Buckle my shoe: West Ham 1 - 0 Peterborough; 24 September

Do you get shoes with buckles any more?  Once upon a time they used to be de rigeur for small children who could not manage shoe laces, but they have been superseded by the ubiquitous Velcro, as, come to think of it, have shoe laces.  So has the counting rhyme gone as well, I wonder?

Such musings were more likely to hold my attention than the game, though, featuring as it did a meandering West Ham performance that always looked good enough to beat a Peterborough side that looks set to struggle.  Not even playing 6 minutes of added time could allow then to score as, for once, we didn't concede at home in the dread zone from 87 minutes on.

But that's two home victories on the bounce.  Joel is relieved as he's managed to destroy the theory that Jessica and I were proposing that West Ham could only win at home when she, Connor and I were in attendance and Jack and Joel weren't.  With Jack having become a part-timer and given up his season ticket (The Premiership or nothing, my dear), the theory didn't concern him.  But Joel might have been permanently excluded from the Chicken Run if this result had not transpired.

So all that was left was to think of children's rhymes, and ponder why it was, when Carlton Cole was playing, he was sent a succession of high balls to battle for, but when John Carew, Carew (who is definitely bigger than me and you - and probably would be if we were combined - plays in the claret and blue, doesn't wear a buckled shoe) came on, balls were played into channels for him to chase.  Carew is bigger and better in the air, and Cole is faster.  Am I missing something?  But, hey ho, we won and we're still in fourth and the object of the exercise this season is to get promoted - which means winning and we did.  

So that's alright then.

Missing: Millwall 0-0 West Ham; 17 September

On Saturday, The Controller and I went with my daughter, Jessica and grandson Connor to Maldon.  Joel and Hannah went to IKEA.  So we all missed the game (just as David Bentley missed an open goal to win it), and given the crap mobile phone and mobile internet access in rural Essex Jessica and I relied on text updates from Joel - which were as rare as David Bentley goals.

So nothing to say about the game, but Maldon on Regatta Day was nice to visit.

Which is more than can be said - ever - for IKEA

57 Varieties of Emotion

This year I have been supporting West Ham for 57 years.  In that time, what started with my Dad taking me to stand (and, in the misty-eyed way beloved of memoirs) be passed to the front of the Chicken Run, has morphed into a lifetime's defining obsession which has been passed on to my children.

In that time, to reprise Elizabeth Barret Browning, let me count the ways that West Ham has made me cry.

There have been tears of exhilarated joy on (too few) occasions.  When I were but a nipper (all of 17), we won the cup against Preston and I watched on grainy black and white telly at the Barber's shop where I worked as a Saturday boy.  No tears, but definitely moist eyes.  Then we won the European Cup-winners Cup and, of course, the World Cup - all experienced at second hand on the telly but with intense joy.

I was working abroad when we beat Fulham in the Cup and listening on the BBC World Service (when it was a proper World Service on short wave with the Lily Bolero theme tune), all alone but overjoyed.

I experienced anguish followed by joy when we beat Arsenal with Sir Trevor's (only?) headed goal and I spent the rest of the game watching the clock as much as the game.  I was there with my Dad and we floated back to our car on an uplift of delirium.  The next day, I took Jessica, Rebecca and baby Joel to see the team bus bring the cup back.

My dad and I also cried after the death of Bobby Moore at the West Ham gates.  Only Jessica remembered seeing him play but everybody was caught up in the emotion.  Jack came to his first game the Saturday following Bobby Moore's death, when Wolves fans laid tributes in the centre circle and thought that all games might be surrounded with this level of intensity.

I wept copiously when my Dad's ashes were scattered at Upton Park in a lovely ceremony by the then Chaplain (even though my Dad was a determined atheist, reserving his worship for socialism, West Ham and his family, although not necessarily in that order) which made much of West Ham being a family club.

With my children I experienced the Cardiff extremes - beaten in a play-off final one year and winning it the next while we all managed to be there, followed by the Scouse Robbery Cup Final with Joel even winging back from his job in the USA! USA! having complete faith in dad to blag a ticket.  Which I did.

And today is the latest day the West Ham have made me cry - with more than a little assistance from my son, Joel.  He presented me with a book of all my blogs from last year, printed in a fabulous design and with a cover photograph of a brick from the porch of my mum and dad's old flat (that my mum moved out of to sheltered accommodation early this year) in which  I'd gouged WHUFC and crossed Hammers when I was a kid.

I was, and am still, overcome.

An Open Invitation: West Ham 4-3 Portsmouth; 10 September

Last week I got an invitation sent to me from West Ham.  I was invited to meet Big (Fat) Sam in luxurious surroundings for a glass of champagne and a seafood buffet.  I would also see the match (with only the slight drawback that I would have to do that in the company of Pornographers and a fawning Reality TV star that would not be reputationally advisable).  And all I had to pay for this invitation was £99!!

I'm duty bound to reply.  Good manners demands it.  So I've got an invitation of my own for Sam.  He can come for a cup of tea and a biscuit and can sit in my garden to enjoy it .  Guaranteed no Pornographers or Fake Peer suck-ups to put up with - just two large, hairy dogs.  The dogs may bounce around a lot, though and rush about all over the grass with evident enjoyment, a frantic desire to please and little sense of discipline or purpose.

Midfield Terriers? Slippery pitch?

Which neatly brings us to West Ham in BFS's latest incarnation, post Super Scott.  The sponsors' man of the Match was Henri Lansbury, newly arrived from Arsenal Reserves on a season-long loan, but Rob Green was essential in us winning at home for the first time since March.  Two of his first half saves were stunning and the reason why the second half goals from Lansbury, Noble and Cole (to add to Matty Taylor's first half equaliser) won the match.  

Now why would that lovely Arsene Wenger lend Sam Allardyce a player?  Ever since BFS's Bolton days, they've not been bosom buddies.  When Arsene was in full conflict with Sir Apoplex of Manchester (before Sir Apoplex took to patronising him from the lofty heights of yet another league championship) BFS was like one of those annoying kids who hang around the big bully sniggering at their 'witticisms' while repeating their last few words for emphasis.  I thought all that meant we might get Man Utd loanees, like Sunderland and Wigan got Welbeck and Cleverly last year, but instead Arsene gave us a current star of England U21s.  So, either he doesn't like Lansbury, or his recent tribulations have changed more than the age at which he'll sign players.  Now he wants to toughen up his youth to go with the prettiness, perhaps.

Nevertheless, he contributed a (deflected) goal and won a penalty when his ball-juggling induced a handball.  So, a decent contribution.  Unlike that of David Bentley, the not-so-super-sub.  He kept trying to do the showboat or the killer ball and it never came off.  Of course he has talent, but I'm not so sure he has bottle.  And that's a quality the the departed Super Scott had (has) in abundance and that showed in the way that Portsmouth could run through our midfield to score three goals.  Normally, three goals away from home would be a victory, but tough.  It's about time we won, about time we came from behind, and more than about time we stopped conceding goals in injury time.  We managed two out of three.

When I got home and recounted to The Controller the self-mocking chant of the fans:

            We're winning at home

            We're winning at home

            How shit must you be

            We're winning at home

Her response was that was typical of the nasty bitter character deformation that is supporting West Ham.

So, please, BFS, accept my invitation and show her it isn't so.  And I won't even charge you £99 that was the price for your open invitation