retiredmartin

June 2024. Wimbledon.

It was worth making the effort of getting those Two Together rail cards renewed, as our returns from Dorking to Wimbledon on a Sunday evening cost £4, which will almost buy you an espresso in the country I’ve just left.

I was beyond excited at a trip to South West London for a brewery tap tick with limited opening, said no-one ever.

But it must have been more than a decade, perhaps before Manchester City incurred those 115 charges, when I last emerged at Wimbledon central, and there’s a thrill about seeing any UK town again after a long time. I know there’s tennis and a “village” somewhere, but I reckon the theatre is the highlight. We shall see.

Inevitably our GBG tick is a dull slog eastwards, the mysterious Haydon’s Road closed on Sundays,

and the views will only appeal to fans of a certain sort of London suburbia.

Our target is the By the Horns tap, relocated from an industrial estate to the shiny new AFC Wimbledon ground on Plough Lane, which seems determined to commemorate Mike Bassett, England manager. What we’d do for a Mike Bassett now to put that showboating Bellingham in his place.

I never made it to the Old Plough Lane, watching the Crazy Gang at the less than crazy Crystal Palace ground in front of 6,099 fans before they were rescued by a scruffy bloke in Milton Keynes.

I reckon there’s more 6,099 folk living in the flats outside the sparking new ground,

which does a splendid job of commemorating the past and looking to a future finishing just above Walsall in League 2.

It’s 7pm on Sunday and there’s impressive security for an empty stadium, we get a friendly guided escort from the club offices to the Phoenix bar. It would be easier to get on the pitch at the Etihad.

Well, I guess it’s a bar for match days, but surely there’s only 25 of those a year, and it’s deadly quiet apart from Mrs RM tapping on her phone,

and an eclectic soundtrack handpicked by a lonely barman, who was apologetic at the state of the two By the Horns cask beers (both off).

I’m giving the Phoenix the benefit of the doubt, as the crafty keg was tasty,

though I didn’t enjoy having to finish Mrs RM’s beer (again) as we dashed for the bus to whizz us back to Wimbledon central, and a pleasant surprise.