offer of "One Ribena for £1.14 or two for a quid" - a most bizarre marketing technique by all standards, and not one you'd find in any business studies textbook. Though I swear Kev was taking note of the said technique in anticipation of his second year at uni. Shops in Southampton will all be doing it soon....who said education standards were slipping?
With Bishop and Ross in one car - all the crap pop sh*t music was confined to that car. One blast of Rihanna didn't hurt us though. The iPod rotation policy was again in place and Kev brought
the Beautiful Girls to my attention - an Aussie band who, despite the name - are all men with beards. Disappointing, but the music was good by Kev's standard - not an acoustic guitar in sight (though I'm sure there was somewhere). With the odd bit of cheese thrown in - our car was rocking with bad singing round the M25 which drew admiring, and slightly strange looks from other cars. Surprisingly though - there were no delays at all on the M25 - not even around Heathrow where the aeropurto was...luck was on our side.
Perhaps not, as soon as we started heading north in earnest - the traffic began to slow down big time. Made you wonder why so many people wanted to head up there - to the land where people only eat spam, wear flat caps and shellsuits whilst walking their whippets. Lucky I don't resort to stereotypes, eh? Traffic snarled up around Birmingham and we were going rather slowly with the drizzle coming down...I knew we shouldn't have played Rihanna as a dedication to Bishop. Anyhoo, the traffic was almost ground to a halt and some rude bearded dude in a Vauxhall Nova had cut Ben up in the queue, so naturally I shouted a few obsenities which (in the end) thankfully weren't heard by the said man. Kev took matters into his own hands and managed to plant a lovely shot on the blokes rear windscreen with his chewing gum...he didn't see. As we were documenting our trip with a camera, it seemed only appropriate to take a picture of this man as he'd provided a highlight...we decided to do it "on the sly" as it were. But the b*stard noticed. Now any normal kind of man would just laugh this off - not this man, he had eyes like a terrorist and pulled into the nearside lane, told me to wind down my window where he said "did you just take a picture of me" - before I had a chance to answer, he asked it 3 or 4 times, I think he had a stammer of some kind - when I finally replied "No, 100%" he sped off at a whopping 15mph due to the traffic, and physical limit of his car. We never did see him again, but if he reads this...I'd love to meet you and have a proper picture, let's do lunch sometime xx.
Everyone was getting restless, Jez wanted Jaffa Cakes and Ben needed a break from the excitement of motorway driving. A stop at the infamous services on the M6 Toll where I'd previously locked my keys in the boot of my car was in order. After the obligatory banter of "me locking my cars in the boot last time we were here" which didn't get old or tiresome at all, we headed in for much needed refreshment and emptying of bladders. Whilst Ross, Kev and I were inside the shop buying a pastie and a drink for a reasonable price considering it was a service station - Ben and Bish were paying through the nose for a Wimpy - 7 quid for a burger and chips!! Even Wembley Stadium wasn't that expensive, how were the endless Chinese tourists in the going to get their head round that crazy pricing, especially when the burger didn't even contain any dog meat?! Anyway, we were keen to get on our way and the rest of the M6 Toll, like the rest - was a smooth breeze at about 90mph all the way. Middle fingers up to the speed-limit here.
With the sat-nav guiding us towards Manchester, and Bishop's map-reading skills directing the other car towards Scunthorpe - spirits in the car were high when we gave Ross/Bish the slip on the motorway in the hope that we'd get them lost. We're nice, see...anyway, somehow we arrived in the same part of Manchester, parking about 250 yards from each other, arriving at almost identical times. Perhaps I underestimated Bish's map-reading skills, he's now on a par with Ray Mears in terms of navigating. We walked towards the her-yow-ge Old Trafford amongst swathes of red shirts, I felt a bit out of place in camoflage shorts and a brown t-shirt. Attention was soon drawn to the hotdog vans - offering a footlong hotdog for £2.50 - bargain, and friggin' nice too. Our southern pounds go a long way up north...
Anyhoo, after a visit to the 'Megastore' where Bish and Ben sensibly declined the idea of parting with £45 for the new shirt when they could get it much cheaper elsewhere. Though there were stacks of people (or gullible fools) lining the pockets of Man USA Corp. plc with all sorts of tat. We took our seats on nigh-on the halfway line with a cracking view to watch the warm-up which consisted of Cristiano Ronaldo doing all sorts of stepovery stuff and then shooting wide. Still no end product....Bishop was coming to terms with no Alan Smith action (who's subsequently gone to Noocastle) and was crying into his watered down drink. Poor lad, it's not everyday a childhood hero like that leaves you, I felt the same when Palace let Jon Macken go.
The game was good. A good pace to it and Wayne Rooney opened the scoring with a nice finish though Inter were dominating possession and it was no surprise when the equaliser came after some shocking defending, Suazo was on hand to poke home. John O'Shea wasn't bossing the midfield as he normally does, and Darren Fletcher wasn't even on the pitch so United's hopes of winning were slim. As such, Inter then grabbed a second following some smooth silky football which lead to Ibrahimovic slamming the ball in. United's normally unflappable defence then faltered again to let Suazo through to make it 3-1 and the game was getting away from them. After the half-time interval in which we all took a brief foray into the corporate boxes, clambering over the walls and posing for pictures - United threw the kitchen sink at Inter Milan. Poor Adriano got a bit dizzy and headed into his own net unchallenged to give ManYoo a lifeline. United piled on the pressure, Ronaldo finally sprung into life and had two snapshots turned around the post before Rio Ferdinand found the top tier of the Stretford End, unmarked from 6 yards. 3-2 the final score but a great game for a neutral, thankfully.
We ambled back to the cars, agreed to stop at Oxford services on the way back and it was finally my turn to take the wheel. Got out of the car park no problem, Ben's sat-nav skilfully negotiated us out of the busy match traffic and onto the M6. Shit. Roadworks and bumper to bumper traffic. Never fear - Jez's iPod was here. The windows were wound down in anticipation of blasting out music to entertain the masses nearby...."Do they know it's Christmas time at all?" - we were playing sodding Christmas songs. Never mind knowing whether it's Christmas or not, it's fecking August ferchrissake. Saying that, it was rather funny, and drew many-a-smile from other people crawling along in their cars. The techno dancing amused one lady passenger whilst her husband gave us evils. Then there was the people carrier with about 30 kids in the back all waving to us - for once in our lives we felt like celebrities, in a Vauxhall Astra in Manchester at 11pm. Nice. The roadworks were soon negotiated and we were out, breezing along down the M6 at a nice cruising speed homeward bound (good film, scary dogs).
But how were Ross and Bishop getting on. "We're still in traffic, should be with you soon". Oh, that's not too bad then, half-expecting Ross to cruise past us any second we got another call "Still stuck in traffic, not moving too much - in fact a cigarette packet is blowing faster than us in the wind". Not to worry, they'll catch up....an hour and a half after we'd got out of traffic, they finally did too - and Ross was on a mission to catch us up. We were about 40 miles from the services, Ross about 130. Oxford services brought welcome relief for us all to stretch our legs at 2am and buy all sorts of crap to eat in the car. A call to Bish and Ross was in order..."we're nearly at Oxford now". You f*cking what?! Nearly at Oxford when we'd only been there about 20 minutes. Bloody ridiculous, we waited around a little bit to see if they'd walk through the doors...suffice to say they didn't and were a little further away than they thought. We got some petrol and went on our way.
The phone rang again (Orange must have been making a mint from all these phonecalls) - "We've got a slight problem - just got through half a tank of petrol in 40 minutes, and driven past the services". That's not a slight problem, that's a big problem for them, and the planet - imagine the carbon fecking footprint they were making bombing it down the motorway, we know who to blame for the icecaps melting from now on. After a brief discussion, they went back to get petrol and Ross 'sensibly drove home' though it turns out he was only doing 100mph on his way back from there, as opposed to 130. Sensible indeed.
Ben managed to take a wrong turn on the M25 and took us to God's own arsehole - Watford. Other than that, the drive home was a breeze and no trouble...back home by 4, up for work at 9 and serving people in Haskins at 10.05am. Magic.
A long day? For sure.
A good day? Too right it was.
Roll on the holiday....
to university!! 28 days and counting....
