The Highs, the Lows, and the Human Sandwich.

This one is a hard post to write. It involves some enormous highs and some incredibly deep lows, but in true fashion, I am going to try my best to keep it lighthearted. 

First things first: we won the bloody league! Again. Now, this was not our team’s first rodeo; they have won it quite a few times previously, but the excitement never fades. Because of that, Miss H and Master Linda & Debs decided we absolutely had to go to the victory parade. The last one had happened during lockdown, so we figured, why not eh? 

Train tickets were immediately booked. We were really excited to go. 

That excitement was incredibly short-lived. 

Debs decided not to wear his football shirt because we do not actually live in the same city as the team we support. Let us just say the fans of the city they live in have some questionable fans—but then again, most teams do, don’t they? 

When we arrived at our local train station to pop into the shops for some journey drinks, we were met with a literal sea of red. Everyone was wearing their shirts. Everyone was going to the parade. It felt like the entire city had decamped to the platform. We were early for our train, but when it arrived, the queue was already at least five people deep down the full length of the platform. 

We obviously did not manage to get on that train. 

When the next one arrived, it was already standing room only. Luckily, the train attendants had finally stopped more people from coming down onto the platform because it was absolute carnage. We managed to squeeze ourselves on. By that point, I had already decided in my own head that if we did not make this train, we should just stay in town and celebrate locally. 

Part of me really wishes we had not got on that train. 

We stood and propped ourselves up for what felt like hours. The banter was good and everyone was in high spirits because about 90% of the carriage was there for the exact same reason. People were even sitting on the floor inside the toilets. When I say it was packed, it was ridiculous. 

We finally arrived and messaged Mr and Miss H: “We are here! Where are you? Where shall we meet?” Miss H and I suggested the start of the parade route. Nope. The boys wanted to catch the end of it. So off we went, successfully hunting them down in a crowd that was already ridiculously busy. We then set off to find some toilets and grab supplies while we prepared to wait hours for the bus to come around. 

I kid you not, the public toilets were closed for cleaning. We had to wait almost an hour just to use a local coffee shop’s facilities. The queues were trailing right down the street at the local Sainsbury’s, so we dived into M&S instead. The shelves were pretty much bare. It felt like a lockdown free-for-all—the kind where toilet roll, flour, and everything else became gold dust. 

By the time we got back to our meeting point, it was five times busier. You actively had to push your way through. People were purposely invading your personal space just to get a slightly better view for themselves. 

The security scale was wild. There were snipers on the roofs of the buildings. Some locals had completely taken over the scaffolding on a nearby building to get a higher vantage point, ripping off the safety netting in the process. Christ knows how someone did not die on that thing that day. 

And then, the weather turned. It had been spitting a bit as we walked up, but then the rain got heavier and much more consistent. 

But wow, the atmosphere was electric! The singing, the camaraderie—it was unbelievable. How the hell people climbed up into the top of lampposts and managed to sit up there for hours absolutely blew my mind. 

I would love to say that we stayed right until the very end. Unfortunately, the combination of the freezing weather, the thick smoke from the flares making it hard to breathe, the urgent need for a bathroom, and the increasingly dangerous-looking scaffolding situation right behind us finally got the better of us. 

We decided to make our way back to the station. 

Only, nobody would let us through. 

People were packed halfway down the side streets, and they simply refused to move. You had to really push for every single inch of ground. The feeling of camaraderie evaporated instantly; this was now a physical fight just to get out. 

We made it, but only because we refused to use the officially assigned exit route. We would never have made it through that bottleneck. If we had stayed to the end and gone that way… well, I hate to fucking think what would have happened to us. 

We left Mr and Miss H to head to our station, as they had to use a different one. As we approached, we saw a massive sea of people waiting outside. No one knew what was happening and the station appeared to be completely locked down and closed. 

We stood there cold, wet, and pretty much entirely pissed off. 

“Fuck it,” we said. “We will get an Uber.” 

We had to move fast before thousands of other people had the exact same thought. We knew it would not be cheap because we had travelled so far, but right then, we just needed to get home. The first driver cancelled on us. Luckily, the next one arrived, and we all jumped inside. 

It was only then that we found out why the first driver had likely cancelled. There had been a major incident at the parade. Master Linda and Debs’ girlfriend (let us call her Geordie J) suddenly got a frantic text from someone checking if she was okay because they knew she was there with us. 

We were okay. But finding out what happened really shook us all to the core. 

When we got home and turned on the TV, we could not believe what we were seeing. It was completely surreal. If we had stayed… if we had followed that exit route… Fuck. 

What should have been an amazing day out ended with cold chills running down our spines—and not just from the rain. We made some amazing memories with incredible people, and the electric atmosphere is something we are proud to have been a part of, but it was an incredibly close call. 

I really do not want to leave this post on a total negative. We do not normally share personal videos and photos on here, but you have to take a look at this clip of Debs emerging from the crowd halfway up the side street. When I say we had to push through, just look at the absolute mess of his sandwich that he was holding in his hand when trying to get through the sea of people!!!