“Bloomin’ heck, Natty! What brings you here!”

It was the first time I’d seen Nathaniel ‘Gypsy’ Palmer since Wolves had left their old Dudley Road ground, never to return. In the days when football as we knew it, its rites and its rituals, were still being invented, Gypsy was somehow already a traditionalist. Though Molineux was closer to his home in Chapel Ash, he refused to follow the club there, and gave up what I’d considered his true passion for philately. His eyeglasses had become noticeably thicker in the intervening years. Yet here he was in the Sandon, Anfield, sipping his mild ale as if it was the King’s Arms in 1883.

“Just saying goodbye to the old place. You know they probably won’t be here next year?”

I’d heard nothing of the sort. Anfield was synonymous with Everton, just as Fox’s Lane was with Stafford Road. You got one, you got the other. Now, according to Gypsy, infighting at the top table of the club meant a new chapter in the salmon-shirted Scousers’ history was soon to open. And it was no surprise that that, and not the useless Stokey referee or Will Devey’s brave goal, was all he wanted to talk about.

“Any idea where they’ll be moving to?” I asked, as Jack Dudley headed to the bar. It wasn’t really his round, but Gypsy’s abandoning of Wolves had always left a bitter taste in his mouth. Jack, at the end of the day, was a simple chap. Between loyalty and betrayal there was only desert, and the occasional homeless wanderer. Gypsy’s nickname was borne entirely of his surname, but there was a resonance there that Jack could simply not resist. “Any decent pubs nearby?”

“I’ve no idea, Gonby. All I know is I shan’t be going there.”

“I wish you would, Natty. You don’t see it, mate, but it’s just the same at the Molineux Grounds. This nostalgia of yours – I wish you’d realize it doesn’t matter. Sorry to say so, but it’s nonsense.”

“No it isn’t, Gonby. And I thought you of all people would understand that. Thank you Jack – a half will do just fine…” The Sandon was brimming now, and the returning pint glasses, as a consequence, were anything but. Gypsy took the only long draught left in his fresh glass and continued, “What we do here, in the pub and at the football, is mark our time on this earth. If we don’t have this, the meeting places and the schedules, the story that brings us together, what are we, but machines with muscles? Oh, you can have your church if you want it, but that’s about the time after you’ve gone, and I see little use in that. Our spiritual work consists of forgetting the time we’re at work, lifting, twisting, bending and carrying, and remembering those moments when we are the agents of our lives. When you have children, God willing, they will follow you here – to the pub and to the ground – and one day you will leave them here and they will continue their journey into time, remembering you as they do it. The players will change, the manager will change…”

“Soon I hope!” shouted Arthur Pilsbury from another table. Jack Addenbrooke already had his detractors….

“For all we know maybe the colours ‘ll change an’all. But the places shouldn’t. These places ought to be our own. I don’t want to walk past here in five years and see a house.”

“No-one’s invisin’ yez!” shouted a local from the skittles table, to the third Scouse roar we’d endured that afternoon.

“…these are our cathedrals, Gonby. There’s a reason why the Queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey, and not Darlington Street…”

“The main’un bayin’ her’s not a Methodist!”

“…an’ I doubt Westminster Abbey smells of dog dirt and urine!”

“Dudley Road is home, God damn it!” shouted Gypsy, the anger in his voice in no way displacing the characteristic sadness. The metaphorical soapbox was splintering under his feet, but his words resonated with me, cutting through the cackles and apathy like a bugle playing the last post. I didn’t miss Dudley Road, and I didn’t expect to miss Anfield, even if these rumours of his proved to be true. But I did miss Gypsy. I missed his zeal, his moral depth. Like most of the pub, all I wanted, or thought I wanted, was a few laughs and a few goals every Saturday – I didn’t look any further into it than that. But standing grimly in the lean-to on the Goldthorn Hill side, Natty Palmer had always appeared to be waiting for something more, and part of me used to hope each week that he’d finally found it. Now as we played dominos in new inns or wandered through Peak District caves trying to find our way home from Preston, he would be sitting alone by his fire in Chapel Ash, tweezers in hand, pasting stamps into a scrapbook. Of course he’d made a category error, confusing the venue with the event; we could all see that, on one level. But can the event truly be sacred, if the venue is ephemeral and profane? Once franked, those stamps of Gypsy’s couldn’t go anywhere; they had reached their destination. But his beloved Wolves were wanderers forever now, hanging their hats only for convenience. And no doubt Everton would be leaving behind some of his kind, too. Some people seem to be born to be memories, rather than people we remember. As we left the Sandon to begin our journey back to South Staffordshire, our goodbyes all felt final. And not only because Gypsy had travelled with the Newhampton Hang-Gliding Wolves, and the sun had long since set on Mow Cop.