The oral and written history of Block 134

No one in the Coventry City end of Wembley will ever forget the period of roughly one hour between the 70th minute and end of the penalty shootout on Sunday April 21. This is my full account, based on memory, chance encounter, things I can recall amid the chaos and discussion with fellow supporters. It is written with thanks to them for sharing the other worldy experience, which we could all meet up as survivors of in 10 years’ time.

70 – Man Utd 3 Coventry 0. In truth it’s been a City performance difficult to take huge pride in, ceding as it did most of the ground and initiative with initial formation, failing to lay so much as a glove, perhaps simply overawed by a greater opponent. “It’s too easy,” I keep repeating to no one. “Like a training match” says a man standing next to me. “They’re too good” adds another in the row behind.

Another fan two rows down, perhaps worse the wear for an elongated Green Man pub session that morning, bellows across to the next block, telling them to “fucking sing a song”. A steward scuttles over to tell him to stop vaping. The mood is resigned, defeatist and defeated, still noisy but frustrated at having so little of actual substance to cheer.

71 – It’s been better since half time, and the switch to a 4-2-3-1 formation, with substitute Fabio Tavares particularly causing increasing problems for Utd down the right hand side. Properly freed for the first time on the flank by Callum O’Hare, he guides a beautiful cross to the near post where an unmarked Ellis Simms somehow manages to sweep home a half volley off his shin. It is past Onana in the goal in a flash, spurring City to life. There’s not much hugging yet, very little genuine hope of actual comeback, but pride in having a moment to hold on to, a goal to celebrate. “Come on then!” a young guy behind shouts and defiant fists are pumped to the skies. A glimmer of something is maybe stirring.

73-77 – The team are starting to win clever free kicks. The passes are suddenly flawless, the technique trustworthy. United have lost control of midfield but not, as yet, to a damaging degree. Every single break in play, where Sheaf or Torp picks up the ball, they are implored to “drive!” by one fan close by. “Keep pushing!” another offers. The tiniest slither of doubt is creeping into United’s game. Rashford is caught offside, to thwart a potential counter attack.

78 – “Piss off!” and “Nooo, fuck off!” echo around as United come forward with Antony seeing a shot blocked. Another goal for them would kill it, make it absolutely certain.

79 – Another goal comes, but for City. Van Ewijk, endless energy, dinks a clever ball out of defence into space on the left side, where a confident Simms collects. Driving inside, against a feeble press that we’ve seen from United all season on Match of the Day and Sky, he finds O’Hare with space outside the area. Letting off a shot, it seems speculative at best, looping off Wan-Bissaka and lost in orbit for some time. When it comes back down its in the back of the net. There is a strange few seconds of silence followed by intense noise. The sort of jubilation only these moments can bring. Other worldly. Suddenly, inconceivably, everyone around me realises they may be part of something extraordinary. “Oh my god xx” I text my dad, whose fault it all is I care so much.

80 – It is becoming too much, mentally and physically, for some around me. One young man, shaven head and top off, is agitated beyond even the normal reactions of a crazy match, climbing onto the railings above the stairs to our block, risking a fairly significant fall. Other times he sits down on the steps, rocking and sobbing.

81 – Around this time I become aware of fan slumped on those same steps a bit further back, stewards next to him, fellow supporters sitting alongside him. “Heart attack” says a man behind me, ashen faced. The struggling fan seems to right himself, and rally, for a brief period of time. But the next time I look round he seems barely conscious, carried down steps toward waiting paramedics. His face, and the concern of his family and friends helping him out, will never leave me. Nothing before or since should matter, pitted against real world pain, but I’ve suddenly never wanted to win a football match more, for this unknown fan who I pray to God has recovered.

On the pitch Ben Sheaf, our captain, has fully decided to puff his chest out and run the game, firing high and wide.

82 – Bobby Thomas takes one for the team, a masterful professional foul and booking as United look to break. “Brilliant” says the fan next to me. It is cheered like a goal. Everything we do is from now on. Each and every Coventry player suddenly seems a foot taller, and United’s a foot less. Even Jay Dasilva, freshly on as a substitute, shows the skills and technique once honed in the Chelsea academy. There is an irresistible wave of pressure. My mind drifts to how uproariously proud I shall be at the end of this match, but I have also never been so utterly convinced in my life that we would score again in a match. “We’ve got this, you know” a man nearby says to himself.

85 – From a long throw, O’Hare is wiped out as he bravely contests a half clearance in the air. It drops to Torp on the half volley, whose thunderbolt – which would have burst the net – is beaten away brilliantly by Onana. Never has a ball been hit cleaner. “I can’t believe this!” says the guy to my left, stunned. Neither can any of us. Onana is finally booked for time wasting, after spending the entire half dawdling over goal kicks. “Wanker!” is the most common word around me.

89 – In the tiniest respite of play, I force myself to look around and try to take a mental picture, one I can sear into my mind’s eye forever. In front of me is my little team, Coventry City, amid the mighty Manchester United, penning them back and driving forward in dominant fashion in an FA Cup semi final. From 2-6 defeats to Yeovil, and homelessness, to this. Haji Wright and Torp both have attempts blocked. Calamity twitching at their ear, United have suddenly realized they need to throw everything in the way of this. “Stand up if you love City” is three-line whipped and not a seat among the 36,000 is in use shortly afterward.

90 (+3) – It’s not enough for United to avoid their fate. Torp feeds Wright, whose cross is attacked by substitute Luis Binks at the far post, quite why he was there – other than sheer desire – unknown. It strikes Bissaka’s arm. A penalty, perhaps soft, is awarded. The celebrations around me are almost animalistic. “Oh my fucking God” I find myself saying, now adding swear words to everything.

90 (+5) – What happens next will be seared into everyone’s mind for the rest of their days. Wright, for much of the match somewhat anonymous, stands as confidently as can be, striding forward to dispatch the ball with minimum fuss. Some couldn’t watch, but I knew he’d score. In the pandemonium which follows I find myself on the stairs, several rows up from my seat, hugging a random man I’ve never met. When I return to my seat I realise I have been crying. “We’ve done it” offers a different fan, quite quietly, disbelieving. There are heads in hands, hands over faces in shock. It is now a wild frothing sea of Sky Blue.

Extra time

94 – 105 – Bruno Fernandes thunders the bar from outside the area but it somehow feels our goal is completely impregnable, an invisible force field in front. Coventry have slowed down a little, the extraordinary exertion of the final 20 minutes of regular time perhaps taking its toll. I, for one, am utterly exhausted in the stands too. United are trying to win it themselves, repelled by our desire. A few half chances fall our way and Sheaf shoots just wide.

110 – 116 – You could say this for the entire last 45 minutes, but this particular 6, given context, opponent and undeniable fatigue, might well forever rank as the most impressive in the football club’s history. First Godden races away and sees a shot blocked. Next Binks makes a ferocious but fair tackle on Fernandes and, against a further wilting United back line, Wright is in on his left foot but drags his shot just wide. I crouch down by my seat, shattered. Next Simms has his chance, rolling a defender and slamming a shot off the cross bar and down and away. We are gallantly trying to do the impossible and win from 3-0 down against a higher league opposition. I will never, as long as a live, forget the desire of our players in these moments.

120+1 – By now I just wanted it all to be over. I was spent. When Torp, at the other end of the ground, steered in his shot, the euphoria felt somehow more silent than I’d expected, like I’d enter another realm. As The Enemy put it this “doesn’t happen for people like us, you know”. Confronted with being part of the greatest cup comeback in cup history, it was overwhelming. No one around me knew what to do either, but silently hold each other and sway. It occurs to me Van Ewijk will be doing his greatest ever post-win celebration in a few seconds time.

As it was announced VAR were checking, real life came rushing back in, it all its rigid, hideous grounding. The moment was taken away from us. No, in fact, the goal was taken away. We’ll all have that moment, forever.

Penalties: So soon after the drama above must have felt like climbing Everest only to see it had been a false summit and there was still further to scale. Losing both coin tosses, once again, Sheaf’s shoulders – on which he’d carried the team to this brink of glory – slumped a little. We started off ahead but fell behind to saves and misses, with each kick Wright growing in stature, passion and leadership for his side.

My abiding memory of the day, maybe even the lifetime following this football club, is the standing ovations for both O’Hare and Sheaf as they trudged back to the centre circle, disappointed. Upon defeat all the players got exactly the same. As the ‘winning’ fans fled home ours stayed, in pride and defiance at one of the most gargantuan performances you could ever imagine. And we didn’t have to imagine it, it had been all there in front of us for one of the most glorious, draining, defining hours of our footballing lives.

Blue sky thinking in bold new book

Book review: When The Sky Was Blue by Rich Chamberlain

Since tumbling out of the top flight 22 years ago a return has rarely felt plausible for Coventry City, even though that very miracle came within just a couple of penalty kicks of reality at Wembley a few short months ago.

The Sky Blues were founder members of the newly-formed Premier League in 1992 and spent 9 years largely clinging on there until their 9 lives were finally spent and relegation confirmed in 2001.

This splendid new book, charting those dramatic years, makes a very good case that – perhaps – they were always punching above their weight to some extent.

The era spans the oldest of schools, with the likes of Terry Butcher, Bobby Gould and Don Howe at the helm, and ends with multi million pound signings such as Robbie Keane as the glamour of the top flight and its riches consumes the club and eventually leaves it behind as it tries to compete.

Told by the players of the era, in a relaxed, chatty and often gossipy style which adds so much to previous understanding, there is a sense that a strong dressing room camaraderie helped these groups of honest if unspectuaclar players keep their heads above water for so long.

It is a book surprising in its honesty throughout: rarely do football tomes featuring ex players manage to go beyond the platitudinal “great bunch of lads” and “top top coach”, yet here we have genuine insight, sometimes lingering anger, as egos clash and hatchets are ocassionally buried or continued. It is extremely refreshing to read for this reason. It regurgitates very little and finds new angles on old tales, adding much to the sum total of Coventry City knowledge from that time. The author needs applauding for his efforts in this regard.

An age-old club theme of repeatedly selling important players just as things are looking good is discussed, though nuance is always provided too. As the club lurched to and from from larger than life characters (Gould) and seemingly smaller than life ones (Phil Neal. Too harsh?) so too did results and form lurch from flirtations with European qualification to dramatic relegation escapes. From thrashing Liverpool to getting thrashed ourselves at Swindon, never did the near decade of Premier League football sound or seem anything approaching stable. Precious little in all the years since has either.

Yet even as top flight time finally caught up with Coventry City in 2001 there is a sense of what could have been, of missed opportunities, of personnel that could have been changed before it was too late to alter the final disappointing outcome of relegation.

The book provoked plenty of nostalgia and much joy was found in the sense of hanging out with some of the favourite players of my Highfield Road childhood and adolescene. I consumed it in huge great chunks larger than Micky Quinn’s appetite.

As a long-suffering City fan myself I was left with a feeling that during those top flight years we just didn’t appreciate how good we had it. And that if we ever did get back there we wouldn’t make that same mistake again.

When The Sky Was Blue is out now https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/when-sky-was-blue

Take me home

Despite God – if you believe in such a thing – reportedly inventing football so men had something to talk to each other about, I was still at a loss as to what to say. How to properly feel and emote. I brought a Coventry City scarf to the hospital in Sheffield as a prop, a tangible proxy for outward emotion. My sign of love. It was the best I could do. Just a few months earlier, across the same city, we watched a goalless draw from the away end of Bramall Lane but now the battle was of a different kind.

Even in proximity to death’s door, hooked up to machines to stave off the effects of recent heart attack, I still found the words challenging with my father. I showed him a tweet of sympathy from the football club, explained how so many Sky Blues fans, strangers yet kin, had wished him well, encouraging him to fight on like a Mark Robins team past the 90^th minute.

Perhaps it helped spur recovery. He lived. He will be by my side at Wembley on Saturday.

Does that last point matter? Should it? Does allegiance to and love of a football club mean something when pitted against life and death? Compared to real world adversity and pain? Football isn’t life and death, and it isn’t more important than that, but it does weave its way through certain lives, and families. It will be part of how he is described when he’s gone, help explain what I was like when it’s my turn. City ‘til we die, indeed.

I can’t help but always think of the word ‘family’ when occasions like a Wembley final occur, and Coventry City are discussed. For some that means the nuclear, blood variety, for others a family of long-standing friends.

In my own case sits a family with a history of depression on the male side, to which I am not immune. We also each have a history of following Coventry City Football Club. The more facetious might suggest those two things are indelibly linked.

Up on Woodway Lane, in Potters Green, is where my family story comes together. Where I spent my first years. Where we lived just two doors down from my dad’s parents, who themselves lived, and died, in these towns. One day the M6 motorway at the end of the lane, just beyond the cemetery they now rest in, would carry me away, northward to a new life and not stopping until the banks of Loch Lomond. But Dorothy was right though: there is no place like home.

By the scruff of the neck by Brian Kilcline as mascot in 1990, a game against Wimbledon so bad some family never returned.

In the 1990s my dad and I would call in to my gran, Olive, before games at Highfield Road, then return 90 often disappointed minutes later and wait on a freshly printed copy of The Pink from the local shop to see the scores and updated tables. Interested only to a point, with the snooker evidently more appealing, gran had surely seen this scene play out before some 20 or 30 years earlier, my dad and his own father – her late husband – going to Cov games together since in the 60s. I always felt the very real sense of a passing down of tradition on those visits. Given my grandfather died just a week after I was born, there had been a very real generational shift yet we remained bonded almost as much by Coventry City as by blood and name.

Then, one fateful day, so much our pre and post-match routine and grounding was gone. Olive’s death in 2001 took away the last of the Woodway Lane dynasty. Though the apple never falls far from the tree. My daughter, named Olive of course, was born in July 2022.

I wanted to make space here to hail all those ‘others’ in our lives. Those baffled family members, like gran, unaffected by the Coventry City bug, who tolerate the expense and turmoil and frustration and time away. Those who can’t comprehend why – picking an example entirely at random here – you wish to embark on an 11-round trip from Glasgow to Coventry three times in six weeks despite having a 10 month old daughter at home.

Who are your others? For me it has fallen on the females, my mother, wife, sister etc. To them, and their tolerance, I salute. I know you’ll never fully understand. I wonder if Olive will join me, or the others, one day.

The connectedness to Coventry was brought home again the other day, a random Twitter follower asking if my dad had lived on Woodway Lane. Confirming yes, he told me of remembering my grandfather and nipping to the shop aged 9 or 10 to get him cigarettes, and of my father playing up on Sowe Common with his brother and friends. You are never more than one or two shades of Sky Blue from nostalgia and shared history in the Coventry City family.

Further musing on families I once, on some now defunct forum, asked how other fans had got into Coventry City initially. Much like myself, taken to a first game on my 7^th birthday, Dads seemed to have most to answer for.

“my old man, used to drag me up there all the time as a nipper. Ironically now its me trying to drag him up there.”

..

“My parents are to blame also, they were not local and had no interest in football whatsoever, but for some reason decided to drag us to the Southampton game on 09/05/87 – no idea what might have prompted that! They soon lost any interest and I’m left to suffer the lifetime consequences.”

…

“Old man took me and my brother up as kids. Loved him for it at the time and still do. Every time I go to a game I always end up thinking about the old man at some point.”

…

“My Dad started taking me when I was about 6 – 1964-5 I think. Used to pass me over the turnstiles, and we started off on the Kop, then moved to the Sky Blue Stand terrace. He’s now in that great Sky Blue resting place in the sky –  Jnr and I are simply carrying on the father/son tradition.”

…

“My brother John, a Skyblue fruitcake from way back, took me to a match when I was just 9. Never forgot the feeling of walking down the roads walking towards H.R. entrance……crikey, I’m getting teary just thinking about it.”

“Apparently my first game was in a pushchair on the Spoin Kop aged 2 (Dad took me for a walk!). Have had a season ticket since early 70’s (West Stand D27) Early memories of Ramsbottom and King in goal, Graham Oakey getting player of the season, Jim Brogan, Donal Murphy, Colin Stein, Brian Alderson and John Craven. The sky blue disabled cars around the pitch. Being in the west stand bar a good hour before kick-off, playing football with an empty coke can. Thank you Dad.”

…

I share these stories by way of illustration of what it all means. Coventry City is a family because it means something to families. It is a tradition passed down, a point of reference for nostalgia, shared loved, memory, grief and joy. For many people the pandemic threw into greater focus what really mattered in life. And for some that was a deeper shade of Sky Blue in colour.

Me and my own father, Wembley, 2017. We communicate emotion mostly through football.

This is why, I’d argue, winning at Wembley doesn’t especially matter, other than financially, for either way it will just be another story, another memory past down through time, another shared experience with loved ones.

For better or worse Coventry will always be home. These are my people. I can’t wait to be with  36,500 of them again.

From her house on Woodway Lane, depending on the wind direction, my gran used to say she could hear the roars from Highfield Road on certain match days during the 1970s and 1980s.

Those sounds echo on today without her, blowing throughout our family, through the city itself, Coventry City forever in our hopes, dreams, hearts and lives.

A love affair..paused

By Kevin Unitt

..

I wrote this well before the current crisis, and confusion, but it sits in my thoughts even more now we’re working from home, for the foreseeable, banished from the Park for the time being. It makes me pine for it and appreciate it even more. It seems pertinent a time to share the below.

The Park will still be there in all its glory when we get to return among it. In all its extraordinary and life-affirming glory.

..

I think all writers, even lapsed or occasional ones, feel a twitch in their eye, a hum in their consciousness, when they read something truly special.

The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd’s tiny masterpiece, awoke the passion to pen once again. Every line sings with beauty but also took my mind away to my own experiences working and living in Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.  I had to tether myself back to the book, most pages, lest I drifted back to times hiking up a misty Ben Vane, dazzled by the greenest green you’ve ever seen at Puck’s Glen or swimming the mighty Loch Lomond itself, from which angle you only then get a true sense of the utter irrelevance of your stature in the wider scheme.

So, while evidently unfit to lace Nan’s formidable boots, I nevertheless felt imbued with the idea of revealing some of my own experiences within the national park this past decade, first as an awed tourist, next as a seasonal ranger and resident, more latterly as a married man with significant personal attachment to the place, and currently as part of a maintenance team doing our best to keep sites special and safe in the face of so many visitors wanting to soak in exactly the same feelings the place has engendered in me.

First a rough run down of the months, as I know them, up here:

January, low-hanging mist that never raised, the purest chill cutting through the best cloth, the silent stillness of loch, land, hillside and soul.

February, similar to the above but with a bit more rain.

March, the trees and bushes still bare, the first glints of green, a few pioneer plants edging into the visible. Will it ever get light?

April, the sigh of relief at a long winter gone, with snow still on the peaks and continuing rain to remind you where you really are, yet the joyous sound of bird-song, the visual assault of colour and creeping vegetation and communities enlarging with visitors once again.

May, the secret we try to keep, the midge free almost summer month where tourists tread relatively lightly in number but find perhaps the only truly (generally) settled month Scotland has to offer. I once did the West Highland Way, in May, and not a drop of rain nor even significant wind was felt for a 7 full days.

June, the puzzle, when you’re not sure if it’s meant to be summer or not, given the rain and genuine moments of cold. The trappings of high season are evident but the landscape, the weather, are clinging on to something else, harking back to the winter they’ve just had. Bracken reminds you of its omnipresence.

July, when you question if Scotland, and its people, are really built for warm weather anyway. Now it is, by turns, cloyingly hot and dustily drought like or torrentially wet and a bit landslidey. In the resulting confusion, midges find their calling. Ticks cling to the edges of bracken, spurred on by the deer that host them so genially, awaiting a new companion.

August, like July but with even greater extremes. Of even greater numbers of people, who if they never return again will never quite – in my opinion – experience what Scotland and this area in particular, is all about. Does it ever get dark?

September, the sigh of relief, the dropping of temperatures and reduction in tourist numbers, the fading of midge threat, the calming down of weather. Arguably the first truly special summer days can be experienced, shorn of extremes, just when summer is on the way out.

October, as visitors seem to have taken the greenery away with them, the rest is slowly and sometimes quickly eased off trees and bushes by howling winds and storms, but always leaving enough beautiful coloured trees and landscapes to make Autumn in Scotland a truly staggering spectacle.

Loch Chon in Autumn.

November, of even more extreme colours, but the slush of leaves that splatter the roads and paths is starting to feel more melancholic.

December, and you remember how a year can flash by so quickly. When I was 18 a year was quite obviously 1/18^th of my life. At 36 it is 1/36^th. No wonder time feels like it goes by quicker the older you get, because a year literally is now half as long.

There is also of course, among all the above, the ‘four seasons in just one day’ phenomenon.

These are all general observations over a decade visiting, yet Scotland, and Loch Lomond as the area I know best, really defies entire explanation. Defies description beyond your own seminal experiences. Everyone’s will be different. What conveys immense meaning for some, for me, will formulate no part of another’s.

For example, on having a first date up The Dumpling (Duncryne Hill), getting engaged there a year later, and subsequently married overlooking Loch Ard, immense reverence is now attached to these places.

About to propose up The Dumpling, and married in sight of Ben Lomond the following year.

The Glen Loin loop, a favourite of dog and family, is also up there. I owe an ode to Arrochar, the first Scottish village I ever really set proper eyes on during a snowy visit in 2005. Ben Lomond, that I have climbed and also later worked on the path of, increasing attachment to it in my own small way.

Each of these, in general, defies complete description, unless you are someone as talented as Nan Shepherd was. But that makes them all no less special. They touch my soul, and maybe yours too, in ways that are probably left indescribable. Like a lymphatic system for memory, shooting joy straight into the heart.

Seeing such sites, most days in my job, could risk leaving one blasé. Familiarity, immanence, breeding contempt. But it only takes the meeting of visitor, casting their own eyes on it for the first time, to re-set and remind you of your fortune to be here, even paid for the privilege.

At Loch Chon, the very centre of the Park but getting on for one of its ‘wildest’ spots, I have viewed from ground level, water, rickety road leading up to and beyond it, then also from high above, searching as I was for the little known, lesser spotted and visited Loch Tinker.

Lochs Tinker, Arklet and Katrine all visible from on high.

From this vantage point the peaks of so many Park heights seem somehow to condense into your vision, part now of one overall plateau. From here, high above Loch Katrine, Ben Venue at my back, I look down toward Loch Chon. Suddenly the high peak that sits to its far side now seems infinitesimal, dwarfed from this vantage point by mighty Ben Lomond behind it.

From loch level you might know it’s there but can’t see it, blocked from sight by those smaller surrounding hills. But up here, on this day, seeing for miles, a mirador for the mind, you feel a connection to the true scale, grandeur, of exactly where you are living and working. Later a red squirrel dances its way up and down a tree nearby. A pine marten pops its head into the cabin, notices movement and scuttles away. The nuthatches peck greedily at the bird feeders. It is true that we are but visitors to their home, not the other way around.

And imagine if you will, one given day of mine, an hour’s drive along forestry track, followed by steep ascent of a Munro at Ben Narnain from its’ more precipitous south face, followed by a full day near the summit hauling large stones into bags for later helicopter-lifts. All in the height of summer with temperatures close to 30 degrees. A nightmare to some? To me, perhaps a touch masochistically, the perfect day. Hard on the body but something beyond ‘tired’. Something raw and right. That evening meal and drink never tasted sweeter or more earned, that post-work shower the most glorious to date.

Nan Shepherd liked to potter in the hills too, a bit further north than here, not especially seeking the summits but just to be, to be there among them. Sometimes, remarkably luckily, I am paid to be there doing just that. A rare privilege. The hills make you feel, perhaps rightly, quite small. Insignificant even. But you know you belong to them and in them. That is where I am meant to be.

Indeed, as the strictly non-poet and sub-par Shepherd Kevin Unitt wrote, in 2020, just now under this very sentence:

‘Their truest beauty reveals, after I’ve stayed a while to see.

‘Those hills and woods and lochs now carry with them the greatest parts of me.’

 

Kevin Unitt, a former journalist, is a Land Operations Officer for Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.

Another new path for me

I’d originally planned for there to be more of these diary updates, but the best accolade I could possibly give is that I was more keen to be fully in each moment, enjoying each experience first hand, rather than reporting on it. I wanted to live the life of a trainee pathway builder rather than narrate it.

And that’s what I’ve done the last few months, working as part of the team to create a new re-routed section of Ben A’an, an iconic hill path visited by thousands of people every year in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. While still learning as we go, it was rewarding to see many of our skills start to develop over time, signs of improvement showing.

A new section to iconic Ben A’an

Being blessed with an absurdly warm summer probably helped, everyone in the happiest of moods, hundreds and hundreds of tourists passing by each day, thanking us for the pathway, asking what we were doing and why, interested in the work, some envious of our office space, others perhaps just glad to stop and have a breather on their challenging progress uphill.

One of the most rewarding aspects has been this sense of helping, in some small way, these many visitors to enjoy their time in Scotland, in this area. The sense of putting in place pathway features that generations of feet may step on. That may last a long time, even longer than us perhaps. I suppose I’d never really appreciated how the upland pathways I walked on recreationally had come about. The sheer amount of craftsmanship, and toil, involved. The flying in of stone by helicopter, the many wheelbarrow loads of stone and turf moved around, the sheer volume of spades and other tools put into the ground.

In many ways that can be the great irony of this type of work: The less you notice what we’ve done, the better we’ll have done it. The easier it has been to just stick to the path, to comfortably walk up or down hill, the better.

Each of us trainees have spent time away from the others on work experience placements with upland pathway companies, experiencing for the first time the realities of a full working week in the trade, including the time spent away from home, living closely with other workers, mucking in as best we can and working the often long hours they dictate. For myself, a week on Ben Narnain, still with Loch Lomond area, with McGgowan, staying in a cottage and spending long days on steep walk ins and then bagging stone ready for helicopter drops later in the week. It coincided with record Scottish temperatures and so much water was consumed it could have filled a lochan, but the week was really rewarding in many ways, working with a great group of people, and I was hugely impressed by the company outlook and plans to perhaps expand into upland pathway work as far afield as Iceland and Norway. Scotland is clearly seen as a real leader in this type of work, so exciting times lie ahead for the industry.

For me, however, appears to be a career change in slightly different direction.

Having previously spent several hugely enjoyable summers with Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park’s maintenance team, I have managed to secure a new job with them, the Land Operations Team as they are now called. It is the sort of significant career step I have been working toward, and looking out for, for quite some time. I am relishing the forthcoming challenge and returning to work with many old friends.

Not to take anything away, whatsoever, from my time with Mountains and The People. It will be a shame to cut this slightly short. I have enjoyed every minute. To learn many practical, manual skills, test myself physically, get involved with team building exercises and additional training and trips away. It was an organisation I wanted to be part of from the very beginning and will always be thankful for my time here. Special mention, among my training colleagues, to Ceara and Mathew, whose dedication, hard work and attention to detail I was inspired to try and keep up with throughout! It would be great to work with them, or possibly more likely for them, again one day.

myself and the other trainees this year

A thanks also, of course, to our leader Kevin, the most important Kevin in the enterprise, for all his support, guidance and advice (and humour) as we started on this new path in our lives. A man who has faced immense personal challenges with a sort of courage one can only stand in admiration and awe of. I’ll keep in touch.

The Mountains and the People Scheme runs until 2020, but the Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland will hopefully continue on and both are doing sterling work to support the improvements needed to many upland pathways coming under immense pressure from visitors in an ever growing past-time. Visit the websites linked above to see the ways to potentially support this important work.

In my own life, and potentially in some of yours, in darker times I’ve always found exercise to be something of a cure, to walk and walk and walk until I feel well again. Organisations like the above are helping make that a bit easier, a bit more comfortable. You may not always notice that.

But maybe next time, up in the mountains, take a moment off from looking out across the beautiful panorama to look at the stonework under your feet, maybe consider the effort involved, perhaps think about how you might like to support in some way. I know I always will try to in future.

An amazing final work site for me – Ben Lomond. What an office!

 

 

Weeks 3 and 4. Peaks, troughs and pathways

This is Kevin Unitt’s blog and personal views as one of the new Mountains & The People trainee upland pathway workers, based in Loch Lomond.

 

You know that thing where you’re looking out for a certain kind of car or other item and then that’s all you ever see for weeks when you’re out and about? Well its happening for me in terms of pathways, at the moment.

First I happened to spot some really interesting survey research from Scottish Natural Heritage on upland paths, suggesting more than half of people would be put off returning to a route again if the path was poorly maintained. This shows the vital importance of work such as that we will be learning to carry out. Good paths improve the visitor experience for 91% of people, the survey also showed.

A path, we are learning, can be looked at as both a reassurance – if you’re in very low visibility and hoping to find your way up or down – or a hindrance if it’s damaged and not so well maintained.

As one example, if it’s holding water, due to blocked drainage or other issues, walkers will edge to the side of it, eventually damaging that new bit of land, after which the next walkers will go wider of that, and so on and so forth, known as ‘braiding’, until the section of pathway is now ten times wider than originally planned, impacting on the landscape and potentially the environment to a greater degree.

Human behaviour is a crucial factor too. ‘Desire lines’ are often the most direct or easiest route up or down a hillside, going on terrain and sight lines of those walking the route. These are not always where the actual path may be.

In many ways, though, pathways are centuries old desire lines in and of themselves. They hark back to the very history of us, and the human habitation of these isles post glaciation from 10,000 BC onwards.  As the climate warmed up and the ice sheets retreated to reveal vast mountains carved into the landscape such as Ben Nevis, the first human foragers of the landmass that was to eventually became Britain and Scotland began to make sense of their surroundings.

Nicholas Crane, in the excellent book The Making of the British Landscape I’m currently reading, explained

“Method rather than muscle separated the living from the lost. In a world of constant mobility, route finding was a preoccupation.

“Features were picked as waymarkers. By the second passing the waymarks became a source of reassurance..the urge to repeat a set of actions at particular locations was both a survival strategy and a way of deriving social reassurance from a potentially chaotic and dangerous habitat.”

In that sense, paths can be so grandiose as to visually represent the successful history of us.

Crane continued:

“Places lived through movement; by being connected; by the creation of desire-paths. Imprinted by repetitive footfall, each path was an intimate negotiation between human desire and the lie of the land.

“Up close a path was a physical trough in the vegetative carpet; viewed mid frame it appeared as a slender thread, meandering like a stream through the wilderness. Every turn had a reason: a boulder avoided, a bog bypassed, a gradient cheated.”

This fortnight has seen us move onto our first official work site, Craigmore high above Aberfoyle close to the picturesque Dukes Pass. There are a lot of bags of stone waiting for us to distribute into pathways and other path features to create a defined route up the hill, roughly on the desire line trampled over many years by visitors.

There is a lot to take on board. I am still thinking of a way to best describe the various methods of building we are using, in an engaging way, but for now I will just say we are all feeling immense satisfaction at seeing our first sections of pathway, built by our own hand, coming together. That these, if built correctly, could well live on for years, beyond our own lives perhaps, is a special thought.

 

Myself (left) and colleague Murdo with some of our first pathway handy work. With the sort of happy, satisfied smiles you can’t fake. Below are before and after pictures showing the way all our spoil is being sensitively integrated into the surrounding landscapes, as part of our aim to ‘leave no trace’ and protect the environment, both in terms of nature and visibly. It has been one of the most satisfying aspects, for me, thus far.

 

 

Speaking of job satisfaction, I have in previous blogs touched on my own occasional bouts of depression, and how being in nature, being physically active and practical, is as good a ‘cure’ as I’ve ever found. The satisfaction of the great outdoors, fresh air in the lungs and seeing actual visible work done by your own hand. I think you meet a lot of like minded people in such profession, each seeking this kind of solace. While it could be seen in some quarters as tuning out, walking away from office jobs and high pressure and ‘normal’ working life, I’ve always seen it as actually tuning back in to what is really important: the beauty of the world around us, being active, pushing yourself in a physical rather than just mental sense.

Sometimes, still now despite my career convergence and lurch toward a much more positive life, depression speaks on my behalf, answering questions for me, dictating behaviour and outlook. This blog is a direct response. When it wants you to shy away, go quiet, that’s when you should open up, confront the thought patterns, put yourself out there. So here it is and here I am.

We all have our struggles. One thing that attracted me most to this job, this opportunity, was the feeling it was not only offering work and training but also a new life, to change lives, through the scheme. To give a rare and priceless opportunity for people to change the narrative of their existence, pursue a new path both metaphorically and actually.

It’s something I seek as a future career, perhaps. To marry physical outdoor work with helping those very people who need it most. A sort of ‘Green prescription’ service if you will. To help impart the joy I’ve felt in turning toward nature as a career, in hope it inspires others to take a similar route. When caked in mud digging out ditches I am fully aware this might not be everyone’s idea of a ‘dream’ job, but I weigh how I feel that night, a good sort of tired, compared to all those nights spent in a fatigued, mental tiredness after a day of office work in my previous careers.

This sort of topic has come up a lot at work in recent times, discussing just what pay – more specifically how little – would be acceptable as you pursue work for its health benefits as opposed to supposed career progression and ladder climbing. For me, money has never and will never, as long as circumstances allow, be the driving force. Satisfaction overrides.

I’m trying to impart my joy in the Loch Lomond area, some of the favourite stuff I’ve done, onto other trainees through social get-together outside of work. Several of us camped on the beautiful island of Inchcailoch last week. Imagine having these views all to yourselves for the night.

Generations past probably didn’t ascend mines expecting to be nourished to their very souls afterwards. Work as joy is perhaps a relatively new concept. Recent surveys have suggested a majority of people are unhappy in their jobs, many not even fully understanding what it is they are meant to be doing, nor why. It feels different for us, seeing a path we’ve built, knowing it will help more people enjoy the outdoors in a safer and more sustainable way. A fine example of ‘giving back’, really.

I’d strongly recommend volunteering, in this regard. It’s where I started out in this career, and the satisfaction is immense. The people lovely. Find out more here and here. You’ll enjoy it, I can almost guarantee it. It might not be too grandiose to say volunteering gave me a future. When unemployed and directionless, after leaving my previous office-base career in journalism, volunteering at my local country park was the first source of real nourishment for the soul, of satisfaction and pride, in months. I went on to volunteer with the award-winning and immensely fun Fell Futures scheme in Lake District National Park, going so far as to be described, for the first time in my life, as a   ‘success story’  because it later helped secure me paid work in the sector.

Some in the industry dispute the need or right of volunteering, fearing it takes away what should be paid work. I can’t and won’t ever agree. It reminds me of the quote: “Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”

I’ve been chasing these highs, that volunteering brought, in everything I’ve done in this industry over the subsequent four years.

I was reminded of this feeling even more last weekend, spending time ‘bark ringing’ up at Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms. The process, taking axes to the trunks of certain trees in a forest, creates – according to the Rangers there who know best – a variety of different stages and ages of standing dead wood, a habitat in short supply, while also allowing gradual change of ground flora rather than sudden shock. It also allows more space and light for the grandest old Scots Pine to flourish.

Among a great group of people, many mentioning ‘giving back’ to nature which gives them so much, the sun beaming down, the smell of pine wood strong, it was a powerful reminder of why I began this whole journey in the first place.

I’ll bring you more on our rapidly developing path work in due course. For now, suffice to say, we’re all as trainees immensely enjoying the experience.

* Mental Health Awareness Week runs from May 14 – 20. The scientific evidence for the benefits of outdoor exercise on mental well being is long standing and extensive, and in my personal experience, irrefutable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks 1 and 2: NASA, new friends and nature..

This is Kevin Unitt’s blog and personal views as one of the new Mountains & The People trainee upland pathway workers, based in Loch Lomond.

 

We’ve now convened, us eight successful candidates, to begin our adventure.

So many different ages, backgrounds, hobbies, interests and outlooks converging in one place. Some in their teens, others like me considerably older, some with young families, others travelling a long way to take up the job, many of us starting out on whole new career paths. All, I think, brought together by a genuine love of the outdoors and I wish to work practically in Scotland. To make a difference. A few times in these early days several of us, myself included, have marvelled that these mountains really will be our office for the foreseeable future. That this is real. We’re already emerging as a little team, a group of friends.

One thing I perhaps didn’t count on, embarking on this new career path fixing paths, was learning about the very latest NASA-technology in outdoor toilet bags. But yes, that’s right, the space agency has indeed developed a gelling agent, the only one of its kind, that traps, encapsulates, deodorizes and breaks down waste. Technology which will allow us to privately and hygienically meet the call of nature when caught short out on the hills.

But first, before our forays into the mountains and wilds, came all the induction information. The power-point stuff we need to know. The procedures and important contacts.

Also the healthy and safety. Ah. It can often be the fault of journalists like my former self, but rarely do you hear about health and safety these days unless in the instances it has apparently ‘gone mad.’ But how about when it’s gone normal? When it’s just a series of safe working procedures and information that will cover the many scenarios out on the mountains and help keep us safe? You don’t hear about that much, until just now in that previous sentence.

We took a hypothetical pounding during the safety briefings and first aid training, I must say.

First aid training. Picture by Rosie Winch.

 

Broke fingers and other limbs, fell in ditches, had boulders career down hillsides into us, spilled fuel, rolled crashing cars and generally beat ourselves up to the point I hypothetically need months off just to recover. Hopefully we face nothing like this for real, but now we’ll know better how to cope should anything transpire.

Later that day, off we went carrying our first tools up Conic Hill, heavy pinch bars and spades and the like, and in pairs had our first go at manoeuvring and lifting and moving large rocks. Rocks that looked liked that sat in the hillside happily for centuries. It was very satisfying. In go the bars underneath, one person holds while the other puts their bar in underneath a bit further along, and so on until its up and out. We also looked at writing out risk assessments for the first time, evaluating all the potential risks to us on site.

A tool talk from our leader Kevin, front right.

 

 

Given it was impossible to pose for a selfie while lifting heavy stone, this is Mat and Ian demonstrating the technique. But I can do it too, honest..

 

Toward the end of our first week we headed on to the foot of Ben Lomond for an overnight ‘get-to-know-each-other’ stay at the bunkhouse run by the National Trust for Scotland, which also looks after the iconic mountain above it.

As a team we rustled up a pasta, or at least helped out with the washing up, then met and were given a talk by Dougie Baird, chief executive of our employer Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland. He explained how, from originally being set up in the 1990s to solve an overflowing carpark issue in the Cairngorms, more than £13 million later it has helped improve upland pathways throughout the country and supported jobs plus training opportunities such as those we had just embarked upon.

It was an illuminating talk, and personally made me very proud to be part of something so inspiring.

As a group we headed to the nearest pub for the evening, and what we got up to was… [REDACTED] 

Shaking off a few hangovers the next morning, we headed up Ben Lomond guided by resident ranger Alasdair, who shed light on many fascinating stories of the mountain’s past, present and potential future, from steel making of centuries before to recent path repairs and peat bog restoration efforts. The sun beaming down, it finally felt like winter was officially over as we all reached the summit, skylarks chirping above us and one enormous Raven surveying his dramatic landscape.

National Trust ranger Alasdair Eckersall (centre) talks us through the history of Ben Lomond during our sunny mountain climb

 

 

 

My new colleagues and friends at the summit of Ben Lomond.

 

I was sure glad I had my Berghaus rucksack on throughout the hike. From the daily commute to a day out reaching that elusive peak, their rucksacks really will see you through. Each is designed with comfort, durability and performance in mind. Crammed with great details like breathable air mesh and convenient pockets they’re guaranteed to make life a little easier wherever you’re heading. Available at very competitive prices right now on their website *

*The above paragraph was a shameless unsolicited attempt to get a new free rucksack out of my favourite outdoor brand.

Anyway, moving on, we have been shown and taught many path construction tactics, methods and styles already, some of which I should relay here, mainly to check I’ve learnt something. I won’t go into too much detail, because I haven’t got any yet.

In  terms of pathways, many features might not be immediately apparent to those walking up or down them, such as strategically placed stones doing a number of different things. Some to the edges may be encouraging you to keeping on the path, others encouraging water to flow under or across the pathway and off the other side, reducing the possibility of damage and erosion. Pathways may meander from side to side, as opposed to straight up, to reduce the gradient and difficulty to a more gradual pace. Likewise stepping stones, on sections with particularly large height rises, can aid the climber’s progress.

An example of stone pitching pathway work on The Cobbler, making climbing steeper sections a bit more comfortable.

 

We’re also beginning to learn why we maintain paths. Everything from safety of users to prolonging the life of the path, to encouraging people to stay on them so they don’t go wider afield and potentially impact the surrounding habitats and environment.

There will be much more of the science of pathway building to come in the subsequent weeks.

A fair portion of week 2 was spent on ‘drain runs’, scaling the summits of Ben Ledi and Ben Venue, before spending the walk down clearing out the various cross drains and other path features which can often clog up with stone and silt, stopping the water washing off the path and away. It was lovely to engage with hill walkers and explain our efforts while welcoming their praise and thanks for the pathways.

At the peak of Ben Ledi we encountered a giant patrolling crow, just at we had at the top of Ben Lomond. Then it dawned. These clever birds know exactly what humans do when they reach summits – the reward themselves with a bite to eat – and these crows must be awaiting their pickings.

That’s probably enough for this fortnight I think, though much more has happened. Please share our news and updates as the future of our iconic summits and pathways can depend on raising awareness of why they are so important.

 

* More information of The Mountains & The People can be found here and more on Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beginnings

ONCE the great ice sheets covering the globe had began to melt away, the first human foragers on land now known as Britain would have started creating their own ‘desire lines’ between places of significance.

About 10,000 years later, yours truly will be learning how help fix them. I don’t mean fix the foragers, they’ll probably be long dead, but fix some of those historic pathways between places which once kept humans safe from predators and crucially acted as lifelines connecting early settlements together.

What I currently know about paths, beyond the fact there’s plenty of clichés to be had about me being on the right one in a career/life sense, is not particularly vast.

I know that I like climbing them, particularly in mountain environments such as those I’ve scaled throughout Scotland, but I suppose I’d never really thought deeper about their structure, and significance, before.

That’s where The Mountains and the People project comes in.

Along with seven other candidates I’m yet to meet, chosen from as many as 100 applicants, we will (I’m quoting this so as to get it spot on) learn the techniques of upland path construction, maintenance and landscape restoration, through practical skills training and work placements, whilst working towards a Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) Level 2 in Environmental Conservation.

I can’t wait to get started.

It’s something of a full circle moment for me, just a few years after I embarked on a career change from journalism to great outdoors. In 2014 I was armed with nothing at all beyond the expressed intention to work outdoors, preferably in Scotland, a place I’d visited as regularly as possible but had no ties with or contacts in. I attached as the cover picture for this blog (at the top of this very page) a photo from a recent jaunt up a snowy Scottish peak, perhaps as a motivation.

Fast forward less than four years, via a degree as a mature student to ranger jobs and self employed countryside contracts, and I will now be paid to climb Scottish mountains and help fix them for future generations. Intention has brought me this long way, coupled of course with hard work and moments of luck and coincidence.

I aim to chart my progress throughout the scheme here, in regular updates. While my career has shifted massively away from writing I’ve never quite let go of my love for the discipline.

Right now I can’t think of any better way to ‘give back’ to Scotland, and the great outdoors, than being a custodian of some of the country’s finest peaks. Some of the very same mountains which have brought me such joy and mental well-being throughout my life. To leave a permanent positive impact on landscape like that pictured above sounds to me like a wonderful opportunity.

I hope you’ll be along for the hike with me.

 

Getting in some training walks this week on the hills around Loch Lomond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book review of The Meifod Claw: A vivacious trip of a debut

The Meifod Claw

Author: JW Bowe

Released: 8 July 2017

Publisher: Serious Biscuits

I figured out the other day that in the course of my ten years in journalism I’d been paid to write almost a million words. More than the complete works of Shakespeare.

But never a book. Never the Holy Grail. My answer to who my hero is will always remain “anyone who has written a book”. So in that sense the Meifod Claw, the debut novel by JW Bowe, is a triumph before I’ve even turned a page. Thankfully it remains a triumph beyond that.

Rare are the writers that grip you with such sparkling metaphor, and vivacious use of language, twice within its opening page:

‘He waited for the morning to find pathways through his body.’

‘..he had found himself within a snow dome that waited for life to be shaken upon it.’

Bowe remains at his best, throughout the work, in describing the beauty of such everyday feeling, of setting a scene, of putting pen to a landscape. A love of language pervades all.

He trust his characters to be liked on their own merits, without the need for lengthy explanations of self. A faith which is justified as you turn page after page eagerly awaiting the next exploit. Huge swathes of this book can easily be consumed in one sitting. Not until around page 265, deep deep into the tome, do you get the beginnings of explanation as to the motives, and background, to several key characters. That is a brave decision, to withhold, but it justifies your faith in those people once you get there. In fact, that very chapter, number 11 of part two, sparkles with some of the most glorious writing in the whole piece. I cared before then, but beyond that I felt.

The book centres on sci-fi but operates an open door policy where all are welcome, regardless of their beliefs and interests. You don’t have to understand anti-gravity for it to work here etc etc.

Dialogue zips by every bit as crisply as the drama, here there and everywhere and a rate of knots. It appears to be intentional. In fact, the book often reads as a trip, both literal and metaphorical, both drug-induced and not.

At times it may come across almost a paean to mind-altering substances: caffeine, alcohol, cannabis and beyond.  But also it deals with the mind-altering feelings of love, a new romance, friendship and family. Of being high in a dramatic sense, among the clouds across the world, but also basically high on life, however that is achieved.

In these altered-states of awareness in which you read the book, narrative flits in and out of comprehension. Leaps of faith are required for you to carry on along with the journey at hand. It’s a rewarding ride, though so much is going on, in so many directions, you occasionally grasp for a good old sit down and cup of tea. Thankfully its characters do too.

Billed as a comedy, it is undoubtedly replete with its funny moments. A lover of an inventive and amusing turn of phrase can gorge themselves here.

I’m fascinated to see where Bowe goes next. More about the life of a key character is promised in the follow up novel. I’m in. Let me know when I can buckle up for another ride.

There’s a line in the middle of the book that goes “I haven’t got time for madness,” but thankfully, in his own way, Bowe has.

* The Meifod Claw is available now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up front, on my own

Social media can be an odd beast. You live in the half-light of other people’s lives, stopping off occasionally to see how they’re doing, hearing from them now and again via statuses or photographs, little glimpses of someone you know well, know not so well or once knew better.

You never really move on fully, life wise, no matter how far away you travel, as friends remain vaguely tied to you from the past. You remember how you were when you knew them better, what you used to get up to together, looking back in fondness or regret depending on your current situation.

With big Rich Bunt, who I knew well and best about a decade ago when we played football together, I’d followed from a distance his move to London, the fun he was getting up to, the marriage and love he’d embarked on, the support for Coventry City he’d somehow maintained compared to my lapsed effort. So when you suddenly read a tweet, about an unexpected and tragic death, and you see a photo containing someone you knew, him, it is hard to process. You sort of assume good people will always be there, among your friends list, quietly continuing their own lives.

I feel saturated with grief lately, anyway. So much of it swilling around the news. It’s hard to process it all, the terrorism, the deadly fires and now the deaths of people you actually knew. I’m losing old friends, who are not even old, at a rate I do not wish to face. Matt, just last October, at 27. An old school friend Dean, also among the 27 club, a few years before. And now Rich, inexplicably and devastatingly, at 33.

I once took tragedy, in terms of how it related to me, as a very firm message that I needed to live more, to make the most of life and all its opportunities, because life is fragile and none of us know how long we’ll have. But I get it. I get that message now, seriously. Please don’t take any more.

Rich got it, I reckon. A zest for life. A sense of fun. of Adventure. He squeezed more genuine actual living into his years as many of us will in twice that number. I don’t know if that’s a consolation, nothing probably is right now, but it can very clearly and evidently be said that he lived.

I met him on a wild rainy night in Warwick in about 2004, brought together by a shared love of football. On opposing teams, I’ll always remember his light applause at a good goal I scored. I can’t remember us ever being on separate sides again. From those kick abouts later came actual league 5-a-side matches, down the road at Myton School. I don’t wish to apportion importance to such low-level football but as strike partners we clicked. A classic little and large double act. He was the Heskey to my Owen, but I mean when Heskey was a battering ram with skill to boot not the maligned player he later became. I thrived off a Rich Bunt knocked down, while in return I laid on many a through ball or cross knowing he’d be there to stick it away. In fact, through all my many years playing football across various disciplines, I have never before had such a telepathic understanding with another player. I passed to a zone knowing he’d be waiting, often without needing to look.

Our finest hour together came during a match against a team named Big Dunc’s A Legend, a group of scousers who seemed intent to live up to their hero by basically assaulting us any time we got the ball. So much so that in this 5-a-side match they ended up with 3 players left. Before then we’d been 2-0 down, I pulled one back and then deep into added time, their two outfield men clinging on but tiring, I scampered away down the wing and crossed for Rich to turn in the equaliser. We embraced. He had a blooded lip among other blows he’d sustained, but he took it all that night. A proper talisman. I like to remember how he was that day. It cheers me, given what’s happened now.

Big Rich, second from left (back row), with me below.

Eventually our lives took us elsewhere, him to London, me to Scotland, both of us to truer happiness, I think. I tried to entice him back to Leamington Spa, before I left in 2013, for one last footy match but we couldn’t quite get it together. But you don’t forget characters like that. He loved The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arctic Monkeys: frankly I needed no more evidence to judge him of sound character, mind and taste.

I last ‘heard’ from him pre-Christmas, again via Facebook, in a live screening of the draw for some golf tournament or other involving his mates. It was all still there. That dry, finely tuned humour. The centre of attention, in an understated and amusing way. That’s as close as I could get to describing the Rich Bunt I knew in a sentence.

You hold on to such people, even if you don’t see them anymore . You don’t want to fully let them go. They remind you of good times, and good people. They remain among your ‘friends’, and in many ways they always will be, whether or not I have to carry on up front on my own from now on.