Tom Dickinson

In a world where it's considered newsworthy when someone attends matches at all ninety-two grounds of the teams which constitute league football in England in the course of his lifetime, the author's feat of checking them all off in one season is quite remarkable; inter alia, he goes to seven matches in seven days at one point. His account of his feat is a masterpiece. He describes in just the right amount of detail the grounds, the pies, his mates, the people sitting around him, the pies, the mascots, the parking, the weather, and, eventually, the football. In the course of the season he drove 250 miles to a match which was called off, saw a man die, watched as the ambulance squad extracted a teen entangled in a seat, and got his picture taken with Frank Sinclair. He is a very witty fellow, both in his own right and in picking up on the hilarity of his surroundings. If this book has flaws, they would center around his sloppy spelling and occasional lapsing into quasi-texting overuse of punctuation ; a professional editor would have probably toned down his boasting about his binge drinking. It would be a little dangerous to mess too much with this book of marvels, though.… (altro)