'Twas a fairly warm March morning. The birds were a singing and all that, and suddenly - "CHRIST!" My phones alarm. After much fumbling of smashing my York City alarm clock to bits instead of my mobile, I legged it down the stairs double-quick, grabbed a few biscuits and straight out the front door. (I got dressed first obviously - I didn't go naked.) 

So anyway - less of the crap. Arrived at the station at 9:48 to the beautiful sound of being told by Laurence that the 9:45 had been cancelled, and old Captain Derek didn't miss it either. You can always trust the British rail system...

Unfortunately, being delayed meant that we had to take a longer route round than we'd have liked. The short ride to Doncaster was mostly taken up by Laurence blahing on about the cycle ride to Belle Vue in April, and convincing everyone to go while I was looking at The Sun's Page 3. 

Nothing else interesting 'till Derby, which was livened up by a lady bombing around on some mobility-machine thing which, size wise, would've been more at home on a Touring Car track. On an excellent note, we discovered we were ahead of Ray Winn and co. at this point. So if you're reading Ray, ha ha.

On the train to Kidderminster form Brum we had a pleasant, scenic* journey livened up by Paddy and a few others arguing about bus liveries (after we happened to overtake a Dodsworth coach. The debate was whether it was the team or fans coach), and who runs the York City Travel Club coaches. Young Paddy has a knowledge of them to rival Barry Parker, and made for an amusing conversation, matched by an equal amount of pointlessness.

*If you live in a landfill.

The match, I have to say, was awful. Might have looked the better side for the first five minutes, but after a dodgy penalty decision by ref Mark Cowburn (who Laurence christened 'Cowpat'), gifted Kiddy an early advantage and gradually started to get on top. Their second goal, which really did get the away fans pretty irate, was awful - our man was on the floor, they broke away and scored. Bloody ref. Myself and Captain Derek showed our anger by hurling abuse at the Kidderminster mascot-thing who popped over at half-time to 'entertain' us, albeit for only five minutes when we told him to "Shoo!" "Get away!" etc.

I won't describe the second-half, which was an AWFUL display as you'll know. Nothing new there then. Eventually the full-time put us out of our misery, and we were free. Well, in five minutes our train went, the next one was another half-hour or so... thus we legged it! And we walked up a short-ish narrow road. And we started pegging it again! And we were through, into the station, AND... the door closed. Thankfully, with all members of the 9-strong party on board. Thank the Lord, AGAIN... We had no intention of staying there after that performance, which was so horrible it should have been 18-rated.

So, the journey home to look forward to. A chance to point and laugh at some of the mistakes in the statistics and player articles, and the ink splodge conveniently placed on Lee Nogan's right ear. I think the opposition are victimising him utilising all the power of the programme, but nobody else shared that view. Perhaps it was just me. Well, it was.

In a truly bizarre and comical incident, Woody Wilson bought a Snickers out of the Vending Machine. Not realising that two actually came out, Laurence (the filthy scrounger...) seized his opportunity to claim the second bar for his own. Old Woody never realised on the train 'till Paddy told him... after Laurence told everyone else, of course.

Much hilarity on the road (or should that be rails?) to Birmingham made an appearance in the form of a woman, who was sat on one of the two tables we occupied. We were wholeheartedly convinced that it was a woman when her phone went off and started talking - in a deep, manly voice. It was a man. The woman/man/neuter thing started absolutely slagging off Bolton's performance in colourful language as our party simply stared at each other in disbelief. Don't say our away trips are uneventful.

A, for the most part, uninteresting (from a scenic point of view) train ride back to York (because we couldn't see anything as it was pitch black) was ultimately fuelled with hilarity and mucho embarrassment. I finally came out about my strange love of sniffing new York City programmes, amid the usual chatter about the game. Also, Paddy punched me and gave me an abrasion. Basturk. Finally arrived at York on time at about 20:10 in the most disappointingly disappointed (last time I ever use that cliché) manner.