In My Life

We tend to form oddly physical connections with the places that are important or significant to us. Look, for instance, at the flowers that invariably get tied to lampposts at the scene of fatal road accidents; the location of a loved one's death is arguably as important to grieving friends and relatives as the numerous places they frequented when alive.

Though not on the same scale, us football fans are possessive of our ground in a similar way. When the Hawthorns pitch was relaid in the early Nineties, fans bid huge amounts (by the impoverished standards of Black Country folks at the time) for chunks of the old turf. Just a few blades of the grass that were trodden by the likes of Jeff Astle, Bomber Brown, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham acted like a religious relic to many fans. And when the old stands were demolished a year or two later, mementoes again became very precious; that's when this chunk of wooden seating from the Smethwick End was taken by a local craftsman and reshaped into a "commemorative" bowl.

It doesn't exude any special powers as far as I can tell, and you can't hear the roar of the old "Smerrick" if you lift it to your ear. You can, however, watch with silent satisfaction when you invite Villa-supporting friends over for dinner, and they greedily scoff their meal from a container that has been consecrated by its sustained contact with tens of thousands of Albion arses.