Outside The Valley

Charlton is a 30 minute train ride from London’s Charing Cross station. Numerous fans were on the train with us, decked in the team’s red jerseys or wearing supporter’s scarves, so we followed them when exiting the train.

The station is on a street lined with small shops, but the crowd was flowing through the backstreets, past houses and 2 flat buildings. At first it seemed all the locals had all drawn their shades, and nobody seemed to be home. But as we got closer to the stadium they call The Valley, which could just be seen over the rooftops, that all changed.

Many of the neighbors had set up makeshift shops at the fences separating their front yards from the sidewalk. Scarves and t-shirts were the main items. As the official team store was packed with fans, we looked at what the neighbors had to offer. Jeff pointed to one of the shirts. It was a parody of the MasterCard “Priceless” ad, celebrating a defeat of rival Tottenham Hotspurs that knocked them out of the FA Cup competition. The final line said something about disappointing “the Yids” and making them cry: this was the “Priceless” part.

I saw that word, knew what it meant, but thought it surely meant something else. Some British term, like how they call a car’s trunk a “boot.” Jeff said no, it wasn’t that.