The year’s around 1980-ish and I’m ten; and Prince Charles was visiting Burnley General for some reason or other. I remember a teacher walking into our classroom and saying we’d been chosen or offered a number of invites (read: kiddies to pad out the throngs) to gleefully cheer our next trophy-eared King.
Being the fair-minded chap I am I suggested drawing straws. Nobody seemed overly interested in that as a concept seeming an equal number of boys and girls were asked to turn up and the number of boys in our class was the number of boys expected. Cue bitch-fight.
I don’t remember much other than standing right at the front of the Burnley masses, plastic Union Jack in hand, camera around neck whilst sheltering from the elements in a knee-length green kagoul. Although I do remember being yanked from my vantage point by my hood by our teacher and shrieked at for wandering off on my own – in full view of everybody.
To this day I still don’t think I was in the wrong. I’d gone to see the Prince of Wales and I’d wormed my way into what I thought the best spot. Fortunately, the kind people behind me took pity and allowed me back after my bollocking.
So, the thought of the not-so bonny Prince visiting Burnley again sets me off on some form of anxiety attack – well I struggle to catch my breath as I think of my industrial-strength zipper pressing hard into my windpipe.
Anyway, at least this time round he’s got his own Burnley shirt ():
We didn’t bankrupt the club with the cost of lettering.
I shudder to think what Owen Coyle would’ve been like had he not trotted off down the A666. Expected Prince Charles to bow I would imagine.
But we haven’t been short of our own royalty round here y’know. That is, if you consider Obama turning up at Lorain County Community College a royal visit just down the road from my father-in-law’s house in Elyria.
Here are a couple of pictures of him at LCCC’s Wind Turbine Manufacturing and Fabrication Lab:
Obama’s customary fist bump.(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
Looks like somebody’s got a man-crush…(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
And to think, if I’d broken ranks to wave flags at yon President I’d probably have been shot.
I like to get a copy of Rate per M.T of Fabrication with the plain & chequered plates.
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