2:18pm Tuesday 19th May 2009
By Dennis Signy
To avoid any misapprehension in the current uneasy situation let me publicly record that Mrs S has long put it on record that Underhill Stadium is my second (spiritual) home.
Football wives often tell their spouses "You spend so much time at the ground that I think you care more about the players than you do about me". I'll pass on that one quickly ... I'm just glad that Barnet don't have a reserve team, too, these days.
Of course having a second home is meaningless for mere mortals such as me. I can't pop into a Westminster office and put in an expenses claim for the much needed new floodlights for the stadium, a moat, a council tax bill. A plasma TV set or cleaning bills when I spill food down my front while eating meals pre-match in the board room.
For mine is a labour of love ... and I have double checked to make sure that the ' l ' in labour is lower case.
For mistakes in print can happen. I used to do a 20-minute routine at the end of my speech about journalism, listing howlers I had encountered in newspapers over the years.
Sometimes a reader's interpretation evokes howls of mirth over a headline that is factually correct. During the war a story appeared saying that Field Marshal Montgomery, one of the great military leaders, had flown back to his operational base after a visit to London to see Winston Churchill.
'MONTY FLIES BACK TO FRONT' said the headline. Do I detect a slight grin?
How about 'ALLIEDS THRUST BOTTLES UP GERMANS?' A flicker of the lips maybe.
Back though to expenses. Frank McGhee, a boyhood friend of mine from Sturgess Avenue, Hendon, rose to become a top sports columnist in Manchester and London. He travelled the world and regaled Mrs S and I over dinner on how he lived on the expenses he received.
Of course, we are not talking of public money here ... nor of the expenses on offer to journalists on the Times series in my three decades of residence. You couldn't live through a lunchtime drink at The Chequers at Church End, Hendon, after fighting with accountant Joe Beckett in the end office on the first floor over a few pennies.
"Where's the receipt?" he would ask when you submitted a claim for fish and chips en route to an evening council meeting at the town hall. It was Us against Him.
In my years as an editor I had the weekly task of vetting the expenses of my staff and, having been through the mill with the above-mentioned Mr B, I was fairly indulgent. I even issued a list of how much could be charged items such as fish and chips when a reporter was unable to get home for dinner.
Indulgent that is until there was a threat of a journalists' strike in the Seventies and, with noisy pickets at the front door in Church Road,there was a fair amount of abuse for a sensitive chap like myself.
So, while the pickets chanted away, I repaired to the Finchley office - unaware to them - to work in peace. At which stage my reporters handed in their expenses for the previous week.
When normal service was resumed, I called them in one at a time to go over their exs. One young chap who worked in the Borehamwood office - a friend to this day, I must add - acted with great aplomb when I queried the £1 he had put down for travelling to Radlett fire station.
"I should point out", I told him, "that Radlett fire station closed down 18 months ago".
We then went on to discuss his visit to Elstree police station - with him unaware that it was closed on the day he claimed he was there.
I must have saved the firm around a fiver as I did my best Joe Beckett impersonation and deleted items ... but we never fell out.
The reporter followed me into Fleet Street as a sports writer and proudly sent me a copy of his first football book.
Whenever we meet these days we have a drink to Radlett Fire Station and Elstree Police Station.
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