Bring me sunshine, Gary and Gareth (From This Is Local London)

Bring me sunshine, Gary and Gareth

7:29pm Thursday 4th August 2011 in Colin Baker By Colin Baker

IT’S the first week in August and football returns to Adams Park on Saturday, when Scunthorpe kick off the Wanderers first home match in their new season back in League 1. I am experiencing a mixture of emotions. Because our summer began and stopped in April and has only just poked its shy nose around the door again this last week, the onset of the football season brings with it an inescapable feeling of a headlong rush into autumn before we’ve had enough time to start complaining properly about the heat.

In an ideally constructed seasonal world, we would have been sated with barbecues, Pimms and hot summer evenings by now and looking forward to the post harvest easing into the cooler autumnal weather that comes with the football season. I know of at least one person, the wife of a good friend, who believes so strongly that football really shouldn’t start until September that she refuses to go until then.

So, as a football fan, I can’t wait to lock horns with my friends again in our Fantasy Football League, which occupied more of my time than it really should last year (and to being higher than third this year!) I can’t wait to see what the new Blues team is like after the many interesting looking signings of the summer. I look forward to catching up with the usual suspects who sit around us in Adams Park on a fortnightly basis, when I am not prevented from being there by a matinee somewhere. It is quite exciting and a time when hope is irrationally allowed to override caution and small dreams of further advancement up the League are indulged in.

But at the same time, one cannot help but be aware that another summer is coming to an end and the days are getting shorter again. I am currently working in the theatre and touring the country, so I enter the stage door in daylight and leave in darkness, unaware, at the moment, when that transition takes place until each Sunday when I do not work. But my seasonal ‘disaffective’ disorder aside (and all seasons do actually have their unique charms) – the prospect of watching our local team demonstrating their fitness to be in League 1 and inspiring dreams of loftier climes one day is one that I eagerly anticipate. So bring it on Gary, Gareth and boys.