As I watched the last of the BORES sink into the bog, dragonflies zipping around my ears, I couldn’t help but meditate upon the irony of the situation. Sometimes, the most expensive and to appearances convenient way to an away match could result in the most cumbersome and dangerous of adventures. Checking my pocket watch, I knew I’d be all right, but at around two percent, the survival rate for train travel was a good deal lower thanpotholing through the Pennines, ballooning with the Flying Squadron or cycling with the Honorable and Worthy Pedallers.

All the above invitations I had declined, choosing instead to head up on the train with the Bushbury and Oxley Rail Enthusiast Society, who I soon realized were concerned less with Wolves’ cup progress than with the future of the Clog and Knocker, the unloved and unprofitable single-track line that would take us from Stafford to Uttoxeter and Derby. Indeed, a number of the BORES were Stafford Road supporters, and even before our first train stopped at Four Ashes, there was talk of slating the football in favour a tour of the sidings and Loco works at Derby. This developed into heated discussions as we waited for our second train to pull out of Stafford, and by the time we stopped at Salt an inaugural meeting of the tentatively-named Oxley and Bushbury Wolves Supporters By Rail had been pencilled in for the following Thursday at the Locomotive on Stafford Road, and communicated throughout the train by calls from open compartment windows.

Far from resolving the situation, however, the planned breakaway only exacerbated tensions. The club secretary, Elijah Bonds, had – I found out later, without asking – been planning a merger / takeover with the Tettenhall Train, Tram and Trolleybus Tea-time Talk, and was wary of being weakened before his powergrab. Then there were the idealists, including Natty and Mae Wetton, who were so opposed to any kind of factionalization that they used their milkcart to transport members to and from meetings, lest the distances involved provoke a separation between those living in Oxley and the Bushbury contingent. There were those that wanted trips out of town that didn’t include football matches, but who feared that the formation of the OBWSBR would result in an unbalanced number of Stafford Road supporters in the BORES.

And then there was Clemence Collier, alias ‘Communication Cord Clem’, a man so nervous that he owed different rail companies upwards of fifty shillings in unpaid fines for improper use of emergency brakes. He was nominally an anti-factionalist, but was siding with whoever was holding sway in the debate, hoping things would just simmer down. He was also the reason I’d had to leave Cerberus at home and cancel our planned walk around the Imperial Steel Works (a great shame: Cerberus loved foundries, and hot dry industrial processes in general).

It so happened that the most vociferous disagreements erupted in the compartment where Clem and I were travelling along with Elijah Bonds, his second-in-command Arthur Gristle, and three potential leaders of the nascent OBWSBR. The shouting rose above acceptable volume shortly after we’d left Chartley station, and Clem pulled the communication cord and held on tightly as the train screeched to a halt in an eerie bit of countryside buzzing with dragonflies, in which the trees seemed to sway from their roots and no bird could be heard.

‘What are you playing at, Clem?’ I asked him, as he collapsed back into his seat…

‘What are you playing at, Clem?’ I asked him, as he collapsed back into his seat. He didn’t reply, and the compartment – and, as far as I could tell, the rest of the train – shared his silence.

After sitting tensely for half a minute or so, all the BORES opened their compartment doors and jumped down onto the track. I watched them head off to the south, and in the distance I thought I could make out the silver Championship trophy that I and all Wolves supporters most coveted.

‘Ar, that’s what you see,’ said Clem, absently, as the figures in the woods began to sink. He seemed a good deal calmer, and rather other-worldly. ‘I see my wife, God bless her soul, waiting for me up by that conker tree on the horizon. That lot, they’m probably following their own dreams: shiny grand locos; cream teas in art nouveau station hotels; impeccably-turned-out porters, doffing their caps for thruppence…’

‘We should call them back.’

‘Wouldn’t do any good. They’m waving goodbye now.’

It did look as though they were waving. I watched them, trying to guess what mirage each had seen. Had any of them seen a woman, or a pint, or anything at all fitting of grown men? Did it matter? How could any wish be more worthy than the next? What was at the heart of any craving, other than vanity and base gratification? Surely, if we are but the sum of our desires, we are hollow creatures indeed.

‘Which one of you pulled the cord?’ asked the guard, red-faced. The driver soon arrived at his shoulder.

I looked at Clem, his white beard yellow with pipe smoke, his eyes fixed forlornly on the floor.

‘It was one of them,’ I said, pointing at the flailing masses in Chartley Moss.

Driver and guard looked at us uncertainly, then went about resetting things. We started off in five minutes or so, and reached Derby without incident. I bought Clem a pint at the Brunswick and after a brief toast to absent friends, we caught the next train to Sheffield, in time to get onto the terraces at Bramall Lane in good time. The crowd wasn’t bad for a Thursday afternoon game, and we got through to the fifth round by the odd goal in three.