Days Like These

This blog isn’t dead but it has definitely been sleeping a while!

Here’s some matches from the past that have sprung to mind:

30.4.1977 Argyle 0 Wolves 0

5.5.1979 Argyle 2 Swansea 2

14.5.1983 Argyle 0 Portsmouth 1

11.5.1985 Millwall 2 Argyle 0

14.4.1991 Argyle 0 Brighton 2

19.4.2009 Argyle 0 Newcastle 2

2.5.2011 Argyle 1 Southampton 3

(with thanks as ever to greensonscreen.co.uk for the details.)

… to which can be added:

3.5.2025 Argyle v Leeds (result as yet unknown)

It's a sorry list. Can’t say I enjoyed any of the games. Quite the reverse in fact. Even though some of them were quite remarkable in many ways I don’t recall any of them with any affection. But they all have one thing in common: it was in this game that our opponents either clenched a title or won promotion. I don’t even remember much about some of them.

The Swansea game? Nothing beyond lots of celebrating Welshmen. I don't even remember Crudgington being their goalie.

The Wolves game? One of their fans tried to nick my mate John’s scarf more or less outside the Barn Park End entrance. (John held firm and the culprit gave up when another Wolves fan had a go at the would-be thief.)

The Pompey game was the infamous game where a riot took place and a football match almost broke out. Alan Biley. All sorts of chaos.

Millwall at The Den? You can read my account of that day here. A truly crazy, tragic day.

The Brighton match? This was the one that really rankled. Hated it with a passion. The Brighton fans were magnificent and filled the old Barn Park terrace and rode the wave of momentum their team had built for all it was worth. Worse still Argyle legend Garry Nelson was playing for them and was their star performer. It was like watching an ex-girlfriend get off with someone else at a school disco. Oh Garry!! How could you? Still ages to go in the season too. Brighton must have been a street clear of the opposition and were deserved Champions in the end even if they weren't on the day.

Makes no difference though. You don’t go to football to watch the other lot celebrate do you? I remember thinking “why doesn’t this ever happen for us? Why don’t we celebrate like crazy at somebody else’s ground?” (And we have since. Quite a few times actually. I just don’t recall it ever happening to that point and I’d only been supporting Argyle for about 15 years at that stage and we were in the doldrums and had been for ages).

Quite a lengthy gap then until the Newcastle game. A game that saw us relegated and them crowned as Champs in a lurid yellow and orange kit. Andy Carroll. Local Hero. Blaydon Races. A big pitch invasion that the plucky stewards did their futile best to prevent followed by lots of manking about how we shouldn’t have indulged their celebration while being acclaimed as “class” by their fans for so doing. I didn't really care. I was numbed by disappointment and just wanted to go home.

Southampton was more or less a re-run of the Newcastle game another promotion/relegation double whammy with their fans being noticeably less gracious in victory than their Geordie counterparts.

And so to tomorrow’s match. It’s very predictable in many ways. Leeds fans will arrive in huge number and very good voice (Leeds fans are always in good voice and fair number in my experience). Their multi-mi££ion team (they have at least one player they signed for a transfer fee greater than all of the combined fees Argyle has paid in our entire history) will probably swat us to one side and hand out an embarrassing spanking which, if they win, will cement the title for them and we’ll end up relegated (inevitable whatever the outcome) again. There’ll be a pitch invasion from the Leeds fans and the whole shooting match will probably descend into chaos come the end.

A suitably shambolic and disappointing end to a shambolic and disappointings eason looms on the horizon. A day from which the likelihood of anything good for Argyle emerging is vanishingly small.

...

vRogcast2 rides again?

vRogcast2.part

FA Cup Finals - Abide With Me

Arsenal v Chelsea. FA Cup Final, Wembley 2020.

I was surprisingly moved by Emile Sande singing Abide With Me on the roof of Wembley. OK so this Cup Final will always be unique, hopefully, because of coronavirus and the empty stadium but Ms Sande on the roof was a stunning visualisation: everything distilled into one single event. And she sung the song beautifully.

Not that it’s fair to call it a song. It’s a hymn, at least, and the FA Cup Final Anthem. It’s not just a song. Whatever it is I was unexpectedly moved. If this was TV the screen would go all wibbly wobbly. We’d go from sharp colour digi-images to grainy black and white ones (if only due to artistic license).

And we’d be back in the early ‘70s. The first Cup Final I recall was Arsenal 3 Liverpool 1 (aet). Arsenal’s double year. Charlie George on his back. And then all the way through the decade. Doesn’t matter which one you choose. It’s not the specifics that I am relating to here but the constants: Arsenal, Fulham, Southampton, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, West Ham, win, lose, replay, great game, crushing bore. None are relevant. It was always just The Cup Final.

And it was always contested by Real Men, real working class men just like my Dad and his mates with outrageous amounts of facial hair. Talking of which comb-overs were de riguer, long hair, along with the odd military haircut. They were all called Jim or Jimmy (never James) or Ron or Ronnie (never Ronald) or Mike or Micky or Bill or Billy or Charlie with a sprinkling of more prosaic monickers: Kevin, Peter, Trevor. Win or lose heroes all.

And then there was the day itself. There was almost no live football on TV – literally maybe 4 games per year on all channels - and this was on both BBC and ITV and it was on all day. BBC would have cameras on one team coach and ITV on the other. Cup Final It’s A Knockout (it didn’t matter if it was Billericay v Swanage v Solihull v Barnstaple from the Billericay Leisure Centre or Jeux Sans Frontieres from the Stockholm Ice Arena it was always essential viewing), Cup Final Mastermind, Cup Final bloody anything they could think of.

In those days I lived at 45 Quarry Park Road in Peverell and Mum ran a corner shop across the road and down about 20 yards. It was a rare Saturday that she would close up early but close up early she did on Cup Final Day. Experience had taught her that NOBODY would come in to buy ANYTHING. I’m told the streets would be deserted but never went anywhere to find out. So we would gather in our front room for the game. Pubs didn’t used to be open in the afternoon so that was never an option. The old alcoholic, Jimmy (natch), from two doors down didn’t have a TV and he’d be there too. Maybe a random mate or two of Dad’s, possibly a sibling or two and maybe a spouse. Crates of bottled Guinness, mostly, to be drunk at room temperature. And smoking. Everybody smoked constantly. I’d watch the match cross-legged sat on the floor (as the youngest it was my place) through a fug of tobacco smoke. After the match? More of the same.

And through it all there was always the “Cup Final hymn” Abide With Me sung by Tommy Steele or Bruce Forsyth or somebody and every time my Dad would shed a tear. “Get’s me every time that does.” Well it had never got me before.

Today it did.

I wish you were still here, Dad.

Coronavirus - the basic maths

This is a distribution known as the Normal Curve.

It has other names and is also known as a Bell Curve (because it looks like a bell) or Maxwell Distribution. Both ends tail off into infinity but never actually reach the zero baseline I have deliberately chosen a diagram with no numbers on it because the numbers do not matter very much at this stage. It is used to model all sorts of things. The peak of the curve often represents the mean of whatever data is collected (adult height or weight, perhaps). This curve also models the number of people infected during an epidemic at any given point if left unchecked. To start with the numbers infected are very low and do not increase much or very quickly, then it grows rapidly and then it peters out. The reasons for this are fairly obvious when it comes down to it. Just imagine 6 people. To start with 1 of them will have the virus and there are 5 possible targets for infection. Once one person is infected 2 have the virus with new 4 targets, then 3 and 3, then 4 and 2, then 5 and 1, then 6 and 0. Nobody left to infect that hasn’t had it and those who have had it will now have natural anti-bodies to protect them against re-infection. However in the UK we have around 65m people not 6. The same logic applies but the numbers are far bigger. Once 1 person infects another there are 2 people spreading the disease. Those 2 might infect another 2. Now we have 4 people. Those 4 people infect another 4 making 8. Those 8 infect another 8 and it is now 16 and so on. So the number of new infections with each passing day is 1, 2, 4, 8, 16… Before long the number of new cases is huge. This is known as exponential growth and an exponential curve looks like this:

This next bit is quite technical. I’ll mention it because it fundamentally underpins all that follows. After which I will abbreviate massively so skip to that bit if you don’t understand what follows. The curve above is based on 2. 2 is a real number. It’s just 2. Like 2 legs or eyes or feet. 2. There is another number a little greater than 2 but less than 3. It is an irrational number meaning it can never be written down with exact accuracy (just like π or √2) and so has a symbol: e. If I replace 2 with e in the graph above the curve looks much the same but, crucially, the gradient of the curve is now also exactly the same as the value of the function (equation) that produces it.

This can be used to model all sorts of naturally occurring phenemona such as radioactive decay and much else besides. Don’t worry too much about e. Suffice it to say e is approximately 2.72. What matters here is the shape of the curve. It represents something that grows ever more quickly. It can also be used to model the spread of infection during an epidemic. There is family of curves which are all vaguely similar and are all known collectively as exponential functions. The exponential function, essentially the Daddy of them all, as already mentioned is y = e^x. The general form for all of the exponential functions is y = ae^bx + c where a, b and c are the particular constants (i.e. just numbers like 2, e, 9, 131, π…) which define the particular curve and x represents the time variable. In terms of viral spread a, b and c are unique to each virus. If you like they are the control factors. One of them is rate of contagion (just how contagious is it?), another is the number of interactions between people (which is why we are being urged to self-isolate) and another is the number of people who already have it. Nothing to be done about the passage of time, nothing to be done about those who already have it and nothing to be done to stop the exponential growth but it can be slowed down if we reduce the number of interactions (hence self-isolation) r the likelihood of it spreading (hence the hand washing). We are currently witnessing an absolutely classical example of exponential growth:

There you go. That’s where we are. I could model the curves and deduce the exact equation that defines them but that’s a level of detail unnecessary. The plan recently announced by our government was to suppress the rate of spread, move the peak forward as far as possible and so allow our medical capacity some chance of coping and not being completely overwhelmed. They used this graph to illustrate it.

Finally there is talk of “acting at the right time” and “maximising the effect” etc. This is mathematically incoherent. The mathematics of maximisation is known as calculus and you need to do something called differerentiation. This works well with some curves with quadratics being the easiest example to understand (you can see where the maximum is immediately).

…but if you differentiate an exponential function you just get another exponential function. There is no maximum anywhere on the curve. There is no exponential part of the curve because it is all exponential. The best way make a difference - to slow it down - is to act early. That’s it. I hope that this helps you to understand the underlying mathematics at least a little better than you did before.     And where we are headed is not good.

A Nation Rejoices!!

vRogcast2 is back!

...

Billy Holmes RIP

I’ve just had the almost perfect Janner Bank Holiday Monday. Took Mrs W out to Lopwell Dam, had a pint in Milton Combe’s Who’d’ve’thought It and then back home for a mini-pubcrawl heading towards fish and chips on The Barbican and a pint in The Dolphin to cap it all off.

Only to arrive and see this:

At which point the memories came flooding back. My first paid job was working behind the bar at the George Hotel at Roborough which was, back then, on the very northern-most edge, perhaps a little beyond, of the city of Plymouth. I have a story or two to tell about that but they are for another day. 1983 was a long time ago now but I started at The George on my 18th birthday. I think I got paid about £20 for 3 nights. Getting there was a nuisance, Dad used to drive me, and it wasn’t long before he found me another job, £30 for 3 nights, at The Dolphin on Plymouth’s Barbican which was, crucially, within walking distance.

The difference between the two pubs could not have been starker. The George was the sort of pub where The Hunt used to meet and I was only allowed to work in the Lounge; The Dolphin was at the heart of Plymouth’s fishing community and only had the one bar. One had a grand piano in the corner the other had a stand-up piano…

At The George I had to wear a uniform of black trousers and a white shirt behind the bar so for my first night at The Dolphin I wore the same. My first customer was my Dad. “A bottle of Guinness, off the shelf, please” quoth he. At which point I made a legendary start.

At The George there was cap remover with a trap below. You inserted the cap of the bottle cracked it forwards, the cap would fall into a catcher, you poured the beer. Job done. Crucially you cracked the bottle towards you. At The Dolphin there was a similar arrangement but different. You cracked the bottle away from you. I did not know this. So there I am trying to get the bottle into the opener. It doesn’t go as I expect it to. All the time I am shaking it up a bit more. Bottled Guinness (can you even still buy proper bottled Guinness?) isn’t like other drinks…. Eventually I got the bottle into the cap remover kind of like the only way it would go (so far as I knew) and cracked the cap off at which point I got a faceful of bottled Guinness as it exploded out of the bottle and drenched me. My white shirt was white no more.

Seconds into my first ever shift I had made a complete half-arse of myself. A fella, coincidentally, named Roger, who was in the pub at the time ran a Barbican T-Shirt Shop and he kitted me out for the rest of evening in a black T-shirt… That behind me I worked there for about 4 years, off and on. I was a student, mostly, at the time and so worked there when I came back and their usual staff, also students went away. But what times…

The Barbican then wasn’t what it now. All the things that are there now were still there then but it was the centre of the fishing community. This has all changed and Southside Street got much less smellier since the Fish Market moved across the harbour to Coxside. But the things that went on in The Dolphin: the fish trading; proper big bastard crabs running around the bar… spoofing, Criminal underlife that seemed to live there: Mike Ede, Hong Kong John, Gambo, Jack Laing (I think they are all dead now – bloody hope so (no offence intended)). Unbelievable. And over it all reigned first Betty, long since gone, and then Billy Holmes.

Billy was a true gent. As Cork Irish as they come and all but incomprehensible for much of the time. I remember him swearing at me as a callow youth who didn’t share his weight of a 22 gallon barrel as we lifted it onto the stillage at the back of the bar. I remember him being as chuffed as anybody ever was at meeting Noel Redding, the bass player in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, on one of his trips back to Ireland. I remember a bloke not of my city who gave far more to it than most people ever will. Billy Holmes was a legend amongst legends and an absolute gent with it. I’ll miss him dearly.

The Barbican will never be the same again.

vRogcast2

...