{"id":336,"date":"2019-09-21T05:54:06","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T05:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gonbys.com\/?p=336"},"modified":"2019-09-21T05:54:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-21T05:54:06","slug":"crystal-palace-1909","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/?p=336","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Palace, 1909"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cCome on!\u201d I\nshouted, hands funnelling the sound from my parched mouth, \u201cIt\u2019ll\nbe dark soon!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jack Dudley shuffled\nnervously along the branch, holding onto another for support. \u201cMy\nmissus is gonna kill me!\u201d he shouted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the crocodiles\ndon\u2019t get you first,\u201d I thought, grimly. In the distance a\nmonkey howled. \u201cIt\u2019ll be fine,\u201d I lied, fumbling in my jacket\nfor a Capstan. The vine on which I\u2019d arrived had now come to rest;\nmy companion never did like heights. \u201cYour Madge\u2019ll understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another whopper. \nUnderstanding was precisely what Margaret Dudley didn\u2019t do. \nNagging, moaning, berating, intervening, moving back to her mother\u2019s\nand standing outside Manders\u2019 on a Friday to intercept pay packets\n\u2013 that was much more Madge\u2019s style. On one occasion she\u2019d even\nsuggested we watch Stafford Road when Wolves were playing away; Jack\nthreatened to move back in with his mother after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou go, Gonby,\u201d\nhe shouted, teetering nervously, \u201cI\u2019ll wait here for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your Madge’ll understand.” Another whopper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome on, will\nyou!\u201d I insisted, \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be by that Iroko tree\nover there. I reckon there might be a quicker route back. I saw a\nthirsty-looking Urangutan swinging from there which suggests there\u2019s\nwater nearby; it might be the pond we saw when we…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAaaaaaaaah!\u201d I\nturned around and a Jack Dudley, twice the size of the last one I had\nseen, with his mouth open wider than the crocodiles\u2019 below us\nseconds earlier crashed into me. We both lost our footing, fell and\nstopped outselves plunging to our certain doom by only clutching\ndesperately onto the branch I had been standing on. After regaining\nour breath we clambered back up onto the branch and assessed our next\nmoves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since an ill-fated\ntrip to Derby with the Speleologist Squadron earlier in the season\n(we\u2019d lost 2-1), Madge had been nagging Jack about looking after\nhis clothes. When I\u2019d called for him that morning she\u2019d\ncontinued the theme, telling him over and over again to save his best\nsuit for her sister\u2019s wedding that Tuesday. \u201cAlways wear best\nfor the Cup,\u201d he\u2019d insisted, both impressing and surprising me\nwith the way he held his ground (in fact, as he explained later, he\nhadn\u2019t yet repaired the trousers of his other suit after riding\nbareback from Wembley after the previous year\u2019s cup final. As\nyet, best was holding up all right but there was some difficult\nterrain left to navigate. He\u2019d also lost his cap when we were\nforced to swim away from poisonous frogs near the main entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The original Crystal Palace football club had been comprised of gardeners and workers at the site, and such was the zeal with which they\u2019d adopted the sport that their duties around the site had gone entirely neglected since a horticultural exhibition had been staged there decades before. Under the glass the exhibit had grown out of all control and somewhere along the line a host of exotic fauna had moved in. Unfortunately, Jack and I had been informed of all this moments after volunteering to retrieve the matchball, and while I never minded a bit of adventure, I had no desire to confront the nocturnal equivalents to the diurnal perils that had already beset us. And though an abandonment of the fixture through bad light would have favoured Wolves, it wouldn\u2019t have been sporting on a plucky Crystal Palace team about to pull off a major feat of giant-killing. Plus revenues from the next round would help pay for the glass Dicky Baugh\u2019s wayward screamer had broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have to head down,\u201d I said, eyeing the crocodiles warily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I climbed up to the\nnext bough and tested its strength; there was little chance it would\nsustain me as far as the next creeper. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to head\ndown,\u201d I said, eyeing the crocodiles warily. We moved slowly down\nthe trunk until we were low enough to jump; the crocodiles watched us\nbut seemed to have conceded the race on land. We sprinted to the\nIroko tree, looked around and there it was: camouflaged against the\nearth beneath but now identifiable. I had never touched a\nWolverhampton Wanderers match ball before and I felt proud and\nexcited as I lifted it from behind the fronds of a Monsteria\nDeliciosa. \u201cCan I hold it, too?\u201d asked Jack, and I gave it to\nhim with a smile. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moving stripes\nat first looked like nothing more than gently moving leaves. But I\nknew that within these crystal walls there could be no breeze. Then\nthe yellow of its eyes. I whispered to Jack that we had to run but\nbefore my words had concluded he had spotted the tiger, screamed and\nscarpered. I sprinted after him, though I was convinced we were\ngoing in the wrong direction, grabbing a thick stick I found on the\nground to use as a weapon if need be. After thirty yards a company\nof parrots noted our progress and raised a piercing, rhythmic\naccompaniment to the drama. Jack stumbled upon a root and I overtook\nhim, seeing a clearing in front of us that could only mean one thing.\n As he clambered to his feet I saw the tiger in the distance, shouted\nat Jack to hurry, and beat hard at the glass with the end of my\nstick. It gave out with an awesome crash and Jack and I leapt\nthrough, with the feline in close pursuit. It was another fifty\nyards before I dared to turn around; the tiger, disorientated by the\ncold British winter outside, remained at the boundary of his domain,\ngave a single roar, and turned back into his jungle. The parrots\nwere silent. We got back to the terrace and returned the ball, at\nwhich time I noticed a long tear in Jack\u2019s sleeve. Madge really\nwould kill him, and Wolves really were going out of the Cup. We lit\na Capstan, watched the vain quest for late goals, and headed to the\nBunch of Grapes, where our huskies were tied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People in glass houses should definitely not feed the animals…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}