Founded in 1889
From October through till maybe late spring this year I was hit with a severe depression. I lost all energy and motivation, barely left the house and found it a Herculean effort to get out of bed. Normal things that people take for granted felt beyond me. Just setting foot outside the house or getting on a bus was a waking nightmare of stress and anxiety. I was late for everything and left all things till the very last minute. “Why put off today what you can do tomorrow?”
This is what it felt like — imagine a desperate panic stricken search for your house keys, taxi waiting outside, going on forever; a seemingly endless oppressive overcast sky is falling in on you, that house on your street with the dirty net curtains and the windows that never open is the physical manifestation of what’s going on in your head. Every slight thought of motivation is met with ‘Fuck it, there’s no point’. Everything is avoided and the only escape from the day is bed and dreaming it all away. Then you’re up all night, a vicious circle of exhaustion, procrastination and guilt. It’s not the first time I’d experienced this.
Previous bouts were far worse and I’ve experienced these with regular frequency over the last two decades. During these times, most days I’d wake up in the morning and visualise killing myself. I was a nightmare partner and left a wreck of relationships in my wake. I was pretty mad; upset a lot of people, would do mad impulsive stuff and was mostly always angry. I was a smart arse too, a gobshite and very destructive — very self-aware too. I didn’t need a psychoanalyst to tell me why I was experiencing this either. I’d had a shit childhood filled with disfunction and trauma but self-awareness didn’t mean a thing and I did nothing to help myself other than keep fueling a cycle of shame and self pity. My behaviour remained bad and exacerbated the episodic depressions. My life for the previous 20 years could be traced like a looping sine wave of extreme highs and lows. The wiki/google search cod-psychologist in me would probably diagnose a Borderline Personality Disorder.
It took a long time to take steps to sort it out. I was adamant about not taking medication and I wanted Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Through the NHS I had to wait over 6 months. I was single at the time. I stayed single. I also gave up alcohol. CBT helped me loads. I got better. That was nearly 4 years ago.
3 years later I was 2 years married — in the longest (stable) relationship I’ve ever had. I was happy, the longest I’d remained happy. No dramas.
I started to feel unwell again last autumn, it creeped up on me. I’d got into bother at work. I work in a museum and get to do lots of amazing things. I throw myself head first into work and projects. I’m obsessive and feel really strongly about what I do but I get frustrated by how slow things can be. This museum is a large public organisation made up of very nice, good people. Polite folk but mostly all introverted types. I am none of these things — not a bad person per se, just a bit mad, blustering and loud.
Since becoming happier I made a real effort to change; to be nicer, more understanding of people, to go at a pace right for others, have a little more empathy and let go of things. Towards the end of last autumn I wasn’t aware that I was doing too much and an old version of myself slipped out, old frustrations erupted. I said the wrong words in the wrong way to the wrong people and it really fucked things up. The combination of this and the latent burnt out I didn’t know I was feeling and I found myself one day not being able to get out of bed.
This time round I was better equipped to sort it out. It took a while but one thing that helped me was watching football — to be more specific non-league football, explicitly the Northern Football League. A football league based in the North East of England and the second oldest in the world. Founded in 1889.
I’m going to try and write about how going to matches in this league makes me feel. I started attending towards the end of last season. I was travelling to places in the North East I’d never been to before. To towns and places I would never have visited if it weren’t for this league. I also started to feel well again.
The matches got me out of the house; I was around people, it settled my mind. It helped me focus. There was something acute about going to these matches that I haven’t quite put my finger on. I’d feel really content after each game and at peace.
I’m pushing it here but I started to feel a profound sense of the sublime. There is an emotional weight to this league’s heritage, it’s 130 year history and the deep topography of the landscape between the clubs; grounds, towns, motorways, roads and estates as you journey between. There is also the match itself and the unqiue sensory experience in the minutiae of each. The German film director Werner Herzog would probably talk about the ecstasy of it all. I’d pay good money to hear his commentary of the FA cup match between Dunston UTS vs Consett AFC this season.
As director and raconteur Ken Campbell said to Bill Drummond ‘Don’t bother doing anything unless it’s heroic’. I’m going to write about things experienced this season and I like rules and a mission. I’m going to watch a match at every ground in the Northern Football League— Northern League Divison 1 and Northern League Division 2. Two divisions, Forty teams. Located as far north as Ashington, to the south Thornaby and Guisborough and to the west Penrith and Carlise. An area covering County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, northern Cumbria, the northern half of North Yorkshire and a North Sea coastline. Might not be Homer but it feels heroic to me.
I think there is a story to be told through this league, the towns, the clubs, landscape and spaces between. I don’t know what that story is. I’m going to try and work it out as the season plays out. Plenty of writers out there, far better and more articulate than me, have wrote about this sort of thing before; football, place, identity and the North East of England. There’s a ton of dedicated bloggers, twitterarti, groundhoppers and away day aficionados out there too. Journeymen; Gazelle sabatons, Bovril grail cup seekers, knights of pie, face skin weathered by the icy winds aloft Ironworks Road, minds worn by the Möbius loop of a 0–0 at Esh Whinning on a wet Tuesday night in February. This isn’t a football story though and I don’t need to tread over old turf. The football is just the vessel, a tabernacle holding some unseen deeper meaning, an oblique first half strategy, a metaphorical 4–3–2–1 of the mind, with me in the hole.
Remember, she said, ‘Keep it simple, like Albert Camus’*.
*Goalkeeper for the Racing Universitaire d’Alger junior team from 1928 to 1930
Do I love football? Yes. Is football my life, soul, passion, in my blood, can’t live with it can’t live without it? No. Football maybe a cruel mistress for some but I’m partisan. Neutral. I enjoy watching football and it makes me feel happy. Have I just discovered football because I went mad and it helped me get better? No. Do I need to affirm or validate my football cred points? Who fuckin cares. I’m not Harry Pearson and I’ll measure my literary skill against the 1998 autobiography Freaky Dancing:Me and the Mondays by Bez. WG Sebald by way of the Salford Advertiser sports page. Iain Sinclair does the Pink Final.
Pseudo deep topographical concerns measured by the cosmological significance of the corner flag placement? Who knows? Trancsendence amongst the team sheets? Maybe. Mystical alignments in the meat pies? Possibly. The Northern League’s Centitrigentennial anniversary season kicked off 3rd August. Heaton Stannington vs Bedlington Terriers was the first game.
