Summer Lovin'

Tomorrow I am heading to see my favourite football team, Gillingham take on Bradford City in a League Two match. Before I launch into the rest of this post, I don’t half wish the authorities would stop messing around with football. It’s not League two to me, it’s Divison 4 as that’s what I grew up with.

So, whilst I anticipate tomorrows match with Bradford, I think back to some of my happy and not so happy memories of the gills. One thing keeps nudging at the back of my mind though, a memory rising to the surface. It’s the summer I spent my holidays from school painting the ground. The previous season we had declared bankruptcy and the future of the club was in doubt. There was an appeal out over the radio for people to come down and help get the ground ready for the new season. I had just finished my schooling for good and I was a t a loose end so I answered the call. I turned up at the ground and was given a pot of bright (and I mean bright!) yellow paint and a brush and was led through dark and dingy corridors. This was where I started getting all excited, I mean to me, this was akin to an American being led around the White House. The old boy unlocked a door, bright light flooded in and all of a sudden I was pitch side. I was shown to the Town End and asked to get started on painting the crash barriers. Through the next 4 or 5 weeks I painted the carriers, the walls etc around all 4 sides, the turnstiles, in fact just about everything.

I was allowed freedom to wander the corridors in the main stand and quite often I could walk into the office, help the secretaries to do basic tasks, I was often sent to the corner shop for sundries. For those few weeks I felt like a proper part of my club. I still get goosebumps now thinking about players recognising me and saying hello to me as they passed me. I was there, actually at the ground when Paul Scally bought the club. I was there when we signed Jim Stannard, Leo Fortune West and Dennis Bailey. That last guy became one of my favourite Gills players of all time when he gave me and the other volunteers that were there that day £20 to go and get fish n chips for our lunch. I smile at that memory now as I do at the time I went into the home changing room and saw graffiti left by the players that slated Mike Flanagan, the manager who was made redundant when we went bust. When I was in the Town End, painting away one day I accidentally kicked a tin of yellow paint over and for several years afterwards there was a bright yellow splodge running down the steps!

Perhaps my age is forcing me to reminisce but the ground has changed since that heady summer with it now being all seater, with all 4 stands being replaced. I know some things have to change but that summer marked the last of my nascent childhood and the start of my adulthood. I’ve included some pics of the ground as it was in the summer I was let loose with a paint brush, just to illustrate. I’ll edit this tomorrow after I get back from the match.