No, it’s were.
We were robbed.
Unless you happen to be a football fanatic: let’s say, a Manchester United fan, and let’s speculate you have paid a king’s ransom to watch your team, one of the most profound allegiances of your life, in pitched testosterone-steeped battle against The Foe, which on this occasion happens to be Arsenal.
My husband relates tales of his team’s games in the manner of a Viking saga of old. Really, he needs a big long beard and a deadly axe nestling close to the hearth, to complete the picture as he waxes through something very like poetry in honour of his beloved eleven men in a red strip.
United, he declaims, dominated the play all along, back in those heady days of the 2005 final: but their adversaries were valiant and gave them an opposition fit for mythical heroes.
The game was a draw, even after allowing for those precious minutes of extra time, a formal half an hour which is added to help break the deadlock.
And so it came to pass, that the two armies must do fierce and deadly battle; with penalties. The custom is that each team must pick five different volunteers, each to take one shot at that Holy Grail, The Opposition’s Goal.
It’s best out of five. it seems. My husband was not in the stands, but sitting next to his elderly father in a home counties living room, watching his father’s outrageously large television screen, lost in his own private hell. For Arsenal, the underdog, inferior in every way to The Red Devils, scored a full five penalties, while Manchester United only scored four.
They was robbed, and Phil – and legion others – were inconsolable. It has gone down in history as one of the great sporting robberies of all time.
Robbed has come to symbolise a right thwarted, an injustice which flies, flagrant, in the face of the state of things. The Viking in us roars, “I worked to my utmost, I raided villages and ransacked monasteries, I have lived the life of heroes: and all it has brought me is a sorry fish breakfast in a damp tent of skins on an inhospitable shore…”
My sorry fish breakfast arrived today, courtesy of my local town council, and I was robbed.
Life is becoming most interesting, hairy even, here in the town with our church under threat from a pope’s prince.
The Pope’s people say it’s being knocked down, and that’s that. Get used to it, they intone inwardly.
But hold on, I comment loudly to anyone who will listen, this is just a few priests who have made their decision to demolish a beautiful church in the woods. What about the people who aren’t a priest, (and that’s a lot)? So far I have got as far as my county and just managed to hit the national Catholic press. Honour is my breastplate, so help me God, and I’m Nordic in my determination and rhetoric.
This afternoon Maddie had a dentist’s appointment. The adolescent rail-track-brace beckons toothily from the chair of a clinically unsympathetic dentist. We parked hurriedly in a nearby car park and hot-footed it to our surgery for a half-hour slot.
Thirty minutes and a lot of gooey pink dental impression clay later, we emerged in good time. We reached the car park with about five minutes remaining before our ticket expired. And there, slapped triumphantly on the windscreen, was a parking ticket.
I was furious. Mess with me, would they? This time, they had chosen the wrong person to battle. I called the council, ready to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
A rant later, a long-suffering parking officer was explaining that these days, one could get fined for dodgy positioning.
My bus is big and lines are hard to find: it is entirely possible that I was parking over a line.
But the entire car park was virtually empty.
It doesn’t matter, mumbled the official maddeningly. We have to apply the same rule to everyone all the time.
I was grappling with scarlet-tinted vision and red smoke was threatening to emerge from my ears. I was conclusively, and thoroughly, robbed.
But not as robbed as a robber who was sentenced earlier this week.
This is the story of two firm friends, who were accused of staging an armed raid on a bookies in Portsmouth.
One ‘fessed up. yes, he admitted, he had put on a balaclava and brandished an imitation firearm in an attempt to threaten staff at a local bookmaker’s.
But his friend insisted he was not there: instead, he vowed fervently, he was at home, in Essex, watching the footie on the telly with his brother.
The investigating team of police stumbled upon a commendable piece of data logging when they trawled through his diary.
On the day in June last year which the raid took place, an entry read:”Go Portsmouth robbery happens.”
According to the Portsmouth News , Detective Constable Mel Sinclair, who led the investigation, said: ‘When we found the diary we thought it was quite unusual. You don’t normally get a good piece of evidence like that.
‘But he was foolish enough to put it in his diary and he said in his interview that it was stupid.’
I can just see him clapping his hands to his forehead; and bewailing the fact that he was robbed.
Kate Shrewsday 
You were more like mugged on that parking ticket!
I have always understood being robbed in sport as more often relating to a questionable decision by ref or umpire. Not so much an upset against the apparent flow. In fact, show business, including wrestling, exploits the way people like to see someone who has had the stuffing knocked out of them suddenly, miraculously, rising again and felling the champion.
It’s a great feelng if you’re on the winning side, Col 😀
Oh Kate, I left England so long ago but your rendition of Manchester vs Arsenal is good enough to get me onto a Virgin flight straight away. I’m sorry about your church. Keep up the fight. Historic preservation, stirring up asbestos, isn’t the future about reuse? Something must stick.
Ah, Tammy, common sense seems to have nothing to do with it; logic doesn’t win any arguments. But maybe stolid perseverance will 🙂
Your job’s worth parking occifer has enraged me beyond the white lines. Crikey! Revenue, that’s all you are to them… just a little more revenue.
The loss of church business is hard to bear, even for me.. a non religious person, as the complete waste of tearing down a building with historical meaning seems ludicrous, even if you don’t take into account the parishioners.
Ours is quite new – only 1972 – because thats when it was deemed the growing community needed it. Lovely design, though.
I’ve gone right off Phil…reds…shudder…
Don’t pay that ticket yet!
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1615246/How-to-fight-your-parking-ticket.html
http://www.ticketfighter.co.uk/
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/private-parking-tickets
Oooh, thanks, Tilly! I’m off now to research!
Ah, yes! The head slapping “D’oh!” of Homer Simpson. Instead, I see the routine in an ubiquitous commercial here in the US: Slap forehead and proclaim with exasperation:
“I could’ve had a ‘V-8’!!”
Your Hubs also needs a Viking helmet (you know, the totally fictional one with the horns on each side, like the Valkyries wore!)!
Tickets! I’ve only received one, and I chose to flaunt the law. It was in New York City back in 1972. I unknowingly parked in a “no night parking” space (between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. – for whatever reason). I was on crutches at the time following my first knee surgery, and i was attending a Bette Midler concert! (The concert was fabulous, by the way) It was the closest spot we could find (I was the one with a car, so I drove the four of us into the city), but I still had to walk 4 blocks! When I saw the ticket after the concert, I sort of blanched – not ever having gotten anything of the sort. I tucked the ticket in my pocket, and threw it away later. I figured they could come to Connecticut and get me. . .they haven’t caught up with me yet, but I still enjoy considering myself a fugitive from justice!
Ah, different states, different laws? Would that our counties had the same system, Paula! Glad you enjoyed the concert 😀
Actually, NY could have come after me had they chosen. If I whad been a repeat offender, they probably would have – the states have a way of cooperating with one another. As this was a one-time deal, my infraction was probably tossed into file 13 and dumped forever.
What a great, fun read! Sorry about your church woes and the parking ticket — I agree — you was robbed!
Still wafting th red steam away from my ears as we speak, Kathy…
You see? There’s a certain level of danger in keeping a diary.
Don’t give up on the church, Kate!!!
You are quite right, Cindy. No more diaries for me. Alibis only.
I wonder what they’ll get on the likes of us who write blogs?
Sorry to hear about the Pope’s people and your church in the woods. Is the church historic to the area? Can you go for the bigger scope? Just remember that “it ain’t over until it’s over”.
It certainly ain’t….it’s having the wisdom to know when to keep going and when one should stop, Penny….on Saturday I’ve called a meeting in a big meeting hall. If nobody comes that should be a fairly clear sign…
Good. Proactive. As you say, it will be a clear sign when you see who shows. Good luck.
Thanks Penny 🙂
Wow! From the gridiron to tire irons to leg irons all in one fell swoop.
Tough break about the parking ticket and the church. Life is not always played on a level field.
I would say more, but I need to doctor up my diary in case I need an alibi at some later date:
At home, reading Kate’s post, I was robbed. 😀
I’m keeping my fingers crossed about the church, like the children’s game with interlocked fingers:
This is the church, and here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.
I’ll do that in your honour the day of the big meeting on Saturday, Nancy 😀
Aw, uneven playing fields just make it a bit more interesting, Nancy 😀
Get your eraser out, now, and obliterate all evidence of your dastardly deeds.
I am feeling cross for you Kate that you was robbed. Parking fines are so expensive, and you had paid to park anyway!
I am in one of those moods today, having just received an email scam, and another one saying the goods I ordered have been despatched, and Hubby is in London today to pick the parcel up!!!
This is the way of things some days, Rosemary! Waves of sympathy wending their way out there to you; and hope the day gets better from here on.
Phil is so right, we were robbed that day. I can picture him telling the story in the voice of the guy who used to do “The Saga of Noggin The Nog” on the BBC.
Best of luck with your meeting on Saturday, I hope you get a huge turnout.
😀 Noggin The Nog! Now there’s a voice to conjure memories, Tin Man, and position you as our contemporaries.. I’ll never be able to listen to Phil telling stories without thinking of him, ever again 😀
Hilarious (the football robbery, though of course, not to fans), touching (the people being robbed of their church, but not quite yet while you are on the job!), inspiring of righteous outrage (the blatant holdup in the parking lot), and hilarious again (the silly robber who wrote his confession in his diary, how girlish!). Love your post, Kate.
Thank you Elizabeth….I’m awaiting your next story…the last two have been simply amazing…
definitely we wuz robbed whenever the team or player i support does not win. what is life without the ability to declaim that loudly (and drunkenly)?
Quite. Let’s try it tonight, Sidey.
do tell your hubby he can borrow my viking helmet sometime
LOL, will do, Sidey. he has a very big head though!
What would men do without sport? (she says, glued to the British Open 😉 )
I love your imagined Viking musing about the fish breakfast Kate – hilarious 😀
Thanks BB 😀 The very epitome of anticlimax…..
I loved reading this ramble through robberies of the day – though of course my heart bleeds for all the rob-ees (except for the criminal one).
I certainly feel righteously sorry for myself, Patti!
Best wishes for preserving your building. I hope there’s a big turnout at your meeting. My sympathy concerning the ticket; I guess that comes under the heading of you can’t fight city hall.
As for the robber, I feel an intense desire to dismantle my computer and stomp on the hard drive. Football? Next year…
How would a person on the other side of the world know the esoteric term “we was robbed”? This is American baseball 1930-1959. When the New York Giants would beat the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League pennant they would say “we was robbed” If they did beat the Giants to go to the World Series, the New York Yankees would beat them and the Brooklyn fans would say “we was robbed” 1959 the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the fans still had to say “we was robbed” and they really were. The unthinkable had happened.
Robbed,Carl. Totally. So very sorry.
“We was robbed” – a common phrase heard in pubs all over the land every weekend during the AFL (Australian Football League) season Down Under. The umpires are the usual scapegoats :-).
Hope the meeting on the future of the church goes well. Sometimes the hierarchy forgets the church is the people “under the steeple”.
Ah, the phrase lives there, too, does it? Might have guessed. The ref, the umpire…has a certain famiilar ring to it, doesn’t it?
How did the meeting go? I hope lots of people turned up.
Thanks for asking Tilly: the hall was packed with young and old, more than 70 acting as delegates for a total of 230. We have a mandate to go for legal action: watch this space.
Dratted diaries!! Hope we don’t ever say that about our blogs 😀 Watching this space for news about your church – all the best with that, Kate.
Thanks Naomi 🙂