I was absolutely knackered when the alarm went off. It’s been a while since we had an early start and I wasn’t ready for this one.

I trudged downstairs to make me coffee….I trudged to the bathroom with me coffee and set about me now unbeaten in 5 games ritual….put the Alabama 3 on the I-pod and got my 3 Sh’s out of the way… All of my lucky footy clobber was laid out neatly ready for me. I’d left nothing to chance today and wanted it all ready, no hunting about…Jeans, TWAT shirt, vest, grey socks, grey shreddies. I figured we’d need all the help we could get today as, though I’d been telling everyone we’d go to the end of season unbeaten, I felt this game would be the hardest to come away from with any points.

Because it was a London away day that meant an overnighter, stopping at Aylesbury with Pete and meeting a few others at his place, then on to catch the train into Olde London Town. For this sort of away day you MUST take the ‘Special Oasis’ ™©

Take note here…for one time only, here is the SECRET family recipe.

Preperation Time: 60 seconds Drinking Time: As long as it takes. Payback time: Morning after Side Effects: Loss of memory, loss of facial hair, loss of use of lips. Body gyroscope may be out of kilter. Take one 300ml bottle of Oasis. (Any flavour will do) Tip contents down sink. (Keep the lid, you’ll need it for later on) CAREFULLY pour in Vodka, to almost full. Leave a small gap at top. (It will become clear why in a moment) Top up (In that small gap that should still be at top) with fresh orange juice. (Preferably with bits) Cooks tip: Pour in JUST enough orange to change the colour of the liquid. Put (retained) top back on bottle. (SCREW TIGHT: Very important, leakage can be painful) Invert bottle once to emulsify contents. Remove top (But keep safe again) Taste. WARNING! Do NOT smell before tasting. Just gulp it down. DO NOT SPILL ON LINO or SKIN….it will burn.

Anyway…I made three bottles up, MAX strength, and stuck them in the bag…got everything together and off to pick up the young un.
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We get underway for the trip to Aylesbury…bloody hell it seemed a long old trek this time….dunno why but when we arrived at Pete’s I was absolutely shagged. Salop’s there and Stan with his mate Danny, quick introductions, get the Special Oasis and see that Stan’s made some of his own…some kinda pink stuff…tasted a bit girly to me, one for the ladies, but it was in a litre bottle so it’ll be OK for back up
I coulda done with a kip TBH but we had no time and we all piled into Pete’s car and headed off to the train station and then onto Olde London Town
          

          

At the station and we start on the Oasis….I suggest we have a drink every 10 minutes to the end of the journey and we should have the bottles empty by then. I got bored with that though, it was taking too long and we ended up drinking every couple of minutes, well it was actually after someone spoke, breathed or blinked…Danny made the mistake of sniffing the Oasis before he drank it…he only made that mistake once as his nasal hairs disappeared…he’ll never grow a tache from this moment on. He pulled that face that everyone does when they make that mistake of smelling Special Oasis for the first time…like he’s turning inside out…Lesson learned though and we cracked on with getting through it all…I think all 3 bottles of Oasis and Stan’s litre of girl juice were gone by 15 minutes into the journey. We were now all in a very good mood and spirits were especially high for some reason…in fact we seemed to be laughing like daft sods at pretty much anything.

          

          
We spoke to a QPR fan and his young daughter on the tube about the game…I know it can be quite daunting for family folk on the tube when faced with a group of drunken Northerners, but he loved it, so did his little lass and he seemed more worried than us about the relegation battle. Smashing bloke and we shook his hand and wished each other well…after today of course.
          

          
When we get to Shepherds Bush we head over to the pub to meet everyone and the place is heaving with Wednesday fans.

I look to me left and there’s a strange wondrous glow coming from down the other end of the pub…it was wonderful and alluring…yet deeply disturbing and frightening too. I’d seen something like it before, it was enchanting and scary at the same time…most people seemed to be split into two definite camps…those who feared it and those who were drawn to it, likes moth to a flame…to a huge fookin ginger flame that is! It was Jonny and his ginger beard of fear…I thought we’d seen the last of that fooker but no! Here it was, bigger, bushier, scarier and more gingerier than it ever was before. If they ever discover that gingeriness is a precious commodity, they’ll be mining for it off Jonnys chin for decades. The chemical formula for that fooker is G2WOAH!

As I walk zombie like towards towards the ginger collar of doom Hollie goes to the bar and gets several triple vodkas…whilst she’s there I nip round the bar at the side and get a dozen Sambucas…and as I walk back with them on the tray they disappear with hands shooting out to grab one almost step of the way…I just needed to make sure Charlie and Titch got one, after all, these were ‘wetting the baby’s head’ drinks and they were to salute their grandson and son Jacob as the newest Owl…No one managed to say a toast to the little fella so here ya go JJ…
WELCOME TO A LIFE OF BEING A WEDNESDAYITE! IT’LL NEVER BE EASY BUT IT WAINT BE DULL!

Hollie goes back to the bar and orders triples again…”we don’t serve triples, you can only have doubles”…I just had some…”she’ll have given you doubles”…I saw her pour them, they were triples…”we don’t sell em”…Can I have 5 doubles and five singles then please? “Yes, of course you can”.

I seem to remember Wym bringing another tray of Sambucas round…I might be wrong about that but someone did…things got a bit hazy for a while…

I had to meet up with Jesper and the lads from Denmark as I’d got them 6 tickets for the game…I get a text from him.

:I’m outside in a yellow raincoat: As I got outside there’s this bloke putting on a yellow raincoat…JESPER! No that’s me. Says the bloke at the side… But you said… I know, I was lending him it for a moment…(Of course he sounded just liked Peter Schmeichel, as all Danes do) To confuse me? No, no…it was coincidence… You were lending him a yellow raincoat at the exact moment you had told me to meet a bloke in a yellow raincoat? Yes. Hmmmm…..You’ve gorra watch these Danish lads ya know…with their crazy yellow raincoat ways

I managed to catch up with Sarah inside, not seen her for yonks…she’s a part timer these days and doesn’t get to many games but it was great to see her and her fella again.
          

          
We downed our drinks and set off on the trek to the ground…I can only remember one song really as we walked along and that was the Neil Warnock’s illegitimate song…when we get to the end bit everyone changes it…he’s a piggy bastard…BASTARD! Becomes…’he’s not very nice…I don’t like him’. There was a group of very small kids close by so it was pre-watershedded for their benefit.
          

          
THE MATCH
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Right…I don’t know how much of this is accurate and folk may disagree with me on loads of points…I was feeling the effects of the Oasis and the tiredness was really catching up on me now…

Buxton was back for this game and on his first game back he was thrown into the deep end of the lions den. His job seemed to be to mark the always impressive and incredibly skilful Taarabt…it didn’t work…it CLEARLY didn’t work and what’s more, it stopped us from playing football.

I wasn’t as impressed with Rangers this time as I was at ours and I thought we could and maybe should have had a go at them, but by tying up a player, a returned from fitness player, on one man and worrying about his threat as much we did, we weren’t able to play how we did at Coventry and have a go at them.

Don’t get me wrong, QPR were pretty good, probably very good at times but one way or another we seemed to cope alright with them… True enough Rangers slowly but surely took a good grip on the game in the first half and all through the 90 minutes we needed Grant to save us a few times, he needed to be at his very best and he definitely exorcised the howler from last week. He was superb and fair play to the lad. We were getting a bit of a battering at times as we seemed to lack drive and haste in getting forward and any attack we did manage to put together was snuffed out pretty easily.

When they did eventually make their pressure tell I suppose it was no more than they deserved on overall play but there seemed to be more than an element of huff and chuff and a lack of composure in front of goal at times and we did still have our share of the ball…but we were the same, all wind and piss and little cutting edge where it mattered, the QPR defence found it VERY easy to stop us as we went for the obvious route every time. The QPR goal wasn’t one for the purists either, an OG really, bundled in by us and any of the numerous other efforts that Grant managed to save would have been far more aesthetically pleasing, this was as scrappy and sruffy as you like…but they didn’t care…they were in front and rightly so.

There was a bloke at the side of Hollie slagging off practically all our players…Spurr, shit….Grant, shit….Purse, shit….he went through most of em with the same thorough attention to detail. This was obviously a methodical approach to rating Wednesday players, built up over many years and honed to perfection. His results were conclusive and the same in every case, bar none….SHIT! When she spoke to him and asked if he’d seen the players at several previous games…his reply was ‘No…I’ve only been to 3 games but he was shit at Leicester and…’ Well…that’s enough of that then…

Take no notice I told her…anyway I needed a snooze…so I had one…aaaahhh. When I woke up just before half time…I needed a pie…I didn’t get one…I queued up for ages, drooling again at the tempting pictures placed provocatively above the counter…NEED PIE! As I got closer to the front…NEED PIE!…slowly….PIE!…2 of your finest pies please pie lady…NO PIES! Pasty? NO PASTIES! What ya got…’ot dogs…3 ‘ot dogs then…they’re shit but I was Hank Marvin…it never stood a chance….gone in three bites

          

          
Fook me QPR were determined to up the ante at the restart…Colin had obviously told them they needed more than one goal and all the decent play they’d had should have produced more than one goal…they responded and fired in shot after shot…but Grant was in determined mood and there’d be no more ‘Coventry’ slips from him…he dived, he tipped, he dropped, he was quick and decisive and it seemed like he held them at bay single handed at times…fook me, some of the saves were breathtaking…the one from right in front of him that he somehow tipped over was just that ‘breathtaking’

Our only chance…I think during the whole game to this point, was when Tommy put a nice, but devoid of pace cross, into the box for O Connor to head straight at the keeper…we could have done better really as he seemed to be unmarked…

We took Potter and Varney off and brought Leon and JJ on, straight away we looked better…It wasn’t long before JJ got the ball, did a lovely turn and kicked on with real purpose…the first time we’d shown any real flair, purpose and proper pace in the game…he cut across the pitch like some gret big fast pitch cutting thing and it was a real pulse quickener to see him accelerate like that…he put a ball across to Tommy that left the QPR defence motionless… Tommy slapped the fooker right back into the box absofookinluetly perfect, this time for spring heeled Tom Suarez at the back post to rise majestically and nod it in off the top of the defenders noggin…again, not one for the purists but we didn’t care…we went fookin mental!

I dived 2 rows down to reach Rich stood in front of me, others beat me to him and we crushed him a against the chair in front of him…meanwhile, I’d forgotten to bring my legs with me and lay across 3 rows taking a pounding everywhere… everyone on our row was piling on my legs….MY ANKLE!

I grabbed Rich and shook the bastard for all he was worth, he had a massive smile across his face, he was loving it…he was the picture of bliss…and whilst the top half of me celebrated the goal ME LEG! ME FOOKING LEG felt like someone was determined to break it…I feared the worst… I honestly thought my ankle was gonna go…there was some right weight on it and the pain up and down me shin was incredible…agony and ecstasy…oh aye… I’d like to be able to say that was it then…I’d like to be able to say from that moment it was all us and we were the better side, but it wasn’t all us and we weren’t the better side…we had sort of half chances from Leon that the whinging bloke thought he would have buried if he’d been ‘a proper player’ and not just ‘shit’ but I don’t think they were easy chances TBF…

We counted down the minutes of normal play and every one of the seconds of 4 minutes of injury time and we came away with, not what I’d call a deserved point but possibly a hard won point and maybe it was a little back our way for the result last week….there weren’t many Wednesday fans disappointed with a point but I doubt any Rangers fans felt the same. As we walk down the road outside the ground we're all in a good mood and every police man and woman we come across, we ask them for a smile for The Wednesday...and most of em did...but there's always one or two miserable buggers. They didn't spoil the mood though and at least their mates kept the public amused, kudos to em....being pleasant doesn't hurt

          

          
Time to head to the Argyle Arms for drinks and Chinese food…fook me it were cold…after quite a few more drinks and bit of a natter about the game it was on to Aylesbury.

Dessie had gone down on the train but decided to come back to Aylesbury with us so he goes to buy a ticket for the train and we all go through the barriers to get on board…in the 2 minutes and 20 feet from him buying the ticket he somehow managed to lose that train ticket….we got off…and it pulled away just as he’d bought another ticket…Bit of a wait for the next one so into the bar.

Missing that first train turned out to be quite good and when we got on the next one it was stuffed with Arsenal fans…One of them had on his Arsenal hat, his Arsenal shirt, his Arsenal jacket, his Arsenal trarsers and Arsenal shoes, he was like Joe Fookin Arsenal! And just to prove it he was carrying an Arsenal shopping bag and in it was a full change of clothing...all of it Arsenal clobber...he was the most Arsenal thing I've ever seen on this planet, it's impossible to be more Arsenal than this bloke and that includes both Arsenal grounds full to the top with an Arsenal of Arsenal players....he was a smashing fella though and we enjoyed talking to him...There was some good banter amongst us and we asked them to sing us a song…they only had one…some poor effort that spelled out ARSENAL…so even though we were all shit faced we gave them the full repertoire…it was fookin brilliant…they loved it…all the Wednesday songs, along with the usual assortment of songs by the Stylistics, Bee Gees, Elvis, Neil Diamond: Sweet Caroline…great craic…it was like cabaret night…the Arsenal women loved especially loved it…they all shook our hands and patted us bye as we got off the train.
          

          
Into the pub in Aylesbury…not the one with bullet holes or the one that doesn’t like scarves, a decent one….Dessie was looking really unsteady by now and if he wasn’t leaning on something or sat down he started to list to port…a lot…there was some right drunken teetering going on. He also had the ten-yard stare. It was like there was a spider dangling from a web an inch away from his eyes and he was trying to focus on it…and failing abysmally.

He was starting to get all flamboyant with his drinks too… vodka cranberry, vodka pineapple…WHAT THE FOOK?!
Vodka Pine-chuffin-apple? What next? Vodka Apple? Vodka milk? Vodka cheese? Vodka three piece suite? It’s not Masterchef ya know it’s not all about BIG FLAVOURS! Just stick to Vodka and Orange and stop fannying about.

I looked around, Pete was chattin up anyone with breasts…including me at one point…mindst you, I do have lovely perky breasts…Dessie was on permanent tilt…Stan and Danny were still bright eyed…but me, Hollie and Salop were flagging…it had been a long day and we were ready for off.

Us three headed back to Pete’s but I was hungry…again.

We called at the kebab wagon in the marketplace.
One kebab mate please….
Where you from?
Yorkshire.
I was in Yorkshire the other day…I went to Bolton…cue shifty eye movements from us three…(Oh aye, Yorkshire stronghold is Bolton) Yeah, I spent quite some time up North…I visited Botlon and the West Midlands….more shifty eye movements from us…

Given his great knowledge and understanding of the lay of this land I naturally assumed he was my Asian twin…we were brothers…we shared that common bond of going to places, not knowing where we were and eventually ending up in Bolton. It’s gift.
          

          
We get into Petes and set up our sleeping areas…me and Hollie took the mattress on the floor…Salop the chair at the side of us…

An hour or so later Stan and Danny turn up, we watch the footy on telly then get our heads down… An hour later me mobile goes…text from Dessie…I’ve been thrown out of pub for going to sleep, where does Pete live? Everyone forgot it was his first time at Petes…He eventually finds his way to us and we get our heads down again. Then another hour later…text from Creg… 'I don’t know where Pete is, where does he live?'

Another that’s never stopped there before…He eventually arrives and stands at doorway half asleep…where do I sleep?
In the other room mate, there’s a bed for you…

How many’s in here?
6 there’s a bed next door….he stands leaning on the door for half an hour then orders Pizza…He eats his pizza then sleeps on floor in front of the fire….

That was it…Only Pete to come home now…everyone settles down for the night…and that was it…

THE NOISE!

The snoring….

It was so fookin loud.

Snoring and farting…I wish I’d recorded it.

There was Danny’s breathless snore and wheeze…
There was Dessie’s deep booming snore…and there was something else…
It sounded like someone was knocking one out…it actually sounded like an orgasm…

Ha-ha-hu-huh-huuuh-HUUUH-HUUUUH!

Me, Salop and Stan all said at the same time – WHAT THE FOOK!

It was Creg.

That was his snore.

There was a faint grunt and this orgasm noise and he was deep in slumber land…

So we all try and sleep through this when the kebab started working its way through…it did play havoc with my insides…I couldn’t stop farting…the silent ones were worst, I just lay there and waited...a few seconds later and Salop shouts…

FOOK ME!
STOP IT!
THAT SMELLS LIKE DOG FOOD!

I’m a martyr to my insides I am.
          

          

It all calmed down and I eventually nodded off but I was snoring too now and Hollie wasn’t happy so what does she do? Gentle nudge in the back? A little push? Kindly whispered words to her dad to stop? Nope. She kicks me on me wounded leg…AAAAARRRRGGGGH! It were hurting before that now it was REALLY hurting….little fooker she is. At sometime just as daylight was coming in Creg sits bolt upright and disappears…we expected to find him face down in the bucket of tadpoles in Pete’s kitchen….Yes, that’s right, tadpoles. For some reason Pete had a bucketful of taddies in his kitchen….I don’t think anyone dared to ask why.

At 8.30 there’s a knock on the patio doors and it’s Pete…’Ive been a whore….I don’t know whose house it was but when I woke up I thought; These aren’t my friends, this isn’t my house…so I came home…the whore’s back…’

Salop half asleep says, “You came on horseback? Very classy”.

I tried to stay half asleep…I was still so chuffin tired…just an hour...half an hour...that's all I want, not much to ask for is it?

CRAMP!
YA FOOKER!

I jump up doing that cramp dance, stretch, fold, stretch fold...it's like the cramp okey cokey and it never does anything to help does it?
That was it then....I coped through snoring, farting, texts and phone calls, folk coming in late, knocks on the door but cramp was just too much.

I was up like a bastard…fook me it was killing me…opposite leg to me gaping wound…and even after it had eased the 'cramp lump' was still there, so now I was limping on BOTH legs.

Time to call it a day…a quick coffee, pack up and we were off…All the way back home all I could think about was sleep…I really needed a kip…I still do.

QPR away days…I absolutely love em, it's still my favouite away day but I might be getting too old for em ya know, this one was one of the weirdest and it certainly took it’s toll on me.

A good weekend though, great company at one of my favourite grounds against one of my favourite clubs....HOPEFULLY we'll be back next year
          

          

Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive