Listening

A day at the Portobello Book Festival - photographing the authors, and getting a chance to listen in on some of the sessions as I split my time between the festival's two venues. Favourite of the day for me was Daniel Gray as he discussed his book 'Saturday, 3pm 50 eternal delights of modern football'. He's originally from Teesside and therefore a Boro fan. And he wasn't just telling his own stories - here he is listening to a contribution from an older guy in the audience who said he'd played professionally in the fifties and sixties. Turns out he was Willie Hunter, who I looked up and discovered was something of a Motherwell legend. Interesting too that someone asked the question I was thinking of asking - what did Daniel think of Boro's move to the Riverside? After his criticisms of soulless modern stadia, moving away from their communities it was bit of a surprise to hear him praise the move and say that he felt it had been the making of the club. While there may be a wish to preserve old football grounds - and it is a fair point to ask why old football grounds are not considered historic buildings to protect - when it comes down to it, it's always different for the club you support, when progress trumps nostalgia.
In the evening we went round to our friend F's to continue our sequence of Britannia boardgames - game eleven of twenty-four. After a recent poor run, I managed to win as Blue, with L second as Yellow. Ultimately pleasing that my early successes with the Belgae, Boudicca and all, in knocking out key Roman forts represented my final margin of victory - just showing that it's important to play the long game! L remains in overall lead as we approach the halfway point and the next game sees most of us playing our weakest colours, so it should be interesting!