Newcastle United NUFC

Wifey and I emerged blinking into the bright New Zealand sunshine like we had just stumbled out of the Wardrobe that is the gateway to Narnia in The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. We checked the time; 11 o’clock on Thursday morning. Did all that just happen? Newcastle just beat Premier League Champions Manchester United 3-0 but that wasn’t even the oddest bit.
We were lying in bed at 7 a.m. and it was raining and dark. We’re still not entirely used to being 13 hours ahead of UK time but I figured it was about time our match crew back in Newcastle would be gathering so I texted Frankie. “Been out with Tony since 3. The rest writes itself,” he replied and indeed it does, they will be quite drunk by now and here I am still groping for the box of Weet-Bix.

A surprising amount of time in Auckland has been spent dressed in shorts and rain mac, it is warm but it is wet. We wander up to the 24 hour pub still sleep bedraggled and wondering about the wisdom of ordering a pint before 9am. In the doorway of the pub is a small gentleman. A very small gentleman, like Mr Tumnus from The Lion The Witch & the Wardrobe. Well, like Mr Tumnus if he really let himself go; drunk, troubled eyes, stubble, he’s hotboxing a cigarette and as he smiles, surprised that we want to be in, he reveals tombstone, snaggled teeth. The bar, his home as far as we can tell, also has a feel of faded debauchery.
It’s now 9 o’clock in the morning so obviously the bar is busy. A group of Russian sounding people have pitchers of lager on their table and the comfy chairs in front of the TV screen are taken up by three possibly Korean gentlemen. “Man U fans obviously,” we both think, unfairly as it turns out. Some Maori work men are in, after a nightshift? Before a dayshift? Hard to tell, no one is nursing soft drinks or looking at the pictures of St James’ on the large TVs. Everybody is on the drink. The barman is a broad shouldered old bruiser, a little bent with time and violence, who clearly ran out of warm welcoming smiles some years ago.
“Who are you here to watch?” growls Mr Tumnus in a thick Kiwi accent, his head popping up in front of the high table we are perched at. I resist the urge to scream in horror and throw my drink at him. “Newcastle. We are here to see us lose.”
“Fucking typical,” he says before muttering drunkenly about Liverpool fans being in with flags the day before, then he cackles at their misfortune (they lost 3-0) before returning to the bar where he gulps his pint two-handed. A couple join the Korean gentlemen in front of our chosen TV while I think. “What’s typical exactly? This is most untypical.” Then I keep one eye on the door to check our escape route is clear and to see if any of the Newcastle fans we have met in Auckland are going to join us. As the game kicks off we are clearly doing this alone. Fair enough, as the Salford mob swarm at us during the first 15 minutes, I am doubting the wisdom of this endeavour myself.
The Russians are not watching the game and the Korean trio depart, our assumption of the global default towards the Old Trafford marketing machine is mistaken. Jonas and Tiote keep giving the ball away. Manchester United are playing with two wingers down our vulnerable left, the girl from the couple stumbles over to us. “What the f*** do you want?” we think. In fairness we both think that when anybody, friend or stranger, talks to us when the match is on. The girl is “Narnurd” as our friend Terri from the Lucha Lounge describes very drunk. (As in Banana rather than Nana meaning Grandmother – unless Terri’s granny is a monumental pisshead.) The gist, as I understand it, is she wants us to watch their drinks for them while they go outside but then she stays, swaying, trying to focus on the football and muttering, “this is it” like she can foretell some future event. She wobbles out. Wifey and I look at each other and roll our eyes. The ball is launched from back to front, Shola nods on and Ba clips the ball into the Leazes End net with a long dextrous leg. “Yesssss!” we hiss almost under our breath. Nobody else in the bar reacts at all.
The girl wanders back in alone and sits down. Mr Tumnus is asking her if she is OK while we think “hold on for 5 minutes”. The 5 minutes pass and our new mission, to make it to half time, is easier because Manchester United are not closing us down as quickly any more. Coloccini is immaculate, Cabaye is apparently fearless. Mr Tumnus has turned into the eighth dwarf, Gropey, and is taking the opportunity, while comforting Narnurd, of copping a feel of her tits.
By the time I have returned from a ludicrous expedition to find the toilets, Gropey has sat Narnurd with the Russians, who have begun shouting boisterously. The old barmen shushes them, they shush each other and giggle. I half expected Man United to have equalised during halftime.

A Wardrobe yesterday

The second half kicks off, Mandy by Barry Manilow in on the juke box. Yohan Cabaye smacks the ball over the wall at a free kick, whoever that is in the Man U goal gets a hand on it, the ball hits the bar and bounces down. The cameraman is confused and the picture is darting about. Wifey and I have time to look at each other in confusion before the screen shows Cabaye sliding in celebration. Good God, it’s 2-0!
Gropey delivers Narnurd to our table, she is now between us and the wall mounted screen. She explains of the Russians, “they are not even watching the match.” Gropey checks out the score and shouts, “Bring it on!” at us with tiny clenched fists. We will do no such thing, thank you very much, there’s a bag full of Red Devil goals waiting to be unleashed at the first hint of gloating. A break in concentration will bring disaster, Coloccini is doing a brilliant job of marshalling his troops but he hasn’t got to cope with Gropey and Narnurd cuddling and swapping phone numbers with her repeatedly asking us, “Where are you guys from then?” every time Gropey wanders off to collect empty glasses. “Are you out late or early?” I ask her. I may as well have asked her for the Stock Market figures baked onto a lovely sponge cake. “Where are you guys from then?” she squeaks, I go to the toilet and see Gropey frantically copying her scribbled phone number into his mobile.
The ball is kicked into touch and Narnurd cheers. Alan Pardew throws his hands up in frustration and she joins in, thinking he is starting a Mexican wave. “High five!” she demands of Wifey who politely explains there will be no high fives until the game is finished. “Where are you guys from?”
“Newcastle,” we say for the umpteenth time and we must be making some progress because she gives us a raised middle finger from each wobbling hand. Time has slowed to an immovable crawl while we wait for the inevitable Salford fight back. Danny Simpson appears out of nowhere to boot a Rooney shot off the line and instead of celebrating we clutch at our hearts and look at the ceiling. Which is better than looking at Narnurd and Gropey who nuzzle, kiss, have their first squabble, then cuddle some more in our eye-line.
Alex Ferguson seems to be throwing more and more strikers at us from his superstar bench, Gropey is explaining to Narnurd that he is off home soon and she ought to come with him. Both acts are predating on the vulnerable and make us uncomfortable. In both cases we feel quite helpless. One of the Russians is singing, “Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking,” loud and off key.
The on screen clock seems to have run out of energy and is wheezing pathetically through the remaining minutes, Narnurd is hitting Gropey on the arm, then poking his little nose. The Russian meanwhile wails, “And I sent you away, ohhhhhhh MANDY!” I don’t think I can stand anymore of this and I’ve had beer, Wifey is through two pints of Cola and is caffeinated beyond help.
The crowd within St James’ is roaring its heroes home, we can hear it over the cacophony and the chaos.
The jukebox, the shouting Russians, the predatory midget and the hopelessly drunk girl all fade away into irrelevance as Jones bundles the ball hilariously into his own net for 3-0 and finally we jump up laughing. Narnurd and Gropey look at us like we committed some terrible faux pas. Like we give a f*** what anyone in the world thinks right now.
We bid a polite farewell to Dark Narnia as St James’ dances with black and white delight. This earns Wifey a sloppy hug from Narnurd and me a punch in the stomach from Gropey. Fortunately he was considerably weaker than he looked.
We are in our Auckland home now. It is 1.15 am in the UK, the middle of the night. Here I’m still confused by the dream. What does it mean and when can we expect to wake up?

With the world on the brink of financial collapse, riots in the streets, bombs and dip-shit politicians defending the same corrupt markets that have betrayed their own people, living in New Zealand feels a bit like hiding under the bed. We feel like we are far enough out of the way of any Armageddon down here, in fact we sometimes feel like we are at the end of the earth. Once in a while we peek out, shake our heads and wonder if we should ever go back to the UK. Yesterday for example the news here reported that David Cameron was doubling the budget for the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games from 40 to 81 million pounds. The news reader pulled a splendid – “are they f****ing mental?” face at the end of the report. £81 million on what amounts to little more than a parade. Surely if we are serious about this belt-tightening lark, that is putting so many people out of work and stealing folk’s pensions, we could have just not bothered with an opening ceremony at all? Then you see the budget for security, realise the whole Olympics thing is nothing but a grotesque carnival of freaks anyway and wonder who is getting rich out of this unwelcome obscenity?

Look it\’s Micky Quinn

We had a parade here in Auckland last week; the Farmer’s Christmas Parade to be precise. Farmer’s being a department store not a collection of agricultural workers we were surprised to learn. This parade began at the top of Queen Street and a brass band led the way with drums rattling. The peculiarity of watching a Christmas parade in baking sunshine was added to when the band struck up with their first tune of the day, which was “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” A traditional kiwi festive song? Who knows but by the time we had marveled at a giant inflatable Mr. Potato Head, been waved at by three floats full of people in fancy dress and been disturbed by a shabby and asthmatic Kung Fu Panda we decided to go to the pub.
The Munster Arms is named after the rugby team and not, disappointingly, after the television programme and it is next door to and downstairs from an Irish Bar called Father Ted’s which presumably can’t say the same thing. They specialise in showing The English Premier League which means they also have to specialise in staying open really bloody late because we are 13 hours ahead of the UK here. We were surprised to discover we could have watched Newcastle United playing in Salford between 4 and 6am. We settled down to watch a recording knowing the score.
If we had seen the game live we would have been drinking beer at 5.30 on a Sunday morning in a state of blind panic. The heroic, 10 man defence of the 1-1 scoreline which included the disallowing of the sort of late winner Manchester United feel entitled to (in injury time and offside) might have been too much us. A Newcastle United penalty at The Stretford End as well; perhaps the people holding the absence of Wifey and I responsible for a welcome upturn of good fortune have a point.
Then again perhaps they don’t. The problem with being a veteran Newcastle fan is that you don’t just expect the wheels to fall off during a good run, you can also see which wheels are loose. And we know the wheels don’t just come off, the wheels burst into flames, explode, cause countless casualties and can be responsible for third degree burns on the other side of the planet. Or at least that’s how it seemed after the catastrophic misfortune against hateful bloody Chelsea. All season it has been glaringly obvious that we would be in trouble if we lost Steven Taylor or Coloccini so it was only a matter of time before we lost both. And not to a niggle or a suspension either, Steven Taylor out for the entire season when he was in the form of his life.

Anyway thanks to the omnipresent nufc.com we got something like16 emails from New Zealand Newcastle fans last week. Organising Newcastle fans is like herding tipsy kittens at the best of times, getting them in the same bar for 1.30 in the morning is something else. Fortunately Hosam said he was going to be in The Fox down at the harbour with a couple of Chelsea fans, so I invited everybody else in the hope that they could stand between Wifey , I and the Chelsea fans, who are invariably annoying. A lot of the New Zealand Mags live outside Auckland, some said they couldn’t make it and it was half one in the bloody morning for Christ’s sake. We didn’t expect to see anyone.
Worse to follow as The Fox turned out to be a disco pumping out hi-energy beats to people who may have been dancing or may have been bumping into me on purpose. They were so drunk it was impossible to tell. We met Vint and Gill who left Gatesheed 7 years ago who were as impressed with the place as we were. The rock and roll disco medley blasting out as our players bowed their heads in respect to Gary Speed was especially moving. Hosam didn’t make himself known to us but a load of people suddenly jumped up when Tim Krul saved Frank Lampard’s penalty. Turned out they were just people who hate Chelsea. Fair enough.
At halftime we made a break for The Munster by which point Vint, Wifey, Gill and I were chatting like long lost mates. I had forgotten how much I love the way Geordie lasses say something is “fukinstupit”. In The Munster we met Natasha from Whitley Bay who has been working in Australia for a couple of years but who hopes to be back in her seat behind the dugouts at SJP for the WBA game. Her fella JJ took a picture of us all that he still hasn’t sent me, if you see them at the match, give him a nudge.
So our luck ran out with a cruel 0-3 and a mounting injury list with Wifey and I still half a world away. Which I imagine means we are free to come home – except it has started snowing in the UK and Gill is cooking us Yorkshire puddings on Sunday so we don’t want to.

Above is the new book “Spitting In The Wind” which is out now!

£11.99 With Free UK Delivery

£16.99 Delivered anywhere in Europe

£19.99 Anywhere else on The Planet

The Bay of Islands is north of Auckland in New Zealand and is an area of extraordinary beauty. We were camping (yes camping, it has come to such a thing) in an effort to save our poor battered and swiftly diminishing New Zealand dollars for a dolphin swim.

I swear I could hear them laughing at me

Swimming with dolphins being a contractual and legal obligation for travellers such as Wifey and I; in fact if you don’t throw yourself at a clicking water mammal when offered the chance they confiscate your rucksack. It is a thrilling thing to do (except when I tried to use the snorkel as a big drinking straw and nearly drowned) but I’ll not go on about it here nor will I go into any great detail about the state of New Zealand football. Suffice to say they have one team, The Wellington Phoenix, who play in black and yellow stripes in Australia’s A-League. This is the equivalent of FC Reykjavik playing in the English Second Division only to a lower standard. Their star player is Paul Ifil who you probably don’t remember playing for Millwall, Crystal Palace and Sheffield United and their goalkeeper is Tony Warner who saw little to no first team pitch time when at Liverpool.

Last weekend they played a” home match” in Auckland before a crowd of over 20,000 which is 4x the crowd they get in Wellington and drew 1-1 with Adelaide in a game featuring a diving header so brilliant that I thought of our own dear Peter Withe. Peter himself would have been proud of it. If it hadn’t been an own goal. Actually it’s not that the standard in the A-League is awful, the problem is that it isn’t bad enough; teams are too fit and organised so goals are rare. In fact all the games end 1-1.
Or maybe they don’t. Like you, I don’t really care.
Wifey was on the phone to her dad who reported great consternation afoot in Newcastle over the renaming of the stadium. “That can’t be right,” I thought, “I was positive we all agreed before I left that we would smile nicely and take the money for a name change, spend the money on new players or a new helicopter for Mr Ashley, then carry on calling our ground St James’s Park? Money for nothing.”
Apparently not, the locals are outraged and the media is awash with enraged Geordies bemoaning the sacrifice of their heritage. Is it really or is the football media machine incapable of getting through the pointless footballing desert of an International fortnight without resorting to mischief?
I’m sure many fans are enjoying themselves immensely by being upset and apoplectic with impotent rage but I’m sure more don’t know who the hell Saint James was in the first place never mind where he kept his apostrophes. ( Wikipedia says St James had a dad called Zebedee and Catholic Online says he is the patron saint of hatmakers- Newcastle’s many milliners must be beside themselves) . Surely all we are doing with this renaming idea is pretending to change our address but not ordering a removal van. It’s not like we are going to knock the ground down and move in with sunderland like what John Hall suggested. And that obviously wasn’t such a terrible crime was it, after all we named a stand after him didn’t we?

A kiwi - usually kept in the dark

Well no WE didn’t, 20 years after some lickspittles came up with the idea of rebranding The Leazes End in a disgraceful act of brown nosing we still regard anybody calling the Leazes End “The Sir John Hall Stand” with contempt, suspicion and a complete lack of credibility.
The problem obviously is that Mike Ashley has got us by the nuts and no amount of complaining, threats, boycotts and pressure groups has loosened his grip. In fact you begin to fear that the well meaning folk, those who are doing the most wriggling and Ashley hating, are the ones doing their own cause the most damage.

I don’t doubt that a more kindly billionaire turning up and calling our ground The Sir Bobby Robson Stadium, building statues of Alan Shearer along the roof in some ghastly appropriation of St Peter’s Basilica and telling us all we are the greatest fans in the world would be most welcome but does that person exist? As it stands what do we look like to potential buyers/sponsors, except a poisonous nest of mawkishly sentimental cry-babies. The chances of a big company with serious money offering us a more palatable rebranding than Sports Direct are pretty slim because our toxic objections would make it a marketing disaster. And don’t think pretty much every team in the country wouldn’t change their name to the Anusol Will Shrink Your Piles Stadium for a barrow load of cash either.

Frankly if you don’t like the idea of money being the first, last and only consideration in absolutely everything in the game, you have been watching the wrong sport for 20 years.
Of course it is difficult to actually side with the present regime, despite the fact that, at the moment, their radical blueprint looks to be working better than any of us ever hoped (I thought the loss at Man City was the most encouraging 3-1 defeat since we were last in the Camp Nou) too much bad blood has been spilled. But even on the other side of the world I tire of being told how upset I should be. I know I am also supposed to be appalled about Derek Llambias’ “foul mouthed rant” reported by Brian McNally in The Sunday Mirror except that I thought it was fun and rather refreshing especially the bit about hitting Liverpool with a £12,000 interest fee for being late with the Andy Carroll money. I actually agreed with a lot of what Llambias was reported to have ranted (Carroll not being worth 35 million, Keegan’s head being all over the place, Shearer should never have been made manager); he spoiled it by saying we make f*ck all out of merchandising recently because the obvious answer is “and whose f***ing fault do you think that is?”

Got up at 5.30am to take this

You can accuse me of not caring about Newcastle’s pride and heritage being vandalised but I’m still pissed off about people from Newcastle being responsible for the destruction of The Handyside Arcade, The Broken Doll and The Mayfair. With nothing to show for it except Eldon Gardens, a seedy bus station and The f***ing Gate. And I’m supposed to care what some advertisers, some free marketers want to call my football ground? Seriously? Because no matter what the name is changed to anybody not calling it St James’ Park is going to look like an bloody idiot.

Above is the new book “Spitting In The Wind” which is out now!

£11.99 With Free UK Delivery

£16.99 Delivered anywhere in Europe

£19.99 Anywhere else on The Planet

You have no idea how spoiled you have become in your luxury 21st Century digital playground. Yes you there too busy worrying about your job, house, family and the fact that greedy idiots are bollocksing up the planet. You don’t know you’re born………… well you probably do, you’ve probably got a birth certificate and everything and what do I know about you or your life and what business do I have shouting at you about such things when my only job here is to find a new way of calling sunderland fans inbred goat molesters for your amusement?…… sorry.
And I’ve lost all my momentum now.

Some of New Zealand recently

Wifey and I picked up a tiny hire car (a Toyota Runt Mouse with a specialist roof rack for our surf boards) in Christchurch and drove it North to Nelson, then Picton, then we got the Interislander ferry to Wellington. (No of course we haven’t got f***ing surfboards). We’ve been to Wellington before and we stayed in a place run by a peculiar retired Scottish murderer and it gave us the creeps and we didn’t like it. We barricaded our bedroom door with our rucksacks and fled before the sun came up. This time our landlord/retired murderer was a Kiwi and all the other guests were either hiding from somebody or terminally bewildered so we changed tactics; barricading our room then sneaking out the back door when nobody was looking. Bloody weird Wellington but they made it the capital so the NZ Parliament is here. It’s like, you know how the mackems didn’t want the North East Regional Assembly to be in Newcastle so they proposed Durham as the North East’s capital? Wellington is what happens when you listen to the fevered mewlings of idiots. A “capital” that everybody knows isn’t really the capital where people can murder poor backpackers and eat their eyes if they don’t barricade their rooms properly (probably).
Auckland is the capital and that is where we are heading, but we are taking our time about it. This is good because it is all too easy to rattle through New Zealand without enjoying all it has to offer. We bought a tent and sleeping bags and have been minding our poor battered budget by cooking our own meals in hostel kitchens. Hostel kitchens are great places to meet interesting folk from all round the world, they are terrible places to cook because all the knives are blunt, and there are no tea spoons, the handle has just fallen off this frying pan and 30 other people are trying to cook on the same stove.
A lot of these places charge for internet coverage by the hour, so you can’t help but think, f*** it I don’t need to check Twitter, emails or nufc.com twice a day and so you get strangely isolated from your own life. And that’s where we are right now, isolated from our own life, granted it’s a nice isolation where the sun shines hot in November, the ocean is a clear blue/green colour and the beer and wine is all delicious. But when your whole life has been marked by football matches and live shows, to be estranged from both for a prolonged period starts to get on your nerves. Rise Against at the O2, Mariachi El Bronx at the Cluny and now brilliant acerbic comedian Doug Stanhope is playing Newcastle as well. Seriously why don’t you all get Rancid to play in my f***ing garden while I’m away as well, just to really piss me off.
In Gisborne we finally cracked and booked into a motel for a couple of days, ostensibly to wash our clothes, ourselves and cook without groups of sunbathing Germans flopping and barking all over the place like bloody sea lions. But the first thing we did was flip the TV on to see if we could catch the Everton game. We already missed the game at Stoke because it kicked off at 9 am Tuesday morning and no pubs were open. We were also both convinced that Newcastle would lose at Stoke and I was preparing a piece on what a disgrace that was; our lack of height and cover in defence leaving us woefully ill equipped to deal with Pulis’ bullyboy tactics and not wanting to risk Hatem Ben Arfa against the detestable likes of Shawcross and Huth being a savage indictment of what Stoke expect to get away with.
We filled the time by doing a Parliament tour and were surprised in the bit where everybody has to introduce themselves to the group by an Aussie voice barking “Have we beaten Stoke yet?” when Wifey and I said we were from Newcastle. As the tour proceeded along corridors we jabbered happily with Simon from Melbourne who has been a nufc fan for 25 years. Yes yes the building is balanced on big rubber springs to combat earthquakes and the carpet is the same design as Parliament in London but why the hell did Simon think we were going to win at Stoke?
I switched my phone back on at the end of the tour and the three of us waited for news from the Potteries. This took longer than we expected because Tim, in charge of sending the score, milked his position with regular updates of all noteworthy incidents. Essentially we relived the highlights until Simon let out a shout that probably disturbed the Minister for Fisheries when the 3-1 final score was announced. Since then we have singularly failed to catch any of the goals until this morning we saw a Premiership Preview show in the Motel. It was like watching Saint and Greavsie in the 80s during that awful period where ITV had exclusive rights to show football in the UK and didn’t know what to do with them. Where you spent half an hour every Saturday hoping for the merest glimpse of a black and white shirt and were invariably disappointed. All we saw this morning was Ba thump in the penalty from a camera shot that didn’t show the ball. Perhaps the game is best left to my imagination where Newcastle, resplendent in black, are majestic, where Ba’s goals are things of power and beauty and where the hateful Pulis rings his hands and explodes with frustration as his team of thugs and monsters is dismantled by the tactical genius of Pardew and his plucky handsome charges.
Our motel has Sky Sports (NZ) 1 and 2. The Everton game is on 3. I don’t know why that bothers me so much because I can never remember games against Everton. For some reason Everton matches slip my mind entirely within a fortnight of the final whistle no matter who gets sent off or if we score 6 or lose to a scabby deflection. (I do recall bits of a 1-1 we watched in New York but that was balanced out by having no recollection of the next ten hours thanks to the NYC Mags).
Sky Sports in New Zealand is run by a malicious mackem (probably) so the only repeat showing is 5am on Thursday morning. So you can see Match of the Day and I can’t and I’m not very happy about it. Which is why I was all snippy at the start. I genuinely hope you enjoy it.

We have spent two weeks in Kaikoura which is on the east coast of the Southern Island of New Zealand. A two hour drive north from poor earthquake battered Christchurch, it is a place that has haunted our waking dreams for over two years.
Originally a whaling town, Kaikoura has a peninsula that gives it a northern and southern bay and just off shore there is a deep undersea trench that teems with so much sea life that the ocean is bouncing with whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, fish and the crayfish that give this place its Maori name. Geography lesson over.

You Could Live Here

Wifey and I spent a day here two and a half years ago basking in an afternoon sun while sat out the back of The Whaler drinking Monteith’s Radler . The ocean glittered blue/green behind us and snow capped peaks dominated the view north. During the moments where we have questioned the wisdom of this trip, like with the rain battering on our corrugated iron roof in Costa Rica, huddled under blankets in snowy Chile or on hearing gunshots in the night in California, we have wished ourselves here.
Radler is a New Zealand brewed lager that some of the locals call God’s Tears and it is a marvel and a curse. A marvel because it’s 5% strong but washes through your mouth all crisp, sparkling and delicious. But it’s also a curse because you quickly grow to loath inferior lagers; I found myself growling at a Carlsberg advert that was on TV last night and the memory of drinking Budweiser or Foster’s makes me angry.

We are staying in a hostel, Dusky Lodge, which attracts a multi-national multi-aged swarm with most people stopping for just a day or two. The whales they used to hunt here are now the principal tourist attraction and while the size of a sperm whale does knock your socks off, the speed and athleticism of the resident dusky dolphins blows them clean off the ocean’s stage. 25 km up the road there is a fur seal crèche where pups are left by the adults while they go fishing. It is a pool under a waterfall where pups leap, splash and play fight unconcerned by the presence of people with their own squealing young.
You could live here alright, providing you take two or three jobs which everyone staying here long term seems to do; an Irish guy in the hostel cleans here for accommodation and works at the Strawberry Tree pub for food, beer and pocket money. A trainer at the local gym cooks at The Whaler and there is a busker/ wine merchant who also claims to be Lord Mayor. At this point I must remember to say “Moi” to our new Finnish mate Henri.
“Hostel?” you say, “like what winos live in?” – yeah, just like that only the balcony outside our room overlooks the mountains and the ocean, the TV has got Sky and we have grown uncommonly accustomed to having a sauna, pool and Jacuzzi. Our much needed detox week was helped by the tap water being as nice as water can be.

Eyes Like Shola

Detox over; at the weekend we sat outside until 1am drinking whiskey with Jacob, a big Maori guy, and his mates after New Zealand won the rugby World Cup. I didn’t have the first clue or interest in rugby and probably still won’t have when we leave here but it was so important to the Kiwis that you couldn’t help getting caught up in it. On this occasion the team overcame their natural inclination to choke: finalists France were organised, brutal and were grinding New Zealand out of the game with the Kiwis 8-7 ahead. One kick would have been enough for the French to win but New Zealand had the ball and despite looking like they were going to lose they got up and fought back harder. With the crowd in The Whaler, and probably the entire country, shouting “Heave heave!” at the final scrums The All Blacks won through sheer mental and physical toughness. It was ugly and primeval and I’m not sure I want to see another game but we were caught up in the moment and to see a nation earn something they wanted so badly was heart warming. And to us, as Newcastle fans, unusual.
I have proclaimed myself His Excellency The Grand President of the Newcastle United Fans Association of Kaikoura (HEGPNUFAK). I was elected unopposed to this position with Wifey refusing to recognise my authority and having no desire to join any club that would have me as a member. She did however join me to see a delayed showing of our game against Wigan at the weekend.
I got up at 6.30 on Sunday morning to stake out a claim in front of the only TV in the building that has Sky. So I saw Norwich draw at Liverpool with Andy Carroll just failing to score in the 5th minute of 3 added on minutes of stoppage time. I guess people must be taking Liverpool seriously again if they are having games lengthened for their convenience like in the old days. I was joined by a South African lad called Grant for Bolton v sunderland. Grant supports Man U because he is old enough to remember South African Gary Bailey playing for the reds and is thus defensive about being called a glory hunter. Later by the pool, he turned out to be a superb football free stylist, during a performance where he did a handstand on a balcony with a football trapped between foot and shin on each leg.
I explained to Grant what the FTM flag was behind the goal and he said, “but they are not playing Newcastle, why would they do that?” – Because they are creepy and obsessive about us like filthy trousered perverts.
Halfway through the second half of our disappointing and lacklustre performance against arguably the worst team in The Premiership we became aware of another presence in the room, a lass. “Is this from yesterday?” she asked. “About 3 o’clock this morning but yes in that it’s Sunday and this is Saturday.”
“Doing quite well Newcastle,” she continued, “more luck than anything probably.” We muttered darkly, unwilling to be distracted from concentrating on the grinding frustration. Deep in the back of my brain I picked up an accent, in our peripheral vision she was twitching when we were twitching but introductions could wait. As you no doubt know, Newcastle improved in the second half although chances remained elusive, bloody typical of us to lose to this lot, we thought. When you can hear individual shouts inside SJP it is traditionally time to worry so what joy, what a nice surprise and how wonderful of Yohan Cabaye to score such a peach to win the game for us. All three of us jumped up shouting at the goal and then we gasped and twisted on our sofas as Newcastle held on.

No Radler in the Adelphi

Ashleigh the lass was called, her Mam lives in Gosforth. She hasn’t lived in Newcastle for 12 years but has visited and is due home for Christmas. We chatted all morning then, as is often the nature of hostels, we never saw her again.
It is a strange transitory life this. Exciting and boring, encouraging and over whelming, with all the good and bad that comes with being rootless, homeless and beholden to no one. Tomorrow I must hang up the ceremonial seal-skin robes and dolphin- head hat, put down the whale bone sceptre (that exist only in my head) and give up my title as HEGPNUFAK for we leave Kaikoura. This feels easier than I expected. For one reason I see that Rise Against have released my favourite recent song Satellite as a single and have added a heap of new dates to their gruelling touring schedule. It is bad enough that they are in Newcastle in November but the list of dates now includes, Rome, Prague and Moscow and it is never a list that is going to have Kaikoura on it so we can’t live here. Also the mountains are shrouded in fog today, rain falls on our view of the sea and we have been in one place a fortnight. More than enough, even for a place with the best bar and chip shop you could imagine.

Nobody likes a bully but special contempt should be kept for the bully’s mate. The snivelling little shithouse who stands behind the bully shaking his fist at you and making snidy comments. At school they were miserable cowards prepared to be regularly humiliated by the bully just so they could avoid being actually bullied. They were to be hated rather than pitied because without them the bully would have had no audience to perform for, less power and consequently could have been beaten. The modern equivalent is Nick Clegg.
When thrashings are administered by the bully the bully’s mate will stick the boot in with extra spite and the bullied at this point should always make the point to think, “when I get you on your own I’m going to f*** you up like a car crash.” After the bully has been expelled or been found hanging from fishing wire in the vicar’s potting shed the bully’s mate will deny all wrong doing and will try to become your mate. At which point this person must be humiliated because they will snipe at you again given the chance.
Those of us under the battered banner of Newcastle United can speak of bullying from experience, having been kicked round the street for years at a time with nobody willing or capable to stick up for us. In the relegation season in particular we were constantly reminded that we were culpable in our own downfall what with our unreasonable expectations and our delusional stupidity.
Flicking round the online newspapers at Sydney airport recently I stumbled across a piece by Guardian journalist Paul Hayward wherein he cobbled a thoughtful piece out of quotes from NUFC chief scout Graham Carr that he had found in The Sunday Sun. Hayward made some interesting points about picking quality French players up that seemed to have a sub-text of knocking Arsene Wenger’s dominance in the field. Compliments for Carr and our recent promising start were fair enough along with nakedly obvious remarks like, “Adversity will strike Alan Pardew’s side at some stage in this season and then we will assess their true calibre.” But the quote that bugged me all the way to Christchurch was: “ In defending their club against “southern” critics some Newcastle fans have acquired quite a persecution complex. They assume all scrutiny is hostile when much of it is directed at mismanagement from above rather than the team or the congregation.” – Say what now?
So now we’re paranoid, are we? Like all that criticism we got was a figment of our own fevered imaginings, was it? And this complex we have developed is because of our feebleminded distrust of southerners? Like I don’t remember Mr Hayward himself on Sky’s Sunday Supplement with his sneering accusative attitude, don’t criticize my persecution complex sir, not when you helped train it to be so battle hardened. And like The Guardian in particular hasn’t been guilty of what some might consider a vendetta against Newcastle United supporters that has verged on the unethical. What are we this week, racist or islamaphobic or is this a week where we don’t know who we are? I’m an entire planet away from my arsenal of press cuttings but haven’t we been “moronic” as well?

Remember when Newcastle fans rioted in the street to protest about the signing of Andy Cole because we didn’t want a black player in the team? No of course you can’t because it never happened – did The Guardian happily publish this as fact within the last 2 years? You bet they did and a pretty good job I didn’t hold my breath waiting for an apology either. If they did apologise I didn’t hear it and I wouldn’t accept it anyway. Sanctimonious shit-rag assumes nobody in Newcastle buys it so they can say what they like because we are all too busy planting whippet seeds in our allotments to read about villas in Tuscany and where to send Jocasta for her Introduction to Patronising Peasants classes.
We are not overly precious and we do not think we or our club are beyond criticism. Our persecution complex is not limited to the southern press because elements of the north eastern press have been guilty over fawning over Saint Niall and everything that happens at The Stadium of Empty Faded Pink Seats as a way of belittling us. Our persecution complex wasn’t built by us, it was built for us and if we object to some half-wit knocking out ill-informed crap about us and our football team every time they have got half a page to fill then it is our duty to throw rotten vegetables at them.
And if Paul Haywood doesn’t like cabbages bouncing off his big forehead he should stay out of our garden.

I’ve been working in Australia for the last three weeks. I haven’t got a visa to work and it’s awful tough to get one when you’re my age so I could be concerned that Julia Gillard, the nice Welsh ginger lady who runs the country, might want to tell me off. Fortunately for me she has got more important things to worry about; what with plummeting popularity and even her own supporters commenting that she has got a big bottom. (In the interests of sexual equality and political balance could I just point out that David Cameron has got a fat arse as well – oh hang on, that’s his face). Also I have cunningly avoided extradition by skipping the country and am now in Kaikoura in New Zealand.

And when I say “working” I mean working on this old drivel which has involved me travelling around South Eastern Australia interviewing Newcastle fans. And when I say “interviewing” I mean “drinking beer with”. At last I have found a job at which I am naturally gifted and when I say “gifted” I obviously mean “addicted to”. “Play to your strengths old boy,” as my grandfather would undoubtedly say if he wasn’t so very dead.
The first problem with football in Australia is that you often have to say “soccer” (I’m going to wear these bastard speech marks out at this rate) or folk will think you are talking about Aussie Rules Football which more people pay to watch live here than our own round ball game. My DJing mate from The Riverside (*) in Newcastle should be thanked at this point for being our cultural guide.

All visitors are obliged to take this picture

James now lives in Sydney and he has been our cultural guide and mobile diplomatic ambassador for the last three weeks. He also got us a dog sitting gig which meant we couldn’t get down to meet the Melbourne Mags but we did spend a week living in a mansion catering for a terrier named Doogie who let us use his swimming pool. James took his appointment as Cultural Ambassador very seriously; he bought a case of Blue Tongue lager within half an hour of picking us up from the airport and made us watch the Aussie Rules Grand Final between The Geelong Cats and Collingwood. Geelong were disappointing in that they didn’t turn out to be actual cats or in any way feline and we were instructed to support Collingwood anyway because they play in black and white stripes. Unfortunately our support meant Collingwood lost. Apparently. I didn’t have a bloody clue what we were looking at to be perfectly honest; random violence perpetuated by homo-erotic boys in tight vests grappling with each other on a converted cricket pitch obviously has an appeal here but interestingly soccer recently overtook fishing as the sport most Aussies actually participate in.
The Aussie rules ran seamlessly into England v Scotland in the Rugby World Cup. “Seamlessly” in that my level of disinterest and bewilderment continued despite the temptation to jibe defeated and mouthy Scotsmen. Thanks to the time difference there was 10 hours drinking time between first pint and Wolves v Newcastle. We were back in Doogie’s mansion in good time and we thought the Merseyside derby would keep us all awake. “Pissed it,” I announced to Wifey and James in the morning, who had both failed to survive the trials of the day, as had Doogie. They all looked at me suspiciously when reading the match report on nufc.com but I was unmoved; “I distinctly remember being unconcerned,” I said, my memory of a lucky penalty decision and Wolves having a late goal disallowed being considerably less distinct.
My other advisers/contacts in Oz have been Steven in Sydney (a native of the Newcastle in Australia which has a Wallsend and a Morpeth near it), Marty in Brisbane (“A piece of my soul dies every time somebody says soccer”) and Andrew in Noosa (who has a “Toon Room” in his house and an NUFC 1 number plate on his car). All were up to speed with squad, injuries, form, fixtures and gossip. Interesting that Yohan Cabaye should be a favourite across the planet so soon, testament to the qualities of 21st Century communication and of the player himself.
As to domestic soccer: the profile took a leap forward with the recent arrival of Brett Emerton and Harry Kewell at Sydney and Melbourne respectively. As chance would have it the two faced each other on the opening weekend of the season in early October. Emerton had a penalty saved and Kewell a header blocked in a 0-0 draw. James’ season ticket at Sydney is about £120 and the standard is described by Steven as “mostly non-league with a few Championship players”. There is one New Zealand team in the League, from Wellington, and goalkeeper Tony Warner who warmed benches at Liverpool and Celtic made his debut for them at the weekend. It made the T.V. news in Kaikoura.
Talking of news, also interesting was that England playing a qualifying match and Rooney (the pampered, stroppy child who has been indulged to his country’s detriment) being sent off didn’t enter any of my conversations with Mags in Australia until James and I saw a replay 3 days later on the World Soccer highlights show. The highlights show seems to be the only free to air chance ex-pats have got of seeing football without Fox Sports. The highlights are weird with lots of interviews and little action, like they are allowed just enough highlights to underline how inadequate they are but the presenters present like they are battling for football in a hostile environment so you’ve got to love them.
Andrew up in Noosa (a thousand km drive from Sydney and worth the trip because it is stunning) underlined the main down side of being a Newcastle fan in Australia; “the first game after I moved here they had a crowd shot from St James’ and they showed my seat and the people I used to sit with and I nearly burst into tears.” Andrew, as well as being keen that I passed on his best wishes to all involved at The Mag and nufc.com, asked for special mention of Wendy Taylor’s efforts for the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation which can be found at www.justgiving.com/wendynufc – which I think I have just done.

Andrew in Noosa, who then had to wash his hands.

So The Furious World Tour has arrived in New Zealand where the Spurs and Wigan games kick off at 4 & 3am respectively. If you are or know anybody who might be awake at that time give me a shout at billyfurious@googlemail.com or billyfurious1st on Twitter or next month’s article will be “I Saw Some Dolphins and Drank a Gallon of Montieth’s Radler.”
(*) Speaking of the Riverside, Hazel Plater and Carl Taylor have just released a book and a labour of love through Tonto Books: -Riverside: Newcastle’s Legendary Alternative Music Venue. When bands said “this is the best gig on the tour so far” this book explains why, when they were in Newcastle, they f***ing meant it.