Thursday 27 March 2014

FOUND WANTING

I am not overly familiar with the work of 1930s writer Paul Beard, and to be honest found it hard to find out anything about him other than the fact that he wrote walking and geographical guides, including one titled Land's End to the Wash. I also know that in 1936 he published English Byways: a Walking Guide to Southern England. But one big fact I do know about him is that, for whatever reason, he did not like Norfolk. Not at all.
For the sake of truthfulness I confess I have not had a complete copy of this latter book in my hands, but I have received, from a London acquaintance - who sent them knowing I would be interested - photocopies of a selection of several pages of his pre-War text. And my goodness, Norfolk did not come out of the experience with any pride. Indeed, and aside from a very few dribs and drabs of countryside, in Mr Beard's eyes the county scarcely warranted a visit at all, and at one stage he actually recommended the designation of a mid-Norfolk tourist 'don't bother to go' zone.
This would doubtless have pleased those Norfolk die-hards who, at the time, advocated and supported the county's rural isolation, and might still have the support of some readers today who rejoice in the fact that Norfolk does not have an inch of motorway. But the sections of the 1936 text which I have actually read seem unnecessarily dismissive.
A few examples, if I may. According to Mr Beard, King's Lynn was an 'odious' large town; the Broads were a 'flat no-man's land' ruined by the sound of gramophones and radios proceeding over the waters; the Dersingham and Snettisham area was 'disagreeable', while New Hunstanton was the 'Southend of Norfolk' with its 'pier and fish suppers'; Breckland's rabbit-scarred miles evidently suggested barrenness and thin poverty; and almost the entire coastline was spoiled by 'endlessly low mean cliffs or dunes.'
Worse was to come, however. Norfolk's medieval buildings had been spoiled by the 'crude reds, pinks and yellow of the local materials.' The North Sea was 'disagreeable,' its colour 'pallid grey or dirty brown,' and it was the meanest and most inhospitable of seas, 'sharp-toothed and grating' on sharp shingly beaches or mud-brown flats.
As for the centre of the county (roughly, the inside of a line drawn from Diss to Swaffham, and from Lynn through Burnham Market and Holt to North Walsham, and down to the Suffolk border at Bungay, well, it was best avoided completely.
The rest of the county landscape evidently displayed only sameness, according to Mr Beard. The same fields everywhere, the same strips of dark woodland, the same thin lines of trees, and the same uneventful parklands and undramatic manors. All this, and I possess only pages 92 to 97.
Of course, there are still people around today who wish the tourist season had never been invented and who advocate the county being left to its own quiet, leafy devices. At the same time, the casual reader of Mr Beard's book - even if they saw only pages 92 to 97 - might easily conclude that the author, deliberately or not, did display a degree of snobbishness.
Fortunately, Norfolk recovered from this 1936 slight, and wasn't too badly damaged by it. It doesn't seem to have deterred the tourists, either.


Sunday 23 March 2014

RISE OF THE PUNDITS

Football journalism has changed muchly over the last few decades, and I do not mean simply that electronic gadgetry has taken over or that the Remington typewriter has been replaced by the digital platform, in all its guises. I mean the approach and the philosophy has changed, too.
The editor who gave me my first chance to cover League football said simply, by way of instruction, 'Remember, you represent all those supporters who cannot be at the match.' What he meant was, report the actual game by all means, but also tell them what the ground was like, and the weather, and the atmosphere and emotion.
I suppose I did occasionally lapse into the poetic or the dramatic, or tried to, but by and large it was about the football. Tactics were interesting at an elementary level only, but not all-consuming. Instead, my football priority was to see it free-flowing and exciting, and often judged a match on how long passing movements were sustained, or how graceful it all was. In cricketing terms, I looked for the Tom Graveney in the game rather than the Ian Botham.
Essentially, this was all I (or we) knew, despite the occasional efforts of various managers or coaches to enlighten us. Few fans really knew much about the game, either. They only saw what happened on the pitch. And most clubs or managers didn't do Press conferences in order to try to explain things. For a start, there weren't enough of us to justify such a thing. Instead, it was a question of catching the boss on the phone at home or sneaking into his office to snatch a few words when things were reasonably quiet.
'Look,' I remember one manager saying after I had grumbled (in print) about the quality of the entertainment, 'this is a business, and we got a bloody point.'
Things in general began to change when regional television started to take a greater interest in the game. Now managers were very keen to explain the technicalities. Meanwhile, Pressmen waiting in their Press Rooms began to be told, 'The manager will be with you as soon as he has finished with the television people.' Priorities had changed, and from that point on we knew our place. And when the manager did come it was usually with a few mumbled words on the 'sick as a parrot' level which we never even bothered to jot down.
But other important changes were in the offing, too, beginning with the invention of the TV pundit. Now, and for almost the first time, the tactical and physical nitty-gritty of the game was openly discussed, particularly when ex-players or ex-managers replaced 'TV personalities' in the studio. There was a new language to learn, too. The fans' (and journalists') football vocabularies widened and blossomed. And then came the TV replay facility, which turned everyone into an instant referee as well.
The situation now is that few people seem to go to a match simply to enjoy the football, or the spectacle. They all want to chew over the tactics, shine a spotlight on the faults, and wonder why the manager did A when it was obvious he should have done B, or complain the ref got it wrong.
Is the game any better for all this additional expertise? I don't think so. It has simply increased pressure and shortened patience spans. Mind you, fans in general have always had opinions, but it is no longer whether the boss should have played Boggins at inside-left instead of Jaggers. Now it is when the sub should have come on, or when Figgins should have been taken off, who plays in the hole or who doesn't lay it off or work the channels.
But after all, we are all pundits (and managers, coaches and referees) now.

Wednesday 19 March 2014

BUFFALO BILL

Many people in the 70 to 80 age bracket will remember, often with affection, the small-to-medium circuses which used to circulate around the towns before and after the War. These outfits tended to work a regional circuit, and therefore became familiar, while the larger shows graced an ever-changing list of cities and larger towns. In this category I'm thinking in particular of Bertram Mills, this being the show that, for me, represented quality and excited my boyish senses.
Only recently has it dawned, however, that even Mills' circus, with its precision, professionalism and trains, was knocked sideways in terms of size by another show emanating from America, the home of Ringling and Barnum, etc. Though not actually a circus in a traditional British sense, being more of an outdoor spectacular, this was Colonel William F Cody's enormous extravaganza, better known as Buffalo Bill's Wild West company.
I have Alan Gallop and his carefully researched book Buffalo Bill's British Wild West (The History Press, 2009) to thank for the detail and for its vivid descriptions of Cody's various tours which embraced cowboys and girls, rough riders, Native Indians, sharpshooters, and Annie Oakley and the Deadwood stagecoach, all of which made their first appearance in England during Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. The logistical nightmare of bringing this lot over from America, plus hundreds of horses and other animals including buffalo, and grandstands and scenery, and then touring Britain, is mind-boggling. But Cody and his huge team did it, several times.
Taking the 1891 tour as an example, a steamship carried the company from America to Grimsby, and the tour began in the north before taking in the Midlands, Wales, and the south coast, and then going north again for the New Year in Scotland.
Three special 'Buffalo Bill' trains, pulling a total of 72 freight and passenger carriages, were chartered to ferry the performers, animals and goods between locations. Two trains carried 100 tons of scenery, the grandstands and the animals - Cody used hundreds of horses - while the third train carried the company in relative comfort.
When the trains pulled into the host station in the early hours a convoy of horse-drawn carts and wagons would move everything (performers, animals, scenery, accommodation tents and teepees, food, and grandstand sections) to the showground. Roustabouts erected the seats, which included covered accommodation for 15,000 people, and 12 hours after arrival the show would be rigged and ready. Three hours after the show's run had ended, at about midnight, the first of the chartered trains would depart for the next place on the visiting list.
Thanks to some advanced promotional methods, and other factors including a public curiousity about the Wild West, it was a hugely successful enterprise. And thanks to Mr Gallop's book I can now see where, in regional terms, this huge extravaganza actually visited.
The first tour was in 1887/88, and although it visited London, Manchester, Birmingham and Hull, it was not until 1891/92 that more of the provinces (Nottingham, Leicester) actually saw it. The 'first farewell' tour of 1902/03 brought it to, among other places, Bedford, Boston, Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Grantham, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Lowestoft, Norwich, Peterborough, Spalding and Wisbech, while the very last tour of 1904 included Cambridge.
During this last tour the company played in over 130 places, travelled 4,500 miles by road and rail, and when it was all over, sailed a further 3,000 miles from Liverpool back to New York.
Logistics par excellence, I think. 
 

Sunday 16 March 2014

JAMES ROBERTSON JUSTICE

By the mid-1950s, and with National Service a threatening cloud on the horizon, my life seemed to be in a sort of limbo. I was not particularly enjoying work, either. As a weekly newspaper's junior district reporter already struggling to tame yet another threatening monster, namely the office-issue BSA motorcycle, my days seemed to offer little more than an unending round of collecting the names of mourners at funerals, visiting vicars, and writing up wedding report sheets. A day in the office was a day spent in a cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded by piles of paper.
On this particular day I arrived home from work to be met by my father saying, 'The story in town is that the Duke of Edinburgh has been out wildfowling, and there is a film star staying at the Bull Hotel,' which was the town's main watering hole. The film star in question was James Robertson Justice.
JRJ - he of the bulky body, beard, and booming voice - was hugely popular at the time. He was also a man of many talents. Born in 1907, he was a linguist and had been a motor racing driver, a lumberjack in Canada, secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association, and had fought in the Spanish Civil War and in World War Two with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.
Then in the late 1940s he entered the film business, some of his best known being Doctor in the House, Guns of the Navarone, Moby Dick, Capt Horatio Hornblower, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Scott of the Antartic, and Whisky Galore. His physicality and charismatic demeanour enabled him to dominate almost any scene.
I got out my bicycle and went into town, arriving with some trepidation at the Bull. It was a daunting prospect, not only because I was hoping to meet a film star but because, although 17 closing on 18, I had never been in a pub! In those days 'locals' tended to be dark, smoke-filled, unappealing places inhabited by grumpy old men intent at staring at anyone they did not know. But I went in. And they stared, unspeaking and unfriendly.
The sizeable bulk of JRJ was perched on a stool at the bar holding a pint, but he looked at me intently when I sidled across and meekly told him who I was. To be frank, he was kindness itself. He confirmed that he and the Duke of Edinburgh had indeed been out wildfowling for the day on the Sutton Bridge marshes, told me a little about it, and said he was staying at the Bull Hotel until the following day. My meek questioning was answered by JRJ in the only way he knew, his voice booming around the room. Everyone was listening, and grinning. 
Suddenly he picked up on my general discomfort, clambered down from his stool, and signalled for me to follow. We went out of the bar and into the cobbled yard under the old coaching archway, and there was his car and trailer, and several falcons tethered to specially erected posts.
We discussed the falcons, and then I asked him a real greenhorn question: 'How did you bring them?' JRJ looked at me with a sort of bemused contempt. 'In my car, boy. How do you think I brought them?' he thundered, his patience on the brink of collapse.
Thinking about it later, I realised his ploy of showing me the falcons was his way of avoiding having to say any more about the Duke of Edinburgh. After all, it was a private engagement, and ordinarily nothing would have been said about it at all. The local excitement soon died, of course, and the Bull drinkers were left alone again.

Thursday 13 March 2014

GLIMPSES OF STARS

The recent death of legendary Preston NE footballer Tom Finney carried with it inevitable echoes of days when players travelled to the ground by bus or bike, and looked after a pub when they finally retired. My hero Sam Bartram kept a newspaper and sweet shop, just a few short paces from The Valley. In Tom's case, he had already decided he wanted to be a plumber, and evidently drove to morning training in his van so he could work at his plumbing business during the afternoon. He was also like many of his generation in that the Second World War sliced several seasons out of his career. I believe he drove a tank in the Army.
Tom Finney, by popular account, was a refined and elegant footballer who would happily play on either wing, or in the centre of attack; a one-club player, then, of considerable value. And a player who, according to some who knew him and his game well, they would happily place alongside the likes of Eusebio, Puskas, and Di Stefano.
Alas, I never saw Tom Finney play. I don't know why, it was just one of those things. The dates, or something, never worked out. For that matter, I never saw Raich Carter play, either, or Frank Swift, but I did catch Stanley Matthews several times, though late in his playing career. Even then, he was still capable of giving cameo performances in front of crowds swollen in anticipation of his appearance.
One man I did see play, albeit after his League career had finished, was Wilf Mannion. In the late 1950s and amid great excitement, Wilf turned up at Carter's Park, Holbeach, as part of (I think) the Cambridge United side for an Eastern Counties (or was it United Counties?) League fixture. I seem to recall he played a peripheral role in the game, but no-one seemed to mind. Holbeach had seen the great Wilf Mannion grace their turf, and that was enough.
There was excitement in Spalding, too, also in the late 1950s, when the Tulips were drawn at home in the FA Cup against Kettering Town (the Poppies), a very powerful side whose attack was lead by one of the most famous No 9s in the business - Tommy Lawton. My weekly paper's sports pages also quivered with excitement, and on the great day there was, by Halley Stewart playing field standards, a big attendance. Anyway, Spalding, for some reason now forgotten, had to play their young reserve goalkeeper, and despite a Kettering victory during which, I think, Lawton scored, the lad performed well.
At the final whistle I made my way through the throng towards the dressing-rooms to try to have a word with Tommy, and he finally came out with his team-mates, wry-faced and thin as a whippet. In the midst of the melee I asked him for his thoughts on the match, and he shouted something back about the Spalding goalkeeper. 'Aye, the lad played well. That he did,' he said, or something like it. Then he was away, back on to the team bus, chased by youthful autograph hunters.
I admired this pre- and post-War generation then, and I still do. It was a hard, grafting life with little monetary reward and damn-all support when their playing careers were over. Then there was the intervention and wastage of the War itself. Also, the affection the crowds felt for them was genuine, because they were not mega-men living in gated seclusion on monumental salaries. Instead, there was a strong sense that they were a part of the community. Like Tom Finney, any one of them could have been your neighbour.

Monday 10 March 2014

UNDER CANVAS

I suppose it was a lack of alternatives which persuaded us to go camping in the first place. Young children, shortage of cash for holidays, that sort of thing. So we piled everything and everyone into the car and drove into the Brecklands, full of hope, ending on a campsite in Thetford Forest about halfway between East Harling and Thetford, which had the river Thet on one side and the Peddars Way on the other.
As things turned out we loved it, and so (I think) did the boys, who could take off into the trees and do their own exploring and still be back for the next Camping Gaz meal. The weather, by and large, was dry and hot, and over the next few years, as we slowly improved our equipment and our techniques, it remained so. In fact. those summers in the late 1970s provided a series of fine holidays - tempered by only occasional downpours.
Camping remained on the family agenda for a number of years, and our range widened - the South Coast, the Cotswolds, Scotland, and even France and Switzerland. Some of this also included week-long walks along the Peddars Way, camping at night and walking during the day when it was usually hot and sultry, and sometimes with foggy and damp early mornings.
The boys grew up, and while two of them never went camping again the other two did, one maintaining a watching brief on the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path - in terms of the official guidebook - the other, now living in Canada.
As for me, the thrill of packing stuff into the boot of a car or a rucksack, and taking off, never went away, and for several years in a row, and despite being in my 70s, I also went off for a solo camp back into the Breckland forests, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading, walking and exploring. It was while doing this that I 'discovered' - and I say this advisedly, as generations of folk had 'discovered' it before me - the little known church of West Harling, which nowadays stands on its own in a forest clearing surrounded (the first time I saw it, anyway) by an ocean of nodding poppies. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
My delight in solo camping finally came to an undistinguished end, however. I had pitched camp at my regular site and, the weather being fine, set off each morning for a walk in the forest. On this particular day I found myself sauntering along a long, straight forest ride with nothing but banks of conifers for company and occasional visits from songbirds, and a passing squirrel. Then, in the far distance ahead of me, there came into view a lady accompanied by a small child.
Now, I don't know if solitary 70-year-olds wandering in lonely places set off alarms or constitute some sort of a threat, but after some minutes of walking, and with the gap between us closing, I suddenly noticed that the strolling lady and child had disappeared. I walked on, puzzled, for I could not see any turning off the main track, and could not understand how they had suddenly gone from view.
All became plain when I passed the mysterious spot and noticed the two of them trying to hide in the undergrowth under the trees about a dozen yards from the track. I walked on, and after a few minutes could not resist a glance behind. Sure enough, the pair had emerged from their hiding place and were now walking away from me as quickly as they could.
I wondered what the lady was thinking, and what the child had learned that day. As for me, now nearer 80 than 70, I have never been solo camping again.  

Friday 7 March 2014

FLYING OFFICER X

The name of HE Bates held a particular resonance for me in the 1950s when I first came across his rural writings, and more particularly his hugely popular War-time titles, stories gleaned from his experiences in Burma and India and which most famously included The Purple Plain, The Jacaranda Tree, and The Scarlet Sword. They won him a big reputation particularly in Britain and America and, up to the 1970s, these three books had been translated into 16 different languages. The total may be even higher by now.
War tales aside - Bates died in 1974, by the way - the pleasure I derived from his writings came almost exclusively from his many pastoral stories of the countryside and of rural people, texts he embued with a sort of Laurie Lee-like lyricism. Titles like The Nature of Love, The Wild Cherry Tree, The Triple Echo, The Song of the Wren, and Country Tales, all of which still sit quite happily on my shelves. It seemed to me at the time there was something infinitely comfortable and comforting about them, as there was a beautifully polished touch to his writing. With very little thought, therefore, HE Bates joined Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Hardy and John Steinbeck my writing idols list.
A couple of decades later I randomly acquired a paperback copy of his 1944 novel, Fair Stood the Wind for France, a taut and vivid tale of an RAF bomber crew after their Wellington had crashed behind enemy lines. If I also had a Top 20 list of favourite books then it would certainly find its way there, too, and without too much trouble. Equally importantly, as far as I was concerned, the flyleaf also said that early in the War HE Bates was a sort of 'writer in residence' at an RAF bomber station in this country, and that he undertook a similar role at bases in Burma and India. Then in 1941 he had published two slim books of War-time short stories written using the cover name, Flying Officer X.
It took a little time, but I did in the end track down copies of them both, The Greatest People in the World, and How Sleep the Brave. I have them beside me now, slim, unassuming volumes, one stiff-covered in faded blue, the other a gawdy red-and-white paperback; one published by Jonathan Cape, the other produced by Cape for The British Publishers' Guild. It goes without saying they were both printed on War economy standard paper.
All the fictional short stories are based on what Bates heard and saw and experienced at various bomber bases, and they are raw and tender and poignant. Indeed, almost matter-of-fact. I prize them highly.
The British Publishers' Guild, by the way, was a consortium of publishers which co-operated 'during the present emergency' to produce a comprehensive list of important books of universal appeal in paper covers at very low prices. The Guild's titles first appeared in February, 1941, and by the time How Sleep the Brave came out, 50 titles had been released.
I have no idea why HE Bates chose to use the name Flying Officer X, but it might have been because of some War Department directive, or security measure. Either way, I am so glad he made the effort.
    

Wednesday 5 March 2014

INVASION SCARE

When I was about five the Army moved into an empty house three doors down the road. We knew it as The Manse, because it had an old, disused chapel in its grounds; but despite the emptiness, it was the largest and poshest house in the immediate vicinity.
The Army, of course, quickly made themselves at home. They moved their equipment into the chapel and dug over the front garden, beside the main road, constructing a defended position with earthen banks and a signals area. About half a mile away, on a bend in the road we knew as Bates's Corner, they prepared a tank trap position, and piled large cubes of concrete on the verge ready to be moved across the highway the moment 'the balloon went up.'
Unbeknown to me at the time, but confirmed later by youthful exploration, they also built an imitation wooden bungalow with a hinged, false roof which evidently concealed a gun which would have had a clear field of fire towards the road and the tank trap.
I think the troops were from the Queen's Royal Regiment, and what I also did not know at the time - but again, found out later - was that more troops were billeted all over the town, and that they were building defensive positions in the neighbourhood and even in neighbouring villages. For this was just after Dunkirk, and invasion was considered to be imminent.
My parents said nothing to me on the subject. Instead, mother began hoarding tinned and bottled foods, storing them in a cupboard under the stairs, father dug a deep V-shaped trench in the garden in preparation for air raids, and we made an arrangement with neighbours that if the worst came to the worst the two families would flee on their lorry.
In town, a building near the sports field was selected as a temporary mortuary, and talks - evidently fruitless - were held to decide exactly who would offer the town's surrender should it become necessary. Instead, the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard) began training with grim seriousness. Once a fortnight, on Sunday mornings, they would crash through the gardens and through the fences, shouting and screaming, and then march back to town. 
As for 'my' soldiers, three doors away, their job was to keep watch on the flat fields behind the houses which stretched towards the Wash, about four miles away. The fear was enemy gliders and paratroopers, and old telegraph poles were set up in some of the fields to deter landings. But they still had to keep watch, and every day and in all weathers a soldier (complete with rifle) would arrive at our house and take up his lonely position under the fruit trees by the hedge at the bottom of the garden, where he could see for miles. How they battled the boredom I do not know, but most of them smoked. I can recall the piles of butts near the hedge. I can also remember mother striding down the garden with a cup of tea for 'our' sentry. It is an abiding memory.
Of course, the expected invasion never came, and flowers grew over the V-trench. But the War went on. The Queen's Royals (and later, the East Lancashires) were posted elsewhere; mother struggled to feed us all on the meagre War-time rations; and father, in addition to his daily job, gardened (growing fruit and vegetables), became a first-aid instructor in the St John Ambulance Brigade, and a night volunteer at the fire control centre in the church hall. 
How parents coped with the strain at that time I do not know. As for me, I grew up watching military convoys rumble by, viewing crashed enemy aircraft on display in the park, listening to the news on the wireless and learning to follow the War's progress on the pages of the New Chronicle, and after dark, going into the garden to listen to enemy bombers (with their distinctive throbbing sound) passing overhead. Thus the rest of the War slowly turned into an exciting time for a youngster with a bike.

Sunday 2 March 2014

SOCCER STANDOFF

The seeds of the demise of open terraces and standing fans were sown during regular bouts of crowd hooliganism in the 1960s-1980s. It was not a pretty period, but how it happened, and why, is best left to others to try to explain. All I can say is that I saw hooliganism on numerous occasions, and was inadvertently caught up in it at least three times. And, yes, there was a moment when I did wonder if football itself was doomed. It felt just like a knell.
I first came across it at Millwall when gangs of Den fans inexplicably rained abuse and missiles into the away section. After the game a policeman came to the Press room to show us some of the 'weapons' they had collected including, I recall, pennies with their edges filed to a wicked sharpness. Apparently some of the Millwall fans had found pleasure in skimming these lethal coins into the visiting fans' ranks. Later, a few hundred of them evidently gained additional pleasure from aggressively chasing the Norwich contingent through various Tube stations and trains all the way back to Liverpool Street, where lines of police were waiting.
Aggro, for a time, became a part of the game. At Oxford, the 'soccer special' trains from Norwich were met by police, and we visitors were closely guarded as we processed in a long column from the station to the ground. At Cardiff, such was the venom that supporters' coaches and the Norwich City team bus had to be escorted away from the ground by a cluster of police cars. It was a relief, I remember, to get to the airport; but it was only after our Dakota had landed at Norwich - when we had seen fire engines and rescue vehicles beside the runway - that they told us there had been a 'bomb scare' and there might be a bomb on board.
The worst example by far was the Manchester United fans' riot at Carrow Road. I was a spectator in the City half of the old Barclay End terraces when United fans launched a 'medieval' attack, hurling missiles, smashing the timber partitions at the rear of the stand, and physically breaking down the metal barriers and netting between the two sets of fans. One idiot even got on to the roof and broke through. In the event, the Barclay stand was smashed to pieces, and had it not been for the heroics of ten or a dozen policemen (and one policewoman, I recall), who linked arms to create a thin blue line between the retreating Norwich fans and the aggressive Manchesterites, thus allowing the home fans to escape the onrush, there might easily have been a much more serious outcome.
So, standing areas at football grounds once again? Well, perhaps. It was noticeable earlier this season, at Old Trafford, that many Norwich fans hardly sat down at all. In fact, every time the ball went into the United half the City folk in front of us stood up, anyway, so we saw absolutely nothing. And some of the 'standers' were not seriously interested in the match, either, for they stood with their backs to the pitch watching and gesticulating at other sections of the crowd.
If standing areas are to be allowed once again, then please, let them be small areas, fenced off from everyone else, and please, please, let them be at the back of the grandstands. Then we would all be able to see the match.