It’s the cold season here in New England. We got two feet of snow last week and there’s more on the way tomorrow. They tell me the economy is dead but I don’t watch the news so I know nothing about it. I only know what works. What works is a plastic dish out front on a pole. It picks up both Fox Soccer Channel and Setanta. Right now it’s half buried in white stuff but it still works. I see every single Premier League game without fail. Not that I watch them all live; I’m often away playing lumberjack. A few months ago I decided to buy a woodstove and chop my own timber. Chainsaws and axes are therapeutic to wield, especially when it’s crisp out. It’s cheaper than oil and even a little romantic. Or maybe not; hours spent alone in the woods contemplating a lifetime’s mistakes means you’re more likely to embark on a death-binge as go on some candlelit dinner. Nine hours sawing and splitting logs is good for character building. It makes you somehow believe it’s OK to poison yourself, so long as you don’t overdo it. But I can only speak for me.
Jack the chimney-sweep installed the stove with me along with his sidekick Joe. The two are approximately 52 years young and have a deceptively firm grasp of English Punk Rock. They loudly recounted Buzzcocks songs during a Saturday afternoon boozing session while we fitted the stainless-steel chimney liner. Fortunately this house came with a real fireplace or the stovepipe would have had to go through the wall. I reciprocated with a blast of Iggy and Jim Morrison, which blew them off the stage like an aural acid flashback.
The guy at the hardware store informed me that Jack’s the only man in Connecticut who’s shot a State Trooper and gotten away with it. So I went up to Jack’s house and shouted “Open up, this is the State Police” loudly through his front door for a laugh, but Jack wasn’t laughing. “Bullshit,” he said, when I asked him. “I shot at him, I didn’t fuckin’ hit him.” The next day he phoned me from his cellphone; he was in the hardware store and wanted a description of the guy who’d told me about it. “C’mon…I wanna scare him,” he said. He laughed then, the sick bastard.
There’s a difference between shooting at and simply shooting. This past few months have seen us take some strange chances and survive by the skin of our teeth. One-nils and nil-nil draws? There’s a pattern there and it’s not a pretty one. We punctured those few inferior defences but Villa’s kept us out. It’s no coincidence they’re jostling the top four. We might win this league through grim determination, not exactly a United trait.
Jack owns fifteen acres of prime woodlot. Logs are his business and he keeps a pile out front under a tarp. People take bundles, leaving cash in a dish with a lid on. He and Joe have stacked an immense pile of logs in his basement to season. They sit by the wood-furnace drinking beers and doing bong hits. Much of the talk centres on Electric Blue, a local strip club. They go there for entertainment when they’re feeling generous. Joe’s girlfriend is a stripper there. She’s known as The Amazon. He’s only a little guy but she’s about six-one. He got in a fight recently with a massive black pimp dude. Jack couldn’t believe it; Joe kicked the guy’s arse. Now Joe’s on a court order. He has to stay out of fights for a year. He’s already broken it once and is paying the price.
These guys are an analogue of the mad bikers I used to live with 45 minutes north in Massachusetts. Difference was, Mass was more rural. A mate in Mass owns 40 acres of wood, 166% larger than Jack’s lot. The Mass crew are based right outside Springfield, home of Smith & Wesson and the infamous Mardi Gras strip club, the biggest and wildest east of the Mississippi. Electric Blue is a shed by comparison. The girls are OK, though and with Hartford a fifteen minute drive away now anything is possible. Hartford makes Springfield look like Kabul.
And Manchester makes Liverpool look like Kazakhstan but they’re up there twiddling their ‘taches and we’re shaking them off like dogshit from a wellie. Those malevolent men in their Liverpool Machine want shooting down but we won’t get the chance for weeks. It’s not right. Instead, we had to make do with pasting Chelsea at OT on Jan 11. Gave their cockney Jake legs a slap and sent ‘em down the M1 smarting in horror.
There’s a plastic McMansion up in the woods right behind Jack’s house. Some rich guy thinks he’s a big-shot owns it. His son is around 16 and likes to wind Jack up a bit with his mates. They knocked some of his dry-stone wall down and stole all the apples off his trees. Even told him how sweet they tasted. Jack told them he’d cut their vitals off with a sword if they so much as came near his yard again. They told Big-Shot and he came for a word. Drove down in his SUV, his driveway was so long. The guy told Jack he was “connected”. Even showed us his driving licence to prove he had an Italian name. Unfortunately, Little Joe was there, Brahms and Liszt. Told the bloke in that garbled drawl that he was Napolitano and to shut the fuck up. It’s just a gigantic version of Top Trumps, really, or “I’m from Salford an’ I know people”. In Joe’s case it was “You’re a fuckin’ finocchio!” It was nice to see Big Shot’s oversized motor scampering back up to the plastic mansion with tail between legs. Then we went back downstairs and sang Punk songs to each other between beers, bong-hits and tequila shots. I don’t ever wanna grow up. It’s ace being permanently immature.
Is it just coincidence that the year we can catch the Mickies honours-wise is the year they finally got their shit together? Don’t accuse me of being obsessive, either. Their 19th would be analogous to their 5th European Cup in Istanbul; staying just out of our reach. We’re all getting older and we deserve to see United get one over on the swines before we’re too decrepit to jump about in glee.
When Joe broke the conditions of his order he did it in style. He went with the Amazon to New York to see The Sex Pistols on their 2008 world tour. Unfortunately it was a Sex Pistols tribute band and not the Sex Pistols at all. To make it worse, I was the tout who sold him the tickets. Joe set a fire extinguisher off and sprayed the bar staff and the tribute band with it. Then he attacked the other patrons with a bottle, calling them “dumb fuckin’ idiots” for knowingly going to the show. He drove home OK but crashed his vehicle into a pole right around the corner here. Lost control in the ice. Most importantly, he retained possession of the Buzzcocks t-shirt he’d purchased at the door prior to his outburst. He’d’ve been scot free but disagreed with the attending officer on the point of his sobriety. For such a little guy he’s got a proper temper. A judge sentenced him to ankle bracelet house arrest. He now lives with Jack and his elderly mother. He doesn’t mind; it’s cold out there and full of finocchio yuppies and wank tribute bands.
This time of year is the acid test. So far we’ve managed to go half way round the planet, come back and still dish it out to the opposition. The games have been competitive and we’ve shown complacency during prolonged passing spells. It’s scary how good we might be, but it’s worrying how the rest of the pack has been energised. We had a little slip up right at the start against the Geordies, and we drew at Stamford Bridge. The Emirates was a bastard but Wenger knows it was a mere blip for us – unlike Arsenal’s recent results. Anfield will be avenged on March 14. City at home on May 9 could shove them into the Championship. It could all still end perfectly for us this season. Someone needs to dent Liverpool’s confidence worse than Everton did in the league. It’s a shame we don’t face them till mid-March because we’re the men for the job. One thing’s for sure; footballers play a hard life. Between now and March 14 United will have played 15 games, not including FA Cup fixtures beyond the 3rd round. Who will trump who by then, Salford or Bootle?
Next week is Super Bowl and I’m taking Jack and Joe up to Mass to meet the crazies. The Crusher always throws a bash in his quadruple garage, with plenty of snowmobile and quad action. He lives across from a frozen pond and we race the machines across it. Mental midnights on Super Sunday. Crusher’s got a full-blown bar with neon signs, beer pumps, tons of spirits and loud music. He’s a Michigan boy, the world capital of frozen pond racing. Builds all kinds of engines himself and used to be a pit man for a pro auto-racer.
As I write this I can hear a coyote howling out back. They’ve been loud lately. The snow has alternated with warm spells and it’s confusing the hell out of them. Me too, if I’m honest; the Crusher’s pond has got me scared. There’s twenty-four inches on the ground right now because today is the tomorrow I referred to in the first paragraph. I’m drinking 3 Monts Flanders Golden Ale and looking forward to the rest of the season. If that dish doesn’t die I’ll be sound as a pound. If it does, there’s always wood to cut, songs to sing, tequila to drink…one day I’ll wake up and the snow will be gone. They call that the Silly Season here, but that’s college basketball, not mushrooms. A whole other world, dude.
