ROYAL Tunbridge Wells is in Kent, one of only three English towns –- Leamington Spa and, latterly, Wootton Bassett the others – entitled to the royal prefix (if not necessarily the royal prerogative.) It’s what folk like to call Middle England, though geographically it’s in the South and politically somewhere to the West.
It has also been the birthplace of familiar names from Sid Vicious to Virginia Wade, Jeff Beck to Jo Brand and Arthur Fagg to David Gower, both of whom could bat a bit.
Rather oddly, however, the former spa town’s most famous resident has always craved anonymity. “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, said perhaps apocryphally to have been a regular contributor to national newspaper correspondence columns in the 1950s, still epitomises a certain middle class, middle age outrage.
We’re headed there by train, down from London Bridge through what the tourist industry likes to call the Garden of England. It’s been snowing, raining and pretty much freezing.
The fields are a mordant brown, not green.
“If that were my garden,” says Mr Tim Duncan, “I’d have it concreted over.”
IT is, once again, the Railroad to Wembley, once again the first leg of an FA Vase semi-final. This one has the added edge that Tunbridge Wells are playing Shildon, my home town team, who never in 123 years – theirs, not mine – have reached the last four of a national competition.
It’s the 7.01 from Darlington, the train spraying snow its wake, the morning papers full of meteorological mayhem. Even the World Pooh Sticks Championships are waterlogged.
It’s by no means certain that the match will be on.
Kit Pearson is carrying a booklet called the Tunbridge Heritage Walking Trail. “No. 19 is the Opera House,” he says but, like two-thirds of England’s historic buildings, the Opera House is now a Wetherspoons pub.
Its Wikipedia page says that Tunbridge Wells – “like the rest of Britain” – enjoys a temperate maritime climate with no weather extremes. Beg pardon?
Shildon secretary Gareth Howe rings at 8.30am to report that it’s snowing in Kent and that the match is iffy, but asks not to tell anyone.
Ten minutes later he rings to lift the D Notice.
At 9.30am he reports an 11am pitch inspection. “It’s 50-50,” says Gareth.
Kit says that if the match is off we can probably make a day of it in the Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery. “Mind,” he adds, “that’s probably a Wetherspoons, as well.”
AT King’s Cross Underground station, there’s a hitherto undiscovered poster headed “This is dramatic, this is Durham”
showing a splendid sunrise – it can hardly be a sunset – over the sea.
No kidding, it’s dramatic. Where on earth can it be? Since Durham only has about ten miles of coastline it can only be Seaham or the Blast Beach at Horden. Money on the former.
Next to it is a poster for holidays in the Dominican Republic. Someone wonders if accidentally they’ve been juxtaposed. Inspired, or perhaps just nervous, I’m rather loudly singing I Vow To Thee My Country.
The Northern Line inches away apprehensively.
We’re in Tunbridge Wells by 11.30, still no word of the pitch inspection.
Instead, we endure an anxious half hour in the station cafe, feeling rather like all those good folk in St Peter’s Square must have done while awaiting white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney.
When it comes, it’s whitish. So far, so good, but another inspection at 1pm. Are they allowed two goes at choosing the Pope?
In the Bedford, an excellent pub near the station, a pint is £3.50 and a vegetarian curry pie £3. It’s uncertain how many vegetarian curry pies they sell in the King Willie in Shildon.
We’re joined by several other Shildon supporters and – how good is this? – by the dad of one of the players. They’re a bit miffed at the prices. “When they get up to Elm Road Club next week they’ll think they’ve died and gone to heaven,” someone says.
The pub gent’s also has a notice announcing that Google must be a woman – “It knows everything” – and that Subbuteo was made in Tunbridge Wells between 1948-81, an early set costing 10/9d.
“That’s about sixpence a player,”
says Kit whose maths (as we shall hear) is considerably better than his geography.
The full-size game gets the final go ahead at 1.30pm, though not to universal acclaim. Though perhaps not quite disgusted, Shildon are said not to be very happy at all.
YOU can tell Tunbridge Wells is a bit upmarket, a bit artsy and affluent, by the number of places calling themselves lifestyle shops. There’s not much call for lifestyle shops in Shildon, not unless it’s lifestyle and chips.
Royalty used to come here to take the waters, others just to parade. In The Pantiles, the elegant old shopping centre, there’s a pub called the Ragged Trousers, as in Philanthropist, though none can explain the connection. Across the road, the tourist information centre still sells mugs bearing the legend “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.”
Kit decides that we should also seek out the Opera House. One singer one song, we foolishly let him navigate. After walking for 20 minutes in the diametrically wrong direction we stumble perchance upon another pub – of all things it’s called The Compass – and order a taxi to the ground.
It’s thronged, the atmosphere wholly good-natured, though it seems a little unfair of the home fans to be singing “Dirty northern bastards” when there’s still half an hour to kick-off.
The pitch is what euphemists call heavy and realists a bog. The standing areas resemble the Everglades after a six-week sub-tropical storm.
Soon, everyone’s up to the oxters.
Just about the only bit of me not caked in mud is the Ebac Northern League tie.
They were wrong about the third bit, probably, but dirty northern beyond doubt.
KNOWN to their followers simply as The Wells, the Kent side is also in the semi-final for the first time. Though the local William Hill’s can find nothing better on which to offers odds than Tranmere v Stevenage, the town’s stirring.
Hitherto, the team’s greatest claim to fame may have been that in 2005 they won a 40-kick penalty shoot-out, the longest in European football history, 16-15 against Littlehampton in the FA Cup preliminary round.
About 200 Shildon fans swell the 1,754 crowd. They have acquired a drum, but not the Salvation Army band. This is not necessarily a good thing.
At the other end, Wells fans essay a variation on the now-familiar football song about pobs, bookies and chip shops. Could that be a line about pubs, bookies and lifestyle shops?
Sadly, it’s too far away to hear.
The first half’s even, mud wrestling in the deep end. Oladogba, the home goalkeeper, appears particularly adept. Tunbridge Wells lead after 75 minutes, a cross inexpertly cleared, and are awarded a penalty a few minutes later. Hardly going to miss it, are they, not with all that practice in 2005? 2-0.
More happily, word arrives that Spennymoor Town have won their first leg in Guernsey 3-1.
Now it’s all on this Saturday’s home legs. A win for Spennymoor would be wonderful, the fifth successive Vase final in which a Northern League club will have featured.
A win for Shildon truly the stuff of dreams.
All’s well that ends Wells? If not quite parallel lines, the Railroad to Wembley nears its destination.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here