Mister Crockett,
I sit here wearing a black armband and unashamedly wiping away a tear or two as the realisation that you are returning to exile in Caledonia finally sinks in.
What memories you have left us:
- that vision of you wearing a kilt at the Altrincham FC Centenary dinner;
- that vision of you actually wearing a suit at the launch of STAR at the Cresta Court Hotel;
- your Pulitzer Prize-winning text that accompanied those 'Please adopt this cat' photographs each week in the Messenger;
- your very public struggle to give up smoking (how could you
ever have thought that you could pull that one off whilst enduring the emotional rollercoaster that is watching Alty?);
- your brilliant and smooth insertion of the adjective 'tumultuous' in an Alty match report, after we challenged you to try and include it;
- driving to each away match and arriving at least five hours before kick-off, as you have a phobia of being late!
- being challenged about your presence at a crucial Alty FC AGM by none other that Leonard Rosenfield:
- sitting in the snug of the social club at Hucknall in April 2005, being surrounded by strange refugees from a DH Lawrence novel;
- your resulting classic 'Hucknall's too tight to mention' headline;
- kindly giving me a lift to that play-off match at Kettering in 2005. An extraordinary day!
Here's one of my all-time favourite Alty photographs:
http://kipax.fotopic.net/p14707627.html So, who's going to take me to Birmingham to see Bob Dylan now, eh?
All the very best in your new job and don't leave it too long before you return to Cheshire.
In the words of Mister Zimmerman himself:
"Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'."