lost that loving feeling

Monday, 17th September 2001. It’s freshers week at Lincoln University. While my body lazily sloaths around it’s new surroundings of ‘spacious’ student accommodation, already boasting piles of unwashed pots and the fossils of previously guzzled alcohol, my mind is at the City Ground where my Trent End seat sits unoccupied, quiet and lonely.

Whilst my body desperately searches the air waves for some kind of radio commentary and my ears strain for the bleep bleep that announces the arrival of a text messages to bring joy or dismay, my spirit is on the pitch with the Forest team as they take on the mighty Rotherham.

While the next 3 yeas of my life will be spent gaining a vital education, interspersed with the occasional party, and going to Forest requires an hours train journey and unwelcome expense, my dreams are of the days when living was easy and free, and Forest were a mere 10 minute bus ride away.

I have been exiled, albeit willingly. I’m marooned and cold turkey. I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms from lack of news on my beloved Reds; I break out in cold, sweaty panics, ghastly hallucinations haunt my nights and my writing has taken on a disturbing melodrama.

God Bless the Internet

The Internet. The World Wide Web. The Information Superhighway. Call it what you like, it’s a wonderful thing.

With it you can discover that Jesus has spent the last 7 years playing Bass Guitar in a country rock group at a bar in Texas. With it you can buy your very own piece of genuine UFO wreckage from a man called Ivan who lives in Nirvada. With it you can find out what the weather is doing in South Korea, then, if it takes your fancy, enter a chat room and talk to someone from South Korea about the weather, or any other topic that interests you. And with it you can listen to Forest games live, anywhere in the world.

Having already discovered that Century doesn’t broadcast this far afield, and that here Radio Nottingham is called Radio Lincoln for some unfathomable reason, I, like many others will have to keep in touch with games I cannot attend in person via my computer for the next 3 years.

Yes, the sound quality is awful and it infallibly cuts out every time the commentator says something like ‘he shoots... ’ or ‘he’s got a one-on-one with the keeper... ’. Yes, it takes ages to load and costs a bomb to stay connected for the full ninety minutes. Yes, it does mean you have to engage you browser in the direction of the club’s official site, or even worse, The Eye and mingle with Karl in his sweaty working man’s club of a chat room along with the usual yokels. However, it is better than nothing and beggars can’t be chosers. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is kind. For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful. But I still cannot help missing the novelty of listening to radio on an actual radio.

And even the brand new facility to download video highlights after each game hasn’t helped. In fact so far the only thing it has succeeded in doing is convince me that the reason the commentary over the net broken and littered with agonising pauses is not because of the poor quality of the steaming audio technology but that is what the games are actually like.

"I bet Prince William doesn’t have to put up with this"

In an ideal world I would be able to access the delights of the net. In an ideal world I wouldn’t have to wait two weeks before I could bring my computer up. In an ideal world the University’s computer system wouldn’t have been struck down with a virus and we would be able to view our timetables instead of just guessing where our next lecture is coming from. In an ideal world I wouldn’t be writing this journal with pen and paper and I wouldn’t have to wait until the weekend to type it up and upload it onto the web.

In an ideal world going to Forest matches would be hassle free and free, not getting up in the early hours of Saturday to catch a train home for the weekend at over £11 a throw. In an ideal world returning to see family, friends and loved ones wouldn’t mean arranging everything around football matches. In an ideal world I wouldn’t have had to make my way to the City Ground on a Thursday night for a game I could have seen for free in the warm comfort of the pub when it was almost impossible for me to get back to Lincoln again afterwards.

In an ideal world a diet of microwave food, beer and take-away pizza would be good for you.
This world is far from ideal.