The television age had aerial-ed its way into the nooks and crannies of Prefab Land by 1958. Yet there were certain times of the week when the wireless continued to have a kind of after-life. For example at five o'clock on wintry Saturday afternoons we would tune in to hear the latest market intelligence on our stocks and shares.
A day would come when - even in somewhat down-at-heel places like our beloved Twiverton - when the masses would keep a watchful eye on their stock market investments, purchase 'you cannot lose' shares in privatised public utilities, and make financial 'killings' by buying their council houses at bargain basement prices. But in the nineteen fifties all this was still a long way off. Our investments were in 'football bonds', and hours were spent monitoring the emotional dividends that came from the ups and downs of our football teams.
No one was more scathing of our interest in football than Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic, the semi-bohemian resident of prefab number three. For him football was ideal manure to ensure that the capitalist jungle kept on flourishing. It was both "opium of the masses" (escapist fantasy) and "opiate of the masses" (dulling the pain of mundane lives). Without this futile dissipation of creative psychic energy Dai was certain that the classic late nineteenth century Marxist paradigm would be vindicated with the working-class at long last becoming fully conscious of its alienated and exploited lot.
It has to be said that there were some days when the only thing that Dai himself was "fully conscious" of was the cider flagon that he firmly gripped in his right hand. This was when we would hear him shouting out lines of verse from - of all people - Cyril Connolly - especially the crude reactionary verse about "classes and masses and masses of asses". Perhaps deep down Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic could not really decide whether capitalism was a system of inequality and injustice which should be thrown on the scrapheap of history, or a unique social order which - almost inadvertently - had delivered unheard of freedom and liberty to the common people. If a day ever dawned when the Left was able to realise its dreams you could count on Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic being the new social order's first dissident.
The process of deciding which football clubs to include in your Saturday five o'clock stocks and shares portfolio involves all kinds of complex calculations. Local loyalties, chance encounters
and even aesthetic preferences all play a part. For example: who could anyone resist the appeal of the blue and white quartered shirts worn by Bristol Rovers! (Answer: millions of thoughful and discerning football fans). In terms of moral education what matters is that once you have made your choice of a football club to follow you stick to it through thick and thin.
Of course there are always one or two characters around who fall at the first ethical fence. Take the case of 'Tubby' Lard. He started off as a Bristol Rovers supporter, switched to Bristol City after Rovers lost in the clash between the two clubs, and then - in the twinkle of any eye - was seen draping himself with a Bristol Rovers' scarf after they beat Manchester United 4 - 0 in the FA Cup! When challenged on being a turncoat 'Tubby' had the gall to quote Winston Churchill's retort of 1900. (Churchill deserted the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party, returned to the Conservative Party a few years later, and said: "To rat is one thing, but to re-rat is something special." )
Twiverton's local football hero is Skirton Taverner. He started his career playing with the Whiteway Canaries - the Somerset League Youth Champions. (Then he went on to play for Hereford United and hit the big time with Arsenal. The Arsenal team of the nineteen thirties had a special mystique. It was said they would "head the ball from one player to another, from one end of the pitch to the other, before hammering into the opposing team's net." The only glitch about our prefab becoming one hundred percent Arsenal supporters was the club's defeat in the 1927 F.A. Cup Final by Cardiff City. Our prefab's Welsh affiliations could well have made us Cardiff fans on that day.
Living in Twiverton makes it imperative that we take an anti-glamour antidote to counter the big-headed dangers of succumbing to Big Club Triumphalism. We had to find an obscure Third Division (North) club which seemed quite devoid of a trophy-packed boardroom. This was the logic that propelled us in a north-easterly direction towards following Gateshead football club. This choice was clinched by having a friend from the north who had grown up in Jarrow (a place which is just up the road from Gateshead.)
Jarrow was known as "the town that died" during the nineteen thirties' depression. Our friend from Jarrow was married to 'Auntie' Ivy's brother. ('Auntie' Ivy shared a house with my parents after they moved from bomb-blitzed Bristol to soon-to-be-blitzed Bath). She always looked thin and pale. You knew without anything being said that something had gone badly wrong with her home town. So when the wireless football results were switched on we would all be rooting for Gateshead, for Arsenal, for Rovers, and (though rarely mentioned) Bath City.