Friday 12 September 2025

Digs booked. Full tank of diesel. Five thirty AM, leaving Burslem, saying goodbye to Lemmy and the Angel, Henry Doulton, the streets of Arnold Bennett – all now just ghosts in the rearview, heading towards Exeter, tomorrow Port Vale will be searching for THAT first win, THAT first sign of better things to come. The revolution. Freedom from despair. 

Today though, today we chase Satori. The path? It begins at the A500, flows into the M6, merges with the M5,and winds through the South West, Honiton Road into Exeter – a koan with no answer. Nobody teaches this in school. Nobody tells you that enlightenment might come with a flat white and sausage & cheese Oatcakes. Now, why might that be?

M6. M5. Wolverhampton, Dudley, Birmingham, Kidderminster — names like drumbeats, like mantras. Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester — places we’ve loved, places we’ve hated. Tewkesbury, Stroud, Bristol, Portishead, Nailsea — ugly-beautiful, beautiful-ugly. All part of the great wheel turning. Industrial cities, seaside towns, the cross of St George, dog shit on the pavement, hate all around us. All of it is the Dharma path.

We chat idly – is the Aussie back? Surely cannot be Marosi in goal again? Ben Amos? Will we see Gabriel? So far proving that he is not the archangel that we thought we had summoned. Who partners Devante Cole? Paton? Is Stockley anything like ready yet? Does George Hall make an appearance? Funso – first name on the sheet – we all must agree on this. And Mitch, is Mitch fit? Didn’t look it on Saturday. Mo Faal, Ben Waine – what on earth do we do with these people? Tomorrow will reveal all. Clarity will need to be wearing a Vale shirt. Could we go a whole season without winning a single league game? Whilst playing good football? All things are possible. Zen says yes. Zen says the goal is not the goal. Zen says the ball is round, but the truth is not. And surely, we can find liberation in defeat? Freedom from our expectations of victory, freedom from our hopes of victory, has to be a good thing, right? Wrong. Football just doesn’t work like that.

Motorway Service Stations. We keep these to a bare minimum. In fact, we limit ourselves to just one. Gordano Services, Bristol way. A temple of the unholy. Ugly, inside and out. Sucking the very spirit from our souls. No Brutalism, no Modernism — just plastic and sadness. Miserable people, miserable lives. Coffee that tastes like forgetting. We grab it and go. The Dharma waits outside.

It is ten o’clock in the morning and we are in Exeter. It is raining. The sky weeps. The road ends. The search begins.