Trail of the Lion King

This game came about because Jen was attending a Sunday afternoon talk in Sheffield about murder. Jen and I get on great, but if ever we don’t then I doubt she would need to bother with a divorce. She knows all about which poisons are hard to detect, for example, and the multiple ways to dispose of a corpse.

As a way of keeping on her good side, the previous two days had been spent at gigs, Jeffrey Lewis in York and the Twisterella festival in Middlesbrough.

The Jeffrey Lewis gig was at The Crescent in York on the Friday evening. We stayed over on what was a busier day than it might have been due to the races being on. By the time we got to town, most of the population were staggering around pissed. Maybe there is some benefit in knowing how to feed people to pigs.

Lewis terms himself as ‘anti-folk’. I’ve no real thoughts on whether that really is a thing or not, but he put on a good show in a small venue.

Saturday was Twisterella, a music festival based mainly at Teesside University. With three stages within about twenty yards of each other it was very easy to see bands in quick succession. Some I liked, others I was less keen on, but the ones that weren’t for me provided an opportunity to go out to the terrace and catch up with people for an outdoor drink on a day when it was just warm enough to do so.

Later on, we wound our way down to Baker Street for a George Bailey pop up set at the Twisted Lip and that might have been my favourite part of the day.

My plan for occupying myself whilst Jen was doing her murdering lessons was to go to watch Sheffield Women play at their Home of Football stadium. Unfortunately, it was a fixture that had been rescheduled for some other date and neither Futbology nor I had properly checked. A quick search revealed that there weren’t any new ground options available, but there was a game at Rotherham’s old ground, Millmoor. I headed there instead.

I’d last been inside thirty-nine years ago in our third division promotion season, although I had mooched around the outside when taking in a game at the nearby New York Stadium a couple of years ago. Rotherham moved on from Millmoor in 2013, but it seems longer, both in my memory and from the way the stadium looked.

I parked across the road from the ground, although if I’d driven on for fifty yards, I could have left the car at the ground itself. After initially just wandering in through an open door, I went back out and re-entered via a turnstile having handed over four quid. Only two stands were open. The main stand was fenced off, and it looked like seats had been removed. I don’t know whether that was just to recycle them or whether it was part of a pending demolition process.

It was like going back in time. Millmoor was quite an old-fashioned ground in the eighties and the current layer of dust across the stadium just added to the feeling that I was back in a bygone age. The only modern day quirk was a ‘No Vaping’ sign. I got chatting to a steward and he mentioned that prior to taking the job it had been fifty years since he was last inside the ground, as part of a half-time marching band.

Chorley were the better side. They took an early lead from the penalty spot and added a second before half-time. At the break I nipped out for an egg and bacon sandwich from a van before watching the second half from various vantage points in the stand along the side of the pitch. There were no more goals and Chorley took the points.