One hundred and fifty years ago Port Vale Football Club came into being. It has given us joy and beauty, pain and ugliness in equal measure – and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Life is always worth living despite the suffering we have to endure. Vale hold a mirror to existence itself.

This year marks my fiftieth year supporting Vale. My first game back in 1976, with my Grandad – Barnsley in the FA Cup. We stood in the Railway Paddock, which would eventually become my spiritual home. There have been a few seasons spent in the Bycars, for secret reasons, but it never felt right, I had to return to the Paddock. I can still remember the smell of Vale Park from when I was a kid: tobacco, ale, ammonia and body odour. A heady mix. Blokes certainly didn’t shower every day back then. Why people yearn for the ‘good old days’ is completely beyond me. The fashion was flares, parka coats, wing-collared shirts, bomber jackets, Oxford bags. The Casuals were still three years away; between ’76 and ’79 everybody looked an absolute state – at the football, anyway. Mind you, Goldenhill was hardly Paris, London or Milan at the time.

I remember how lads would just walk from the Bycars straight over to the opposition fans in the Hamil via the Lorne Street. Nothing in the way. It fascinated me – that element of the match, the lads at play and all that carry on.

A random selection of names now, but names that mattered: John Connaughton, Neil Griffiths, Kenny Beech, John Froggatt, Peter Sutcliffe, Bill Bentley, David Harris, Neville Chamberlain, Mark Chamberlain, Phil Sproson, Bernie Wright, Ken Beamish, John Ridley, Trevor Dance, Terry Bailey. They all played a part in my childhood.

The absolute joy of the 2-1 FA Cup win over Spurs in 1988. I was 17. It was the closest I’d ever been to heaven. Before that, my purest football experience had been a 5-1 away win at Crewe in 1978 – Friday night, might have been the League Cup, might not. I was there with my Grandad and my Dad, all three of us completely lost in the chaos of it all. It was my first taste of something beyond happiness – a brief feeling of being at one with everything. A quasi-religious experience at Gresty Road of all places.

The 90s. I missed so much of our greatest decade – well, the first half of it anyway. I went to Manchester University in September 1989 and immediately got hooked on everything going on around me: the music, the clubs, the clothes, the drugs, the scene. I couldn’t get enough. I absorbed it all until there was nothing left to absorb. Manchester was on fire. Saturdays became a write-off. Coming down off a cocktail of chemicals, there was no chance of getting a train around the country for the football. There is something else I need to confess: I liked being away from Stoke-on-Trent. I liked where I was and who I was around. Home no longer felt like home – not compared with Manchester at that time, when anything and everything seemed possible. I’m older and maybe a little wiser these days.

May 1991. Dropped out of university. I’d winged it for two years and couldn’t be bothered to wing it any longer. I wouldn’t have been allowed into the final year anyway. Not a chance. I jumped before I was pushed. Too much partying, and no intention of stopping. I moved in with a mate in Chorlton and worked behind a bar – the absolute dream job for anyone who has studied Philosophy and Politics. Seriously. That’s where you really get into it all. I learned more about Philosophy and Politics in six weeks behind a bar than I did in two years at university.

Tuesday 24 November 1992. Port Vale 3-1 Stoke City. FA Cup first-round replay. My first time back at Vale Park since 1989. Like a drug, but without the miserable comedown. Actual ecstasy. The conditions, the people, the sheer feeling of being there again after three years away. May 1993, Peter Swan is red-carded and it all falls to pieces in the League 2 Play-off final against WBA, my only ever trip to the old Wembley Stadium. The Millennium Stadium and the new Wembley would bring happy memories in 2001 and 2022.

October 1995. Finally back home. I had left Chorlton in 1994 to spend six months living in London, I was writing a book on the nomadic ‘crusty’ techno culture that had been flying during the early to mid-90s. It was never finished. New Cross chewed me up and spat me out all the way back to Manchester. Things eventually went sour in Chorlton. Enough was enough. It was time.

Anyway, ’95, living in Tunstall, staying with an old mate. Back at Vale Park for the first time since the Stoke FA Cup replay in 1992. We lost at home to Crystal Palace. We lost at home to Birmingham. We lost at home to Sheffield United. It didn’t matter. We were playing in the Second Tier. John Rudge was already a legend. I loved what I was seeing. The names alone: Paul Musslewhite, Dean Glover, Neil Aspin, Ian Bogie, Andy Porter, Tony Naylor, Jon McCarthy, Allen Tankard. Another FA Cup adventure. Bringing Everton back to Burslem and beating them. Almost beating Leeds United in the fifth round. It was crazy mad. I could go on. Maybe I will.

More names: Robbie Earle, Jimmy Greenhoff, Robin Van Der Laan, Nicky Cross, Russell Bromage, Ernie Moss, Steve Guppy, Bob Hazell, Darren Beckford, Andy Jones, Ian Taylor, Steve Fox, Ally Brown, John Jeffers, Felix Healy, Ray Walker. I love them all.

Memories, eh?