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smbu.co.uk scourge of drones since june 2001 SMBU is an independent site created by Wycombe Wanderers supporters. If you want bile, spleen and sarcasm, this is the place. If you want information, go to Chairboys on the Net. |
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the simple shovel of truth
The views expressed in SMBU do not in any way represent the opinions of the goons and freemasons who 'run' Wycombe Wanderers. |
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| Cheddar Gravel | Newsflash | Kit Competition | Jixz is Bak! | Devine | Stockport |
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The train it heaves on to Plymouth, And do you think you made the right decision this time? A wipe of dirt in the sky as the train drones out of Paddington, destination known, West Country on the horizon beneath the circling crows and kites. Urban warfare battle scars everywhere here, taglines barking insistently and German schoolchildren with rucksacks full of rye. Persistent rumours of a defeat don’t deter the Elemental Jurors and the bulk of them grind on to the train when it reaches the wilfully doomed commuter town of Reading. The morning is turning into sun and the barstools of the railtrack are easing into play as the jurors tuck into their Breakfast Lager. The sound of ringpulls being pulled like a thousand gun salute at the utter defeat of Sanchez for the final time. Hear the crack of the whip as the justice is meted out once and for all. The Elemental Jurors do not know why they are travelling through the countryside at a hideous pace but the pull is Martian. Breakfast Lager is spilling down their mouths as they shout and whistle their way through the usual caper. Trees hurtle past as the creaking train is fired from a giant gun straight into the heart of the county where at night men creep about in their daughter’s bedrooms with a heavy heart and the weight of their own being almost destroying them every day. Greasy rain falls onto the Elemental Jurors as they use every trick in the book to haul themselves out of the train and stand scratching their pointless heads. Welcome to Plymouth, the sign reads. A taxicab is procured and the Jurors follow a map that someone pressed into someone else’s hand or head or fading mind and instructions are followed, instructions are always followed. Whipcrack ale is served on trays of bone and pirate beards are selling for half the price of once before as the clock on the wall counts down the minutes until they can leave and go somewhere else. Discussions are muted as people arch their spines and finger the beads on their wrists. Seven hours of distance eaten up by the bullet train and the game it drains, it always drains. Stumbling on a field of battle somewhere near the Home Park and the Jurors have nowhere else to go anymore; A plate of seagulls flies down and scatters the children poking at a discarded bone-burger laying so quietly in an unruly bush. Game-time approaches and soon the gates are turning with fleshy stomachs howling their way into the concourse, meddling ape-men shouting and young women with more hair than sense smearing make-up from their reeking faces and demanding to be let in, let in, just let in somewhere while they still have the time and the inclination. The Chairboys are dishevelled and spiralling out of control like a doomed space shuttle and what the hell is going on Sanchez and why are we never threatening and why are all these people here, do you really deserve this? And the game reels on, the green team pounding away like a tree into wet mud and something has to give, punishment like this cannot go on and somehow half-time is reached and no-one is dead yet and the home fans raise a giant bone-skull in the sky and one of their witch-men dances a terrible dance and the skies turn black and cold rain falls onto the Elemental Jurors. People scuttle into the shelter afforded by the basic bone structure of the ground, shards of femur still sticking out and catching the coat of a young man with a bruise on his heart. His coat coast him more than a thousand pounds and it is made of the hair of a hundred unicorns and now it is ripped and he falls to his knees and asks Sanchez what this is. The second half is much like the one that we have seen many times and the green men’s pagan dance and prayers seem to have been answered as they spilt the Chairboys asunder finally and 10,000 living cells of incest rise to their feet and pound the floor with huge oversized clammy boots that shake the Elemental Jurors and the players in blue are shattered and they know this feeling, yes. They clap but the rain is too thick to see anything. Someone throws some confetti in the air and orange and yellow stars fall into hair and somewhere thirty miles away a man brings down a cleaver into the head of a lamb. The foggy parks that surround the green men’s ground are choked with people, many of them slipping and stumbling down the hill as the gradient turns them into rats. The train station is seen as a beacon in the rain which is now so hard that the gutters of the town are red and blue and green and purple, all of it paint lifted from cars by the endless splatter of water. The Elemental Jurors see the Ripcord Gang on the platform and they exchange tales and dreams and someone sneezes and his nose dissolves in his hand. It is time to leave this godforsaken bone-hell. Quietness on the train as it slices through towns still run on steam, farmers firing pellet guns as the silver beast flows past like mercury. And 200 miles away a man in Haddenham presses a detonator… The carriage containing the bomb evaporates instantly, everyone on board is unaware of their fate as particles of their bone and brain are dissipating into the fresh grass on the verge. The second carriage flips fifty feet into the sky and the windows are imploding and the people at the front are being flung against windows that are not even there and a shard of glass is pushed through a women’s eye and a man’s leg is sliced off and three seconds later the screaming starts and someone in the third carriage is being thrown forward so violently that his skull is shattering against a coffee machine and there is already a river of blood in the fourth carriage. A women is lying with her pelvis shattered and neck snapped and the second carriage buckles horrifically and fire is spreading and her body is flung back into a group of men who are already dead and vomit is lying at their feet and someone thinks “Why me?” just an instant before a piece of metal spears him through the lung like a javelin and he dies in agony while his head bounces along the track and he is seeing nothing and then it is all gone. A group of four children are smashed together so hard that there teeth are shattered and they are dropping to the floor like snow. A door hurtles backwards and decapitates a man and a woman who are not even meant to be on this train and then the second explosion sends fire into the fifth carriage and people are burning and the smell of flesh is overpowering and there are body parts everywhere, rivers of blood seeping into the oil-soaked track. A mobile phone rings six times and the screams fade into white. “I love the different sorts of cheese you get given by the supervisor. Usually it is yellow cheese but sometimes it is orange cheese. Once one of us was given a white crumbly cheese which we all thought was broken so we threw it in the bin! But it was supposed to be like that and we all got docked three days wages and had to work through lunchtimes for a month!” It is clear that Cheddar Gravel is a keen worker and that he loves his work. But as the old saying goes, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’. Of course, there is no-one called Jack here and Cheddar is actually a 34-year-old man but even the handicapped children that consume his cheese so messily could grasp the general point – Cheddar is a man with interests other than cheese.
 Cheddar and I walked along the canal bank munching on sandwiches as he told me of his great passion, other than mashing up what is essentially sour butter. As crows pecked at rubbish strewn along the bank and a group of school children tried to throw one of their friends into the brown water, Cheddar explained how he spent his weekends producing soccer videos and commentating on Masonic Marauders Football Club matches at their purpose-build stadium Admans Park set in rolling hills somewhere in England. Cheddar has commentated on the Marauders since he was 21 years old and every Masonic fan worldwide recognises his voice – which is not actually that impressive, as Cheddar explained: “Well, I was a keen rambler as a youngster and spent many a day walking through the rolling hills somewhere in England, whistling, eating small cakes and climbing trees.” Time was short, so I pressed Cheddar on why his voice was so strange. “Well, I was walking through some farmland once and I saw what turned out to be a threshing machine! I must say, I had been out in the sun a lot that day and it was a warm afternoon and I suppose my head started spinning somewhat. Anyway, to me the threshing machine looked like a beautiful lady like in the films what I had seen at the cinema. I thought to myself, I’ll have a piece of this, and though I am ashamed of it now, I lunged in trying to kiss the lady.” But as Cheddar was soon to discover, this ‘lady’ was in fact a Massey Ferguson YF464 Threshing machine and as Gravel loomed in, his eyes clouded with sunstroke and lust, the machine tore into his boy’s throat, ripping out his oesophagus and leaving him thrashing on the floor. It was a horrific incident that stunned the local community. Cheddar Gravel was left fighting for his life as he leaked blood onto the grassy field. The day was later recounted by the farmer responsible in a special edition of Horse & Hound that was soon banned by WH Smith and John Menzies, such was the terrible nature of the description. Cheddar spent two months in hospital with virtually no-one giving him a chance of survival, but using the strength that he believes God/Jesus has given him, he fought back: “They said Cheddar, you might not talk again. Well I thought that’s ok, I ain’t got much to say.” But Cheddar had plenty left to say. Thanks to the miracle of Medical Vocoders™ Cheddar was able to talk like a normal human being once again, albeit one who sounded like he should work in a truck café for robots. And what a sorry world we would live in if it were not for Cheddar Gravel and his droning, subsonic, almost hypnotic voice that tells viewers of every Masonic Marauders goal scored at Admans Park. Onlookers tell of the predictable sight of Cheddar, one arm aloft, the other arm pressing his Medical Vocoder™ hard into his neck as he celebrates another goal in the Marauders latest football adventure. As one supporter told me over dinner the other day “It just wouldn’t be the same without Gravel, I can almost hear him in my sleep.” With time now almost completely gone, I asked Cheddar if he could give me a lift to the railway station. As we drove slowly through the winding hilly backstreets he sang along heartily to the latest pop hits on the radio. In his mind it must have sounded pitch perfect, but to my ears, via the Medical Vocoder™, it sounded horrific and I silently urged Cheddar to speed up and drop me off. As we sat in the station car park, with the engine and the Vocoder™ both idling, I asked Cheddar Gravel what plans he had for the future. As the Duracell batteries kicked in and his mouth started moving I listened while Gravel outlined a day when he would be in charge of his own cheese business and a world where he was in charge of producing Masonic Marauders videos with no interference from the powers-that-be at Admans Park. It was a moving speech and I think I finally understood what it was that drove Gravel to growl and spit out his words each week. Every man has a right to let the world hear his voice, and though Cheddar will never be asked to chair a seminar on speechmaking, he has a rough honesty that moved me to tears. I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last. I could see Gravel waving from the station concourse as my train pulled away. He was facing the wrong direction and pieces of currant bun were falling onto the floor but I couldn’t help myself – I waved back. Oily Sailor Dec 2002 - Wesolych Swiat!  Life is being crazy in Krakow!!! My uncle and loyyer men say Hey you Jixz why fuK you hurting men in barns but I say hey not me doing then what!! Officer Hzzxy from pole army says you must come with me jixz we can making yu a man at last praps you want fighting in Irock!!! we can making you enemy of terrors!! I may be dressing with him once but soon no praps next year is it if I growing stronger after dokters say hey yeah maybe now go!!!!! I am firing with rage at heard news about Snachez and all problems at Admans park!!!! Men from SmbU say hey jixz have you heard someone got a big dinner with Snachez out at Cheltham and Snachez and Beiks have been hunters with fans and Beiks kills them and puts bodys in his bildings!!! Just like in Warsaw scum!!! We do never talk in Jerzy Dudek now he has letting whole Poland down and my frend Kwzzyh II set fire to a street when Jerzy Dudek face is on television!!!!!! Anyway Wandrers!! I am wanting to come to English soon to see Wandrers play culchster Skum!! MY friend al the pil says hey you jixz why not come and live in my house in Hadmane and we can eating horsee horsee!!! Now he rans off to Austria and I am crying in my dinner of bone!! Finally, men at smbu have sent me fans male they got sent on email and I am replies just under here can you see!!!! Dear Jixz656 I am a keen fan of yours and being a lonely lady living alone in Chesham I would love you to come and stay with me. Perhaps we could get the coach to Bluewater and I could buy you some Levi 501s or some fashion shirts. I am so alone Jixz, will you come and make a tired and cold woman all hot? Yours truly, Henrietta Gull Hey lady!!! I am loving your male it is kind of you and you know my liking levis but loyyer man say no way!!!! If you leave Krakow they will kill farm and send my cow to boiler!! Perhaps you coming to see me in farm and we can drink beer and sing rebel songs but not louder because man in house near east field has snipper gun he sees crazy snipper man on CNN and he is always shoots men and sometimes ladys!!!!! You sound pretty I want to be you, now!!!!! Love jixz Dec 2002 - Devine to Exeter, Beeks to Hell The "it'll all be alright" apathy that seems to afflict a worrying majority of people at Wycombe Wanderers could very well be the ultimate downfall of a club who have been in the football league for just 10 years, and are now facing down the barrel of a financial Luger with the trigger primed. What other club's fans would sit quietly and accept their team's chairman just happened (who no more owns the club than you or I) to waste a vast amount of money on a corrupt and hapless Chief Executive that only added to the financial woe? It is depressing to see fans of other sides motivate themselves into a focussed reaction to events while the majority of Wycombe fans continue to fawn towards the talentless parasites "in charge" of the Chairboys. The collapse of ITV digital gave the board a handy excuse and one which they have used so frequently they have lost any credibility they may have once had. The latest money-making scheme is to sell Sean Devine, one of the few players to show any form this season. This decision can only be disastrous. The finances will not be helped in the long-term by a small drop in the ocean from Exeter City but any chance Wycombe had of staying out of a relegation battle is fast disappearing. Lawrie Sanchez is the ideal manager for the Wycombe board as he shares the same ideology as them. He too has no real understanding of being a football fan and has admitted that had his career not been in football he would not have taken much interest in the sport. He has recently ingratiated himself with the doyen of negative regressive play - Howard Wilkinson. They help form a group of people who see the game as a necessary evil, something to grind through each day and avoid the annoyance of howling supporters if they can. Compare this stance with someone like Martin O'Neill who could be manager of Shepshed Charterhouse or Glasgow Celtic, yet still shows the same amount of passion for the match. It is no coincidence that O'Neill is adored by fans wherever he goes, while chairmen are wary of the love he generates. Stories continue to circulate seven years after he left Wycombe about differences between him and the board but he will forever be a folk hero in Bucks. Something rotten has taken hold of Wycombe Wanderers and people need to wake up and realise this as quickly as possible. The whole ethos of the club has changed and they are sickeningly pursuing the so-called dream of Division One football - where the current problems will only be magnified on a bigger scale. Anyhow, the next divison Wycombe look likely to be in is the third, something that may stir up some more passion amongst the army of droning sycophants that assemble at Adams Park each week. There is a general crisis in football that we cannot hope to stop on our own, but we can at least try to make a difference at our own club. Who are these people who have latched onto football as a boost to their own ego and to make money from the game? Every fan is viewed as a customer and they are constantly barking out "Focus Groups" and "Charters" which mean absolutely nothing to the average fan. People go to be entertained and to be part of an occasion not to be patronised by the suited-scum who sit for free in the directors' box and demand more and more money from the average fan. Their response to any show of passion is to try and ban fans from coming to Adams Park, as they pursue their dream of a soulless, atmosphere-less hellhole in which corporate fans sit and chat while no-talent nobodies go through the motions on the pitch. Fans love players who have something special. Sean Devine is one of those players and he is being traded away like a pregnant cow at a market. He cannot be blamed is he signs a long-term deal at Exeter, but can anyone really argue that had Wycombe not hired Monkman/Cawley/etc - we could not have kept him? Each week new poison seeps into the public domain and the horrific reality of what is happening at the club becomes more apparent. But we will be there long after Beeks has returned to Loftus Road or Sanchez is 'enhancing' his CV elsewhere. These human locusts are - in the end - nothing and one day their influence will fade away. Let day be soon. Longsight market was being slapped about by the rainy wind, it was Saturday morning and carbon faces were peering into Greggs at staleness. Marching past the cashpoint sprinkled with revolver feedback onto the Stockport road you must always remember to never look back at the Bay Horse. I heard a tale told of a man who went into the Horse for a quick drink and was still stacking crates in the cellar three years later. There was no casket of Amontillado for him at the end of the day, just the punishing weight of brown ale and dry nuts. The Stockport Road stretches south from Manchester like a sour artery. Each shop, business and pub is haunted by the past and scarred by the future. The bus stop was full of people stuffed with shopping already and so along with some others we were forced to front the offensive drizzle and sickening spray driven up by the fleet of Ford Orions that hurtled past, heading towards Levenshulme like diesel-driven moths to a damp glow. The 142 seemed like it was being driven ruthlessly into an arctic grave, such was the condensation on the windows upstairs. A vomiting man on the back seat didn’t help the atmosphere. His Friday night was being splashed onto the seats and panes of glass at a German rate. People rolled their dice took their chances, no-one got covered but the author of the dance looked like he needed a nap as the bus droned into the town we would call Stockport for the rest of the day.
Like dogs chasing invisible meat we hunted for cash machines but as the brown water from on high continued to eat into our bitter faces, the only solution was cheap alcohol, and there is plenty of that in Stockport. Roll a two pence piece on the counter and you can take a bath in the optics at your leisure. The Dark Angel chose Guinness and so did the rest, luxuriating in dry seats and wet eyes. A man with one arm and a piece of skin that flapped like a dogs ears hanging out of a Landrover won big on a fruit machine that had been designed to guarantee victory. Except for the Dark Angel. He shovelled in coin after coin only to shake his (both good) arms in some kind of a rage. Still, in the land of one-armed bandits he remained something of a king. Working out where the ground was was pointless. The rain was so heavy at this point that the whole of the north west of England was reversed. Scout leaders were visible on the streets burning maps while driving instructors pointed their cars towards meagre building societies and grinned inanely as the Vauxhall Nova’s engine came through the dashboard into their legs like pork pie through jelly. We were later than a pickled baby and the idea of a taxi service in this town was presumably outlawed, along with belts and left arms. The flowing roads were treated therefore, to a monotonous run through the backstreets with the Dark Angel’s eyes hunting floodlights and Screech complaining of shin splints. Hurtling roundabouts, traffic junctions and crossings we inched closer to Edgeley Park, which seemed to be suspended high in the clouds like some kind of offering to the rain God who was emptying his sores on us this wretched Saturday. With a glance to the type of digital watch that was worthwhile in the 1970s and is now found wrapped badly inside a Christmas cracker, Screech informed us all that there were but four minutes to kick-off. A man thumbing leaflets to passers by outside the ground was eager to offload his sheets to us. The Dark Angel grabbed one and before the acid rain burned the crude typeface off the paper we saw that it was a National Front support-rousing epistle. The timewarp was complete. We were urged to isolate ourselves from everyone different and to try and turn the clock back, something that the people of Stockport don’t really need telling.
Grimy men in bulky hats forced us to hand over £16 for the privilege of missing the kick off though an injury to some home team icon meant that the Wycombe defence was in no danger of losing control at this point. This was the last time such a cocked-hat phrase could be offered. Let’s not beat around the bush, Stockport are a very bad team. They are managed by Carlton Palmer, they have probably lost more games in the last 18 months than any other team in Britain, they were on a bad run coming into this game, their fans were depressed, the National Front were canvassing outside, the town seemed to be attracting water like some sort of biblical magnet, yet Wycombe were bent over and spanked at ease. The team defended in the way that has become hideously common in the 2002-03 season. Ripped apart like a barbecue dog in a summer frenzy the players’ belief dropped straight away and for once even the head-in-the-sand supporters were near to turning. Cries of ‘Sanchez Out’ increased to record-high levels when County went two up. Had a third been plundered then the manager’s current love of away fans might have ended right there. Much more of this and the guns come out. Of course, Wycombe came back in the second half. Stockport were terrified of losing the lead and sat back for huge spells, could Wycombe take advantage? No. The sight of Jonny Dixon on the pitch and Richard Harris on the bench was pleasing, though no-one fooled themselves – this wasn’t what the manager wanted. A few players came through the game with credit. Dixon, Craig Faulconbridge, Roger Johnson, Keith Ryan and Steve Brown, the rest looked broken, like our season surely is after this point. Apart from the relegation battle of course. Wheeling away into the rain that burst through the floodlit sky at the end, a few of the faceless fawning mass of droning automatons countered cries for drastic changes with memories of that day at Villa Park. Fuck Villa Park, fuck the FA Cup, forget the past what does it matter? Perhaps too many of the current team are living comfortably on the Cup Run that made them national heroes for a while. That won’t count for anything when the final league tables are drawn up in May. Look at Chesterfield, who went down in the second season after reaching the last four. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this Wycombe team is sliding badly, groping its way down Division Two. People can live in the propaganda world of the official club statements or face what is actually happening in front of their lazy reeling eyes. © Oily Sailor – December 2002 (Photography by The Dark Angel) |
