I was reminded of this absolute gem from the Homes of Football collection as I stood on that very corner this afternoon, people-watching, noticing the groups of families and friends going about their matchday rituals of meeting, queuing, eating, all bright and hopeful in the sun. Half a mind, like the rest of us, on the occasion being marked down the road, with a service at Anfield: the eighteenth anniversary of the deaths at Hillsborough on a day just like this, an epic peacetime tragedy which scarred so many families and neighbourhoods of our city.
Contemplating this picture, studying the real-life moving picture outside Goodison this afternoon, recalling the earlier conversation with my next-door neighbour still haunted by the events of 15 April 1989 when his friend died at a football match, it struck me again how in places like ours, at times like this, community, family, place, presence - all these unfashionable things - still flourish.
If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely - You are a lucky man! If you've found the reason to live on and not to die - You are a lucky man! Preachers and poets and scholars don't know it, Temples and statues and steeples won't show it, If you've got the secret just try not to blow it - Stay a lucky man! (Alan Price)
And lucky too, all of us, to be the privileged ones who witnessed first hand James McFadden strike the goal of the season.....
john davies
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