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Yahoo book review: Daniel Gray’s Saturday, 3pm
We forget. All the little things that made us love the game. Daniel Gray’s Saturday, 3pm is a little bagful of stardust that can remind us.
Gray’s careful eye and evocative prose have already been used to great effect in his book of travels through football’s provinces, Hatter, Railwaymen and Knitters, and here he supplies us with what are essentially 50 love letters to the ordinary beauty of football.
A glance through the chapter list gives a taste; Watching an away end erupt; Ball hitting bar; Listening to the results in a car; Going with Dad; Singing; Sunday score pages; Watching in bad weather; Being at a junction station on matchday; The ‘hectic Christmas schedule’… All those facets of ordinary beauty.
The way Gray writes about each sliver of delight lifts the book above being simply a quirky treat. Each chapter is a little paean of praise, almost poetic at time, waxing lyrical as evidence of what makes the heart sing. The use of language is a treat. There are many beautifully crafted turns of phrase you will delight in discovering as you pick your way through and I won’t spoil the pleasure by quoting them here. But, to select just one as evidence of what more there is between these covers, the description of football in bad weather as “a game of sacrifice followed by sharp relief, a pastime that begins in daylight and ends under floodlights” is a particular favourite.The fragment entitled My daughter listening at the window also makes its mark, originality and humanity shining through.
Some may find the very idea of the book a little overblown. Poetic, purple-tinged prose and pretentious piffle can be close neighbours, and Gray’s take will not be to everyone’s take. This is only football, after all. But for those who cannot take pleasure in this celebration of the extraordinarily everyday, well, that’s their loss.
There are, too, reminders of that which is slipping away – reading the section on getting the fixture list reminded me how little I care these days about something that was once cause for excitement. That’s partly because it is no longer, as Gray describes it, “a map, allowing us to see where we will be in five or eight months, and perhaps even what mood we will be in at a specific time of day in February”. That’s because, at Premier League level at least, it’s a rough guide rather than a map, a general grid subject to shapeshifting changes the publication of which is ridiculously hyped. So too has the pleasure of the Sunday score pages – described as “a work of art and a triumph of the factual” – but one all too often with missing parts these days.
But it is easy, believe me it’s too easy, to elucidate a cynical take on modern football. Gray’s book reminds us of the simple pleasures, of why we are here; it is a lovely package of observation and eulogy, presented with a striking cover that does justice just to what lies inside. It takes us back to why we started, gives us cause to take a breath, enables us to take pleasure once more and perhaps to believe there are some things that cannot have the life marketed out of them. And for that, it deserves to be widely read.
Follow Martin on twitter @MartinCloake
