This story is about an actual fever. For cup fever, see Derby St. Lukes, 1884

The word opened up when he said it, split, creating a vacuum and sucking in the air all around us until the telephone wires above the streets of Moss Side vibrated like guitar strings. I had to look away. For some reason I began to imagine that all of the houses in the tight terraced streets were bigger than they looked, closer than they seemed, and that they contained normal-sized houses inside them.

G—-o—-n—-b—-e—-e—-e—-e—-e! The voice was compressed, soundwaves tailored for the human ear, fitting exactly and passing smoothly into the brain. I understood the message. It was a complicated, multi-faceted message. Names are curious things.

G—-o—–n—-b—-e—–e—-e—-e!

Is this an aesthetic? Yeah, well, kinda, uh-huh. See, if you belong at a football ground, you belong at any football ground. It isn’t that Molineux or Maine Road is your spiritual home, it’s that the football is your habitat, and the rest of the local fauna, the boot-boys and the comb-overs, the Beatles haircuts and the NHS frames make up your eco-system. You notice the differences – of course you do – but if you were dogs you’d all be the same breed. Even the eccentric old dear with the… is that Percy Belter’s rattle!

G—o—n—b—e—e—e—e—e! Now it’s a whisper, but it’s louder than the call was. There’s no perspective in the sound, no frame of reference. This is what it is to be part of a crowd. This and the smell of fried onions.

Then another voice begins: calm, controlled, unwavering in force coming from so close that it feels almost inside you. But actually it’s as distant as can be — distant in time, across a forbidden border. Your father is saying you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be.

(Oh hi, Dad; how silly of me to have thought you were dead. Oh, do you really have to go…?)

Is this your aesthetic? It’s factory architecture. Don’t you spend enough of your life under asbestos roofing? This is not beautiful. Do you really want to be here?

G—-o—–n—-b—-e—–e—-e—-e! My face is the face of a crow. I knew that anyway. But it moves when I don’t feel myself move and it is mouthing words at me. Am I sure that’s my own face?

Cerberus got big. I see his tail wagging behind the houses along Kippax Road. His teeth would be valuable.

G—-o—–n—-b—-e—–e—-e—-e!

The whistle is deafening. The crowd is silent. The ripple of the corner flag sends draughts back through the air and it rushes in to the gap in the word and makes it whole again. The word was “Manchester”.

‘We’re here, Gonby.’

You step onto the platform at Piccadilly. You’re not well. You should have listened to Dr. Slaughter and stayed in bed. And now you have to make the journey all over again.

Yes, I fed Cerberus before I left. But still, I shouldn’t have come. But I am kind of needed. ‘Yes,’ the TV Sociologist is saying, ‘You are both audience and participant. You are part of the spectacle, and there to be entertained. An extra in Spartacus throwing rotten veg at the hammy lead.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Gonby?’

‘Where are we going for a pint?’

It’s an okay pub, the Pepperhill, but something’s wrong. Everybody’s too tall. Or are you shorter? And those cats on the bar, climbing over the electric pumps… they’re rats!

‘Jack! What are we doing here?’

‘We don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be.’

‘Why does everybody keep saying that?’

You still haven’t tasted the beer. The rats are climbing over the people, now. In and out of their mouths. The people don’t mind. Well, they don’t seem to. But I bloody mind.

G—–o—–n—–b—–e—–e—-e—–e!

You never get to taste the beer in dreams. Maybe you’d never wake up if you could. We’re here now, anyway.

You light a Woodbine and step down from the train.

Beer, football, beer, football, beer, beer, beer. Train.

All in all, an enjoyable fever, and a point from Maine Road is never a bad return. Come on me babbies!