Now then,

I’ve been busy in the garden this week. It’s been time to cut back and prepare for the long cold winter. It makes me look back to all the hopes I had in the spring. The tomato plants I thought would be the sweetest and the juiciest I had ever grown; the Wisteria I had hoped would climb right over the trellis work and the potatoes that when freshly dug were supposed to be so creamy you could eat them without butter. Yet somehow it just did not work out that way. The tomatoes were good, yes, but no better than last year. The wisteria was swallowed up by the weeds. The potatoes were hit by blight quite early on and never recovered.

This is what hope is like really. You plant things hoping something special might happen, but then things entirely outside of your control mean that what you wanted to be excellent ended up being ordinary. The intentions I had in the spring were the right ones, I put just the right amount of work in, but life has a way of halting the progress you expect to make, as if it comes with its own irresistible friction; an inertia that stops any forward progress.

As I stoop amongst weeds and cut back leaves now turned to mulch, I remember that the garden is much like the life of a man. In your twenties, full of bravado and hope, you launch out into a career, a family, a car that wheel spins away from all road blocks. Then somehow as you race through the middle years of life it all becomes comfortable, normal and steady. It’s not that you always take the easy path; it’s not that you always settle for second best, it’s just the way these things work out.

And so to ten men in black running around the City Ground last weekend. Years ago, that would never have been allowed on black and white television, it would have looked like ten referees and one team of 11, then one of a centre forward and two wingers. My friend Arthur has supported Norwich all his life. After the game, he told me how jealous he was of us. Oh yes, they had won and we had looked especially awful in the second half but he said that Norwich are a team of journeyman professional footballers with no particular loyalty to the club or the city, just fighting to stay in the Championship. He envied our young side, average age 23, and due to a deliberate policy of buying in Nottingham-born talent, a young team with a commitment to both club and city. He was quite genuine when he said that he wished we would win all our other games this season and stay in the Championship.

The second goal looks worse every time I watch it. There is such an element of throwing in the towel about it. Then a draw against Doncaster in midweek and we are plunged back into new Manager Speculation for what seems like the tenth time in as many years. The usual Doughty out/Arthur out/Pleat out factions start queuing up at the doors. Everywhere is the sound of disappointed fans looking for yet another scapegoat.

I really believe we started out with the right ideas. We tried to put together a team that could play the Forest way. This too is refreshing, that one thing that the fans all agree on is that there is a Forest way – flowing football, passing to feet, using the wings. However, if you watch some of our most important ever games that way is forgotten when winning becomes really important.

As the endless speculation reaches fever pitch this weekend then perhaps dies down for a week or two or perhaps presents us with yet another new manager and team, I’m drawn to a certain John Keats and his question:

‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,’

Whatever happens at the City Ground over the next few weeks, one thing is for sure. There will be another spring and a whole new set of music to be faced.

I’ll see thee.