In the week leading up to the game the news, as far as West Ham are concerned, was that the Olympic Stadium deal was off. My moment of joy that I was to be spared needing to take binoculars to see future games in White Elephant Running Track Stadium with distant seating around it was rapidly dashed, however, when it became clear that West Ham is still likely to bid to be tenants, and still most likely to be successful. Apparently we'll be 'anchor tenants' which is not cockney rhyming slang, but a phrase to indicate we won't even be exclusive occupiers. So we'll no doubt sell Upton Park for another supermarket and move into rented accommodation, as they recommend for those who can't pay their mortgages. Still it'll be a legacy like that nice former Tory MP Lord Coe promised (I always preferred watching the Steves Ovett and Cram, anyway) - or just something you inherit that you're stuck with, and that you paid for anyway. At least when Terence (sack the board, sack the board, sack the board) Brown came up with a whizzo scheme whereby we gave him lots of money to build a stadium and in return he gave us the right to spend even more money going to watch matches in it, everybody saw through it - even Danny Baker and he's a Millwall supporter. This way, it's built with our taxes, we're lumbered with it and we have to pay to be miles away from matches in it. Mind you, for some of West Ham's matches, the further away the better.
But not this one.
My mother lives, as she has always done, in rented accommodation. Her recent accommodation, though, is extra-care sheltered accommodation. On Friday I had to be there while a social worker did a care assessment. This included making an assessment of her mental state by asking her questions. As she has Alzheimer's, from which only Ernest Saunders has ever recovered (after being diagnosed while serving a gaol sentence for fraud and therefore released, only for a miracle to happen), this is done simply to illustrate how she can't care for herself and is therefore entitled. Her short term memory has been gone for a few years, but now her longer term memory is also in decline and she is unable to remember my father to whom she was married for more than fifty years. I was thinking about him leading up to this week's match, because today would have been his 91st birthday and, after his death, his ashes were scattered at Upton Park. Will his ashes also become 'anchor tenant' at White Elephant Stadium Next to Westfield Shopping Centre? Thought not. But now my mum can't remember him and I only ever think of him infrequently, nearly 14 years after his death.
But he was responsible for taking me to West Ham as a 7 year old. And he once took me to Arsenal as a kid because Stanley Matthews was playing in his last season, and he wanted me to be able to say I'd seen the greatest English footballer. Obviously this was before Bobby Moore, so now I can say I saw both although, rather like my mum, I can't remember anything of Stanley Matthews playing at Arsenal.
So yesterday was a birthday treat for my old dad, even though he wasn't there (except as ashes in the pitch), but two of his grandchildren and his great-grandson were able to enjoy a sunny autumn day and a comfortable win that lifts us to second in the table. With Carlton Cole not playing there was a vacancy for the chosen boo boy of the numpties behind us, but not even Kevin Nolan could measure up in a four-nil home win. And even with Andy D'Urso performing to his habitual level of incompetence we couldn't let a goal in in five minutes added time at the end.
So now it's off to the South Coast for Southampton and Brighton. You can tell that, just as the sunny weather is due to end, something's bound to go wrong. Promotion can't be that simple, can it? This is West Ham.
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