Going Underground

wolves-fans

Well this is nice isn’t it? The 35 odd people who followed the blog are now the only ones to see it. I’ve set it to private, now it’s just us. You and me. I’ve spent so long on the bottom that everything looks like up. I think that was Neil Young, who knows? The reason I’ve taken it out of circulation is that, well it was too big. I was getting a lot of traffic and attention. I didn’t like it. It was affecting my football love. Match days started to become days of drinking with people I hardly knew. People who would read my thoughts on supporting Wolves and not really understand what it’s actually like to grow up a few yards away from Molineux and to live and actually breath the air of my club. I had some doughnut constantly denigrating Costa in my earhole last Saturday at Barnsley. He knew me but I didn’t know him. It was a provocation. It was reading my love for Costa on the blog and he got a hard on using it as a screwdriver to get under my armour. It was shameful. What did I do? I looked at Nuno for a few minutes with his arms crossed. It was good. Thank you Nuno.

I know opposition fans didn’t like my thoughts about their teams and I can understand that. But I’m not writing for them, I’m writing for a handful of people. Not the 35,000 who have viewed the site this week. I don’t feel that Shaky Jake should be thought about by these people, I don’t think Gaz Mastic should have been either. I haven’t used them. I’ve been inspired by them, my story is theirs and yours I suppose too. The posts may have been seen as pretentious but that was never a thing. It was just love thats all. My club can rarely do wrong in my eyes. Managers, players, whatever. Now me Jake and Gaz can get on with knowing each other and learning to be friends and that’s good too.

We went to dinner with Alex Rae and the things he said there made me want to punch him in the face. How fucking dare he say he preferred to play for Sunderland. You see? That was his truthful speech. He’s a lovely man. But the second he said he loved playing for another club he became the enemy. I shouldn’t be invited to these places and the blog has made that possible. I have met former players at these dinners and I have found them lacking. I have met my heroes and seen them just as me, mortal and aged. Bitter in some cases and much jealousy too. I have met other Wolves fans too, people who would normally pass me by without a glance and I have found them lacking too, lacking in that they lack the capacity to understand what is actually happening in this city. I could weep. Sometimes being crazy is a strange and lonely place.

I’ll carry on doing the blog for everybody here because I’m scared that if I stop some line of Kwan will be broken and I don’t want that at all. We have to stop believing and start knowing. But at last I can breathe easy and keep getting to know Gaz and Jake a little better by maybe going to see them for a chat instead of farting around trying to explain why Rafa Mir is like a shopping trolley and who the fuck Melissa Multipack is to people I don’t know on Social Media.

The world will keep turning I suppose and there will be other Wolves blogs, people wanting to write stuff about Wolves and that’s good. But this place will be where the ‘strange’ people talk about Wolves and this place will be that corner of the Southbank where the rain used to blow in, we would huddle around in small groups because there was only five thousand of us there. We would laugh and sing and that pain of our distress would go away for a little while but we have to remember that pain is also the thing that holds us together in mad times like these. Yes, that’s what this blog should be, just friends talking together at half time.

Do we still resist everything? Yes we do. We resist not supporting your team 100% We resist denigrating your own players. We resist your petty arguments. We resist your poor ideas as well. Now me and Horace can carry on getting to know each other properly and that has been interrupted over the last month. My friendship with him is a solid and real thing and we can share a coffee again and a cheese toastie if he’s buying while we talk about Wolves and have a good fucking moan about other things.

Peace

Mikey

39 thoughts on “Going Underground

  1. Keep strong, I appreciate you letting me in to your inner sanctum. Please enjoy the match first and if we are lucky enough to get a blog then that will be a bonus
    Thanks Mark

  2. Hi Michael – just read this post and I reckon I understand your motivation in going behind a wall. Your blog has definitely become “a thing” and the power of social media is increasing the power of that thing.

    Your words are being read by many thousands and if each person is a tapestry of differing experience, pysche and outlook then the thing that brings us all together is the one common thread in that tapestry that we all share – our love of Wolves. People will read your words, relate to them and think because of that they know you. It’s bollocks of course because how can we. Then again I’m as guilty of that as anyone.

    In truth I feel sure we could share and enjoy a pint together as I sense I share your optimistic desire to remain positive at all times on all aspects of Wolves. I similarly despise the Molineux spending each game trying my hardest to telepathically transmit my own positive thoughts on to Helder as I am desperate for him to shine. I was a journalist, I love language and I am huge fan of your writing. It is free of the constricting straight-jacket of formal training and it has a vibrancy & imagery that is fresh.

    However, I know that beyond the three W’s of Wolves, words & Wolver-rampton we would have very little in common, little to naturally bind us together as friends. The second half of my career was spent in Boardrooms. I live in a big house. I drive a big Audi ffs. You would probably dismiss me as a Roger the Tosser from Tettenhall even though I don’t live there. And yet I would still regard us as friends albeit superficial social media ones – pathetic ay it.

    I guess what you have experienced in an extremely minor way is the effects of celebrity (remembering not to pronounce the ‘t’) and I don’t blame you for wanting to reject it.

    I hope you find your way back to Twitter though if only to keep us up to date with what your face is doing each morning.

    Keep up the writing please for your own sanity & for the enjoyment of the few of us who have made it over the wall.

    And maybe, just maybe we might share a pint together one day & muse over the Three W’s – who knows.

    1. Hello ahk…well, most of my friends are indeed Multi Millionaires, one has a yacht in Italy he uses to fart around the Med. One of them just bought a Bugatti for 300K, I’ve been to dinners where I’ve mixed with more of them, in Wolves and around the UK. In fact I talk to them more than I do ‘normal’ folk simply because I get on with them and they trust me, they know I’m not in the least bit impressed by their cash and they listen to my tales of laying slabs for 30 quid a day with amazement. One of them (my mate Luke) comes around my house every week for egg and chips, he loves it, it’s the best meal he eats hahahahaha… But they also know if they have a problem in their lives they can talk to me honestly and get a well thought out and honest answer. The dichotomy of the well heeled and the ‘poor’ is one I never see, we are all human. At New Cross I sat having chemotherapy with folk that had all the generic trappings of wealth, the cars, the holidays and the big houses and I watched them succumb to their disease as mine disappeared. That wealth they worked hard to accrue was in the end useless to them so what value is success? Financial security? I don’t think it has any value at all. At the moment I am indeed broke, I’ve got two quid and I’m going to spend that by getting the birds in the garden a fat ball, I love to watch them fly around. I do live hand to mouth, I swear I’ve never had the breaks others have had, chances seem to be something other people have but I’m alive, breathing, having a laugh, enjoying my life totally, I could do with a new back tyre for me mountain bike and a set of guitar strings for my electric guitar (we just formed a band) but that’s it. I stand on the Southbank and to be honest win or lose I love every second of it and I love writing about it, but more importanly I love writing for people that love what I write and that is the greatest payoff ever…but if any of my millionaire friends want to buy me a car that would be good, I think the steering pump on my van is on the way out hahahahahahaha Respect brother X

  3. btw – if you’ve had about a hundred invite requests from RahRah85 she isn’t a spambot. It’s actually GingerNinja aka @sarerahrah. I told her I would let you know

  4. Fair play Mikey, once it starts to creep into real/surreal life it’s a problem. Thanks for adding me and keep up the beautiful work, but only as long as you are enjoying it. It is not a fucking obligation mate and don’t let it become one

  5. Thanks Mikey, I appreciate the add, your words help keep me grounded amidst the crazy.
    But like Nunos team, can’t allow them to get pulled out of shape or distorted, becoming something you didn’t intend.
    It’s the authenticity thats the joy. Ta man.

  6. Thanks for allowing me to keep reading you. I’ll be honest. I don’t get some of what you say. Moved away from Wolverhampton at a young age and lived most of my life in the South. However your writing and musings always make me laugh and make me feel closer to the team and place of birth. Thanks and keep them coming. 👍🐺

  7. Some people look at life through a different lens, particularly all things WWFC…if you’ve created a space for like minded people then it’s all good with me fella

  8. Chuffed to be here!
    You had me worried.
    Keep in that good place – stay safe.
    P.S. If you haven’t seen the new film about Churchill, there’s a class line at the end that made me think of you. Mobilising the English language to take into battle – look it up or watch the film.

  9. Hi Mikey,
    Thanks for letting me back in. Good to see that there is also room for us 1970’s North Bank Boys in this place. Keep on keepin’ on
    OODCL

  10. Mikey, I tried to write in praise of your blogs but it all looks wank written down. Suffice to say they move and inspire me. Please do them as long as you want to

  11. Im one of the twats you dont know, (me dad got run out of the Scotlands in 1967 still not sure why) and I sit in the north bank now , sadly within earshot of that complete cunt Charles fucking Ross talking absolute shite non stop for 90 minutes every home game. Keep going mate, twitter was full of conspiracy theories last weekend but glad to see you’re still writing.

  12. You have a great way of expressing the things many of us feel or would want to say (and not just about Wolves) but lack the talent (not education, we got that !) to do so. Stay strong.