The Diary Of A Gooner

Vital Arsenal welcomes all views from it’s readers & Gunnerblood will be writing his weekly artcile aptly named……….’The Diary Of A Gooner’.

This weeks edition is titled

Adventures In Spuddyville

Well here it is, after a little coaxing, my first forray into the world of online article writing. They say that when it comes to this sort of thing it is best to stick to what you know and I think that this sounds like good advice. However, recently I have taken a interest in wildlife and this is where I would like to begin. By no means could I be considered an expert in this field as my studies in college were more centred on human concerns, so in terms of the natural world, I am what you might call, an ‘enthusiastic amateur’.

That said, the area that I am particularly interested in at the moment concerns some rather unusual creatures that I have been observing in their natural habitat. Many of you will be familiar with these creatures, but I do hope that my research may bring some new learning to our community, so that we may gain a greater insight into them and their strange little world. The creatures are known as ‘Spuds’, but have also been called ‘Totts’ (and numerous other names that I can’t mention here). They inhabit a physical world very close to our homeland, yet to say this only scatches the surface of the world they have made their own. For in fact they have also created a ‘metaphysical’ or imaginary world and this is where they start to become quite fascinating. Allow me to explain. In my research I dared to travel into this imaginary world to study this phenomena up close. Yes my friends, to undertake this experiment, I had to travel to darkest ‘Spuddyville’. I realised that the only way to trully understand these beasts was to attempt to see the world as they see it (dangerous, I know). So, using a bag of crisps and some shiny things I managed to capture one of these ‘Spuds’ and made it speak (lengthy hours of speech therapy, believe me!). So what follows are the ramblings of ‘Inferious Spudicus: The Lesser known Tott’, be warned my friends, we are going to the bad place!

‘Welcome to Spuddyville, home of the Spud. In Spuddyville we have the greatest football team in the whole world. What’s that I hear you say? Trophies? No, no, no! We have no need of such trinkets to prove our greatness, our success is based on the fact that we . . . . . . eh . . . eh . . . . . . . . are . . . .eh . . . . simply the best, yes that’s it! My great grandad supported Spuds you know! We refuse to be judged by your standards (and the standards of the sane world). We are the mighty Spuds! We are all about tradition. Other clubs have wasted their whole histories trying to ‘win stuff’, what do they know of tradition? . . . . .Okay, so you say we have a tradition of losing, but how blind you are! We may have lost, but such glorious defeats! . . . . . .It could have been so different you know, we were invaded! That’s right, invaded, by a ‘red peril’. And it’s not bloody fair! We could have been huge, huge I tell you. But that’s not what we’re about at Spuds. Success, ha! We don’t need it and we don’t want it. For we are the greatest! We have tradition, heritage . . . . . . . . .did I mention my great grandad? . . . Anyway, these red interlopers have been brain-washed by the idea that world class players, a genial manager, countless victories and cups, free-flowing – at times breathtaking – football, a new state of the art stadium and a massive fan base make for having a great club. The fools! Do they not realise that football is about tradition . . . . my great grandad .. . .eh . where was I? Oh yes these fools think that success is measured by . . eh . . . .erm . . . . . wotsit . . .eh . . well success I suppose. Fools. Now they find themselves in some big final or other, they think that makes them big time Charlies. Think we are jealous or something? Don’t you believe it! We don’t have expectations at our club, that way we can never be disappointed. Haha! How clever is that? It’s not like we don’t know what winning is all about, I can remember me great grandad . . . . . . .did I mention he was a Spud, I’ve got pedigree me . . . . . . telling me about some matches we won before the war, what great times they must have been. But it’s not about winning anyway, it’s about tradition, it’s about dressing up like a giant chicken . . . . .eh . . . . . . it’s about waking up every day and being safe in the knowledge that being terminally mediocre is the path of the righteous. We are the greatest! Arsenal???????? Don’t be soft! They have nothing, NOTHING! They moved here and took what should have been ours . . . . .my great grandad . sitting on his knee. . . a giant cockerill . . . . tradition . . . . . when the year ends in one . . . . . .Spuds are the greatest, Spuds are the greatest, Spuds are the greatest, Spuds are the great . . .’

And there we will have to leave our subject, for after his chanting trailed off he just began to rock back and forth, muttering incomprehensively to himself. Sad really, but I hope that by taking on this experiment, I may hopefully have shed a little more light on these creatures and the dark world they inhabit. They are afflicted by delusions of grandeur, a massive persecution complex and by mal-adaptive cognitions or skewed thinking that redefines and reshapes the world to suit whatever crazed notions they hold up to be sacred.

It was an experiment that was full of risk, I exposed myself to the
insanity of these beasts and their ‘different’ (trying hrd not to use the word ‘mental’) world they have created, but I did it for you my brothers
and sisters, so that together we might better understand these poor sods.

Don’t hate them my friends, pity them.




More from GunnerBlood next week……….