A place to have a chat.

Reading those travel tales got me reminiscing. So, here we go with an early tale, have yourself a read 🤓.

This goes right back to July 1980, when me and my mate had just turned 18 and just about finishing 6th form. We took ourselves off on a trip to Chamonix by train, which was inspired by our Art teacher, known as captain McFrizz. We went with a vague intention of having a go, at least in part at the Mont Blanc circular trek. On our way there we stopped off at a couple of places, non-better than Annecy which was an absolutely beautiful old town built amongst canals and situated next to the cleanest most fantastically scenic lake imaginable. It was a stunning place and at that time seemingly untouched by the Brits other than perhaps Frank and Nestor Bough on their French tours for the BBC Holiday program.

I remember as we walked from the station, with our back packs along the streets of the old town up to the campsite and we met a bunch of game lasses from St Etienne. They were gorgeous, they each had long curly brown/black hair with a reddish tint in and amongst and they were skinny as rakes, skinny legs. Infact, that’s why I though the French were called frogs due to their skinny froggy legs like these girls had. It’s a shame though to think how things have changed, with the takeover from MacDonalds and the discovery of chips in France they are all fat gits now like us and the Americans, without so much as a skinny leg in sight.

Then up on the campsite, it was full of Dutch people, and the Dutch lasses were all at least 7ft tall! Me and my mate didn’t have much of a chance though, we thought we’d had a good day if we’d managed to find a bar with a space invaders machine in it. And instead of pulling the birds we’d often inevitably blow any chances we had as either he or me or both at the same time, often be in the unappealing position of being slumped over a trough, honking up in the bogs.

There was a group of glamourous, fabulous, model looking girls just a couple of tents a way, it’s got to be said as well that they were well out of our league and anyway their heads were turned by the presence of some cool dude Frenchies in their sports cars. Me and my mate enviously hatched a plan to come back one day, perhaps once we’d made our fortunes and rev up in mini coopers just like in the Italian job – of course we never did 🙁.

So, we did actually make it to Chamonix, but it was wet, in fact it was wet all over, absolutely tipping it down 🌧. You wouldn’t have known that there were any mountains there as mist covered the place. We spent a couple of miserable wet days on the campsite as it was also too expensive to drink in the bars, especially given our meagre funds.  We decided to cut our losses and we made an hastily retreat back to a place that we’d stopped off earlier on route, an unremarkable village called Culoz (pronounced ‘Culo’ as I found out some years later). Although on the main line, Culoz is obviously a sleepy old place that everyone just passes by. I think we must have been the first English people to call in since 1945, because the old locals were very welcoming, in fact it was a absolute privilege to drink with a bunch of old boys complete with their berets in the bar and who had all been members of the French resistance. They regaled us with unbelievable war time tales, I will never forget it.

Then one morning, whilst composing myself in the tent for the first visit of the day to the hole in the ground, with early signs of hangover recovery from the previous nights drunken stupor I had a strange feeling. It was almost like an out of body experience as it seemed as though I was floating, weird. I unzipped the tent, to find that the whole campsite was flooded, and our tent was floating, with me and my mate in it! We immediately abandoned tent, carrying our sleeping bags and all our positions to the only dry spot we could find which was the toilet block (yes – the one with the afore mentioned hole in the ground) and this was only just above water. Nightmare! We found out later that in times of heavy rainfall, the authorities would control the flow down the Rhone-Saone by releasing water from the various barrages. Apparently, we were in the South of France during the wettest July for a number of years and they’d gone and deliberately flooded the campsite that we were on.

The locals, true to their good name came to our rescue. They put us up in the town hall, and so it was that the next morning when I again woke up in the aftermath of a drunken stupor it was this time to the sound of typewriters. We were sleeping on the floor of an office in the town hall, and people were working at desks around us typing away. Unbelievable, maybe, no-one has ever believed me, but it is true 🤔. 

Although we had our train tickets to get home, and pennies for our bus fare for when we got back to Bradford, we only had 70 centimes between us when we travelled back. We used it to buy a ‘du pain’ in Paris as we had to wait almost 24 hours for our train connection there. We ended up going to Dunkerque instead of Calais that was on the ticket but in those days, no-one said anything. And when I got home having carted a couple of bottles of treasured local red plonk all the way home, I sat down with my family for Sunday dinner, and I proudly opened one of the bottles whilst explaining how we had lived off the stuff for 2 weeks and how proud the locals were to show us how they made the wine etc. When I plipped the cork there were greenflies floating in the wine! Presumably French ones 🍷.

If you have read all this, then well done for enduring this tale and thank you for prompting me to reminisce – those were the days! 😬

Spongebob  

Zut alors! Just look what happened today ⚽️🥳. There must be a god out there after all 🤔. La de da, la de da, la de da da da 🎶🎶🎶. “Take me home Midland Road” 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶. 
Enjoy your weekend chaps 🥳😀🤓😃 eeeel pie, eeeeeeurcha!!!!!

On this coming Sunday, 11th May, it will be the wedding anniversary of my childhood neighbour. It is a very unfortunate date. Attending the wedding was always going to be a bit problematical for me because it coincided with a football match, a match that I very much needed to go to. So, during the wedding reception I sneaked away after telling a small white lie, to catch the bus down to town. I eagerly arrived at the game in time to meet up with my mate and his dad standing in our usual spot, which was to the left of middle, near the back of the old kop. We would occasionally watch games from the old main stand; in fact, we stood in the paddock which was the standing area in front of the seats in that stand at my very first game which my dad took to me when I was a nipper. A thought scares me “shipless” even to this day, that in the event of something going wrong, my instinct would almost certainly have been to find an exit at the back of the stand, where we came into the ground, rather than to jump over the wall and onto the pitch. Being a ‘good boy’, I wouldn’t dare to have ever gone onto the pitch. Of course, exits at the back of the stand would always be firmly shut until 5 mins before the end of a game. Fortunately for us, the kop was our choice to be spectators on that day. The kop itself was also ancient, it was basically a set of steps, badly worn concrete terracing open to all elements and in our position where we stood it was within range of any flying lumps of concrete from the other side where mischievous opposing fans might often congregate. But it afforded a fine view of the pitch and accommodated the jovial banter from the regulars who would gather and lean against the occasional bent rusty barrier. Despite being open to the elements, for a Saturday game there would usually be a very strong odour of stale beer and curry lingering from the previous night. For the first time in my (then young) lifetime and following a much, much longer time before that my team had actually, finally won something. Not only ‘won something’, but they’d won it in real style, with an entertaining, attacking team made up mainly of exciting youngsters and with a few wise old heads – they are all my heroes. It was therefore a day of grandiose celebration complete with majorettes; the old ground was packed to the rafters with 11,000 crammed into it to witness a rare historic occasion. Not surprisingly, the mood was festively exuberant, and applause rang out all over the ground as the team paraded the 3rd division trophy around the pitch before kick-off. It was such a unique occasion that the television cameras were even there to cover it, which was a novelty for us at the time. The players held up large cards, each with a letter on it which together spelled ‘THANK YOU’, an appreciation of the fans support received over the season. The first half in contrast was a very dull affair; so much so that I can’t remember any of the play. Then towards the end of the half, we could see and hear a bit of commotion in the seats near our end of the old main stand to our right. There was a clear whisper of grey smoke spiralling up from within a section of seats, which themselves were positioned on wooden planks. I remember hearing a few chants of ‘p!ss on it, p!ss on it’, as befitting the banter you might expect but not that many people at that moment seemed to pay much attention or worry about it as the game continued. In a very short time however, the whisper of smoke became thicker, and people started to move out of their seats and away. Then suddenly, we could clearly see a bright orange flame, and people started to spill on to the pitch. Within a few more moments the flames having properly taken hold were stretching out and reaching the roof. I remember seeing people who were serving in the hamburger shop at the end of the stand hastily escaping debris that was by now falling from the roof in flames by jumping out the serving hatch. We could at this point feel the heat as the fire intensified, rapidly devouring the end part of the roof with thick black smoke bellowing far up into the sky. There was proper panic now as people scrambled to get away, clambering over the seats and wall partitions to get onto the pitch. We saw a flame start on the top of a wooden partition which then rapidly spread along the full length of the stand at a speed that was surely faster than any man can run. Within probably only 3 or 4 minutes the whole stand was a raging inferno. Where we were stood the heat was becoming unbearable and yet as we watched on helplessly, we could not get out because the gates were locked. One concern for us was with the floodlight pylon which sat on the corner of the ground between us and the stand, there was a very real worry that it could buckle in the heat and collapse onto us. Luckily, it didn’t. As unwilling witnesses to the unfolding horror, we watched on and screamed out loud as a poor old chap with his clothes in flames suddenly appeared from the far corner and stumbled onto the pitch. He was quickly bundled to the ground and the flames put out. That was a stark moment, this was serious. I don’t know how long it was before we were able to get out of the ground, possibly 10-15 maybe 20 or so minutes. Incredibly, even as police, fire and ambulance sirens were ringing everywhere, we left with the very naïve assumption that everyone had managed to escape. It was only after reaching the car and listening to the radio on our journey home that the awful, horrific reality hit us as we learnt of fatalities at the ground. Those, unfortunately were mainly people who looked to get out by going to the turnstiles at the back of the stand and getting trapped there. When I returned home, I was at first embarrassed to see the mother of the newlywed bride, and with it my little white lie exposed. My mum, blissfully unaware of events, wondered why I’d come home early as she did her ironing. We turned on the TV to see it all being played out. The smoke actually was clearly visible anyway across most of the Bradford skyline. She was relieved to have been blissfully unaware; it saved her some worrying. As we gathered in our local pub that night, we learnt of the ever-growing list of confirmed fatalities and of the huge numbers of casualties with many seriously burnt. There was a sombre atmosphere in the pub as we all sat cradling our pints, numb to our cores with shock as everyone reflected to try make sense of what had just happened on the terrible day. Silence was only interrupted by quiet whispers and by sobbing as endless tears were shed through the evening. On 11th May, 40 years ago, 11,000 people went to watch a football match and in the most horrific of circumstances 56 did not return home alive. Like many of us who were there on that dreadful day and indeed for many who saw it on TV, my mind is frequented everyday by recollections of those events. I will not forget it. I have shared my story. RIP 56

Edited by member 06 May 2025 at 20:09  | Reason: it's right not left