After leaving the ground at about five or something I wheel around to where I came from, looking around for the away coaches. I ask for directions from a Steward. He directed me ‘that way’ and pointed down the side of the ground. I followed in this direction, casually walking around the carpark that encircles the stadia.
I walked and walked. ‘If my geometry is right’ I think there’s only one corner left to where I started from. I turned the corner. No coaches apart from the team one, shielded by barriers and Stewards. Cut off, surrounded by carpark and unable to be penetrated. I had to turn back. In search of another Steward who gives me vague directions to where I came from. Alarm phased through me - the first plain of urgency. I lurched into a quick shuffle. Here I mouthed at another official, spouting out my intentions to go home that night. It must have been about 10 past five approaching fifteen minutes past. This is when I realise that the first official had meant, not around the ground but little sliproad in the direction he had pointed. Panic set in.
I madly pounded down this sullen track. Cutting up Middlesborough supporters waddling in swarms and scattering into their own directions - aiming for their separate locations. Running infront of crawling cars on the roads that fed into this tarmac artery. Beside a hot-dog stand I see the distinctive bright orange of a Stewards jacket. I stumble towards him, short of breath and full of dread. I urgently ask directions to the away coaches.
‘You’ll be lucky, I think they’ve gone’ he said before telling me they’d be on the left and that I couldn’t miss them, bizarre as he said I probably had.
My sprint continues, gasping for breath and muscles contracting, crying out for energy, my body cutting through the waves of people. Splintered groups in their ones and twos. Looking vaguely in the distance - hoping for the paradise of de courcy coaches.
The next thing I know I am scampering through a carpark on the side of the road. Crawling towards the exit which I had sped through. The place looks like a tyreyard and I see no coaches in amongst the sea of stranded cars. I bang on a portercabin then bundle my way through the door. I interrupt a conversation with my desperate plea . A man explains the coaches are along the road I had been running down. A brief note of thanks and I am running again. I reach a bridge and it is conferred what I suspected - my carriage has gone. I am stranded.