Between the Sticks. Alan Hodgkinson

more progress than a maggot in a fisherman’s bait box. I was escorted to a large wooden double door that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Hampton Court in terms of age or size. When one half of it opened, I stepped into a large, square, cool room that had all the restful atmosphere of an old Methodist chapel and something of the same smell. Dotted about the room were heavy carved chairs with plush red-cushioned seats; a large dark oak table that looked as if it could comfortably sit sixty for dinner and some; while on wood-panelled walls hung oil paintings of past Mayors in ceremonial robes draped with gold chain, their faces sporting thin white moustaches. On the far wall to my right, a landscape oil of Sheffield viewed from a hill recorded an elevated view of the city just as the Industrial Revolution was seemingly getting under way. On the left, a stained glass window about the size of a tennis court shed every colour of the prism dancing across floorboards you could have skated across in stockinged feet. It was an old musty, fusty, narrow-minded room, as quiet as a minister’s study, the sort of room that didn’t look as if anyone ever worked in it or would ever want to.

      The Mayor was a small, round, avuncular man with a cheery face and voice to match. He seemed to be of friendly and humorous disposition, but something about him suggested to me he’d held a lot of noses to the grindstone in his time. The Lady Mayoress was taller, larger, with a rotund face covered in sufficient make-up to keep Max Factor’s profits ticking over nicely and chins that lay on top of one another like slices of processed cheese. She had blue-rinse hair set in a ruthless perm and her eyelashes were twin miracles of mascara. When she welcomed me her voice had a blustering, hard quality to it and sounded as if it would never tolerate any nonsense.

      Introductions over, a woman dressed in a blue overall entered the room pushing a metal trolley containing cups and saucers, a pot of coffee and all the usual trappings that go with the drinking of coffee. There was no tea.

      I gingerly sipped miniscule amounts of coffee as we passed a pleasant enough fifteen minutes. I was told His Worship and his wife saw my selection as a ‘feather in the cap for the city’. For my part I informed them I felt it a great honour to be selected to represent my country and would do my very best not let down the good folk of Sheffield. As the minutes ticked by like hours I fielded questions about Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, players I had yet to meet, whilst the Lord Mayor said he would offer me a cigarette as he ‘liked the occasional one’, only they brought on the asthma of his good lady wife. I put him at ease by thanking him and saying I didn’t smoke anyway. He looked a tad disappointed.

      I’d managed to decrease the coffee in my cup a couple of millimetres when the doors to Ben Hur’s temple opened again and a tall, thin, silver-haired man of around sixty entered and informed His Worship the car was ready. The Lady Mayoress snorted and said she hoped it wasn’t the Daimler as she had ridden in it before and it had brought on her asthma. The old boy with the silver hair bowed about a centimetre. He didn’t scowl but he looked about as happy as a man in a starched collar ever looks.

      ‘Well, Mr Odgkinsun, shall we depart to our, ehm, special hoe-casion, to celebrate your Hinternational status?’ said the Mayor, and he duly extended a chubby little hand in the direction of the towering doors.

      The Lady Mayoress’s asthma was spared. It wasn’t the Daimler. An old black Rolls Royce with headlamps the size of Royal Doulton dinner plates awaited us. On seeing us descending the Town Hall steps the driver leapt out of the car, scuttled around to the pavement side and opened the rear door. I followed the Lady Mayoress on to a cool, leather back seat and sat feeling very self-conscious between the pair of them. The driver closed the door of the Rolls Royce as if he were closing the lid of a jewellery box. That done, he returned to his own seat for a journey that lasted all of four hundred yards.

      We drew up outside the Odeon cinema. It would have been as quick to walk and would have made more sense to do so. As we ascended the steps of the Odeon I thought, ‘This is going to be some occasion.’ The Odeon seated 1,500 people and though I did not expect the auditorium to be anywhere near full to capacity, for the ‘special occasion’ to be held in such a vast hall I imagined a decent crowd of the great and good of the city to be present. The cinema manager and a young usherette welcomed us with no less reverence than if they had been welcoming the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon’s pied à terre. We three followed in their footsteps, up the carpeted stairs towards the main auditorium, in so doing, I ran through my mind a few words of gratitude should I be called upon to speak, which I was certain I would be.

      On reaching doors leading to the auditorium stalls, the cinema manager and usherette stood to either side, extended a hand and swung the doors open as if beckoning us to enter another dimension.

      ‘After you, Mr ’Odgkinson, tis your special day,’ intoned the Mayor.

      I checked my tie was straight, took a deep intake of breath and strode into the vastness of the Odeon cinema auditorium. The sight that greeted me turned the shape of my mouth into an O. The place was completely and utterly deserted.

      I was so taken aback I stopped dead in my tracks, but the genial Mayor extended a chubby hand again and indicated I should carry on walking down the aisle. When we reached a point about halfway, the chubby hand got to work again, pointing to a row of seats.

      ‘I think about ’ere will do very nicely.’

      The three of us parked ourselves in the middle of a row of seats and with the cinema lights still up, his Worship the Mayor revealed to me the purpose of our visit.

      ‘My good lady and I wanted to mark your selection for the England football team by doing something special for you,’ said the Mayor with not a little enthusiasm, ‘but what could be done to honour one of our own sons of the city on such an horse-spicous hoe-cassion as playing for ’is country? What form could this special occasion take?’

      Before I could mount a guess, he told me.

      ‘We ’ave arranged for you to see, with us, a film of Saturday’s Grand National ’orse race. Now what about that? Surprised?’

      I certainly was. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d suddenly produced evidence that proved Elvis Presley was the illegitimate son of Mother Teresa. In truth, I had no idea as to what the ‘special occasion’ to celebrate my England call-up would entail but, should I have been asked to guess, watching a film of the previous Saturday’s Grand National would have been pretty low on the list.

      The cinema lights dimmed, the big screen flickered into life and I found myself watching horses and riders in the Aintree parade ring. I settled back in my chair, crossed my legs and hoped that the action wouldn’t bring on her Ladyship’s asthma.

      Little over twelve minutes later we were bidding our farewells. Once again the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress wished me luck, reiterating my selection had helped put Sheffield ‘on the map’ and said they would be in touch on my return to hear all about my big day. I thanked them for their hospitality, and the coffee, picked up my grip bag and headed for Sheffield Midland station. I never did hear from them again.

      Of all the ceremonies and situations my football career has presented me with, sitting in a deserted cinema at ten on a Monday morning watching a re-run of the Grand National is, without doubt, the most bizarre. I did, however, appreciate the time and trouble taken by His Worship and his good lady and I did, in a curious way, feel honoured to have been invited to what they obviously saw as a rare treat. Even in 1957, the number of homes in the UK which possessed a television set was in the minority, at the time Mum and Dad didn’t own one, so it was somewhat of a treat to see a major sporting occasion as opposed to hearing it on radio or reading about it in my newspaper.