WEST HAM v LEICESTER

 Monday 23rd August

8pm kick off

London Stadium

West Ham 4 Leicester 1

I'd never been to The Olympic Stadium before and I still insist in calling it that. It's now called The London Stadium. Sign in was at 3pm and I was to go to bridge 2 and then go down a ramp that would lead me into the sign in area.

Upon arrival on the way from Westfield Shopping Centre I caught the eye of another chap dressed as a penguin. His name was Lennox and I explained that I'd never been to The London Stadium before. Lennox was a chatty chap and proceeded to give everyone directions upon our long walk. I felt like I was in safe hands upon meeting this Lennox chap. He told me how he was a supervisor and that he was used to this stadium. Lennox and me were only wearing our ties, white shirts, black trousers and black jackets yet still people kept coming up to us both asking for directions. Stratford baffles me so it was a good job Lennox was able to tell them. 

On Bridge 2 the sign in area. I had to find my name card. It was quite easy as everything is in first names. I found mine easily after realising this but it did still take me a couple of minutes to work it out.

I took my little credit card sized name card and off I went to the next queue. They scanned my card and proceeded to give me a slip of paper with the many photocopied "Spare" on it. It bought back memories that did. The Wembley wind tunnel when I had to wait in the pouring rain and I was freezing cold because the previous day was a heatwave. Well, on this day it was okay and I didn't mind being a spare and just hanging about because hanging about is why I got into stewarding after all.  

I was sent to the wall. It reminded me of being at school. All the spares lent against the wall and we all started to have a chat, "Are you a spare too?" That was the sentence of whoever came to the lonely wall. Soon the wall wasn't lonely. I was the first "Spare" but we could have formed a Gospel Choir within about fifteen minutes of my arrival. We didn't though. We talked amongst ourselves about Wembley and how shit it was that they were sentencing stewards to two years in prison for selling the Hi-Vis and lanyards. We talked about bloodyhell, haven't people got anything better to do than blame us stewards about everything?

I had a heart to heart with Shazia next to me on the wall of spares. We got talking. When you're in the spares it takes forever. A bit like being an old cat or an old dog that's about to be put down unless someone adopts it. There's nothing wrong with us though, they just randomly select some spares. Some SIA's get upset about it. I'm never bothered though. I just think it makes the job all the more exciting.

I started to talk to Shazia. She told me she had 3 young children and that she worked all day as security in a Liverpool Street office block. She told me that her husband had abused her for ten years and he would beat her and the children up and that she was made to never leave the house. Thankfully she remarried and she said her new husband is perfect and that he looks after the children now. I didn't know what to say to the first bit of me and Shazia's conversation. I do believe that she understood my caring nature as she needed water and there was no water and she needed the toilet and there was no toilet but I took it upon myself to find Shazia both. Well, I thought I might as well as we could be standing around for 3 hours as spares.

Shazia was the first to leave the wall as she was SIA. I was second. I was given my hi-vis and sent to one of the stands.  I sat there and soon my friend from Wembley turned up, it was no other than my great friend Stella! We had such a top time at Wembley. It's really nice when you meet a fellow steward that you can have a chat to through the boring times and then laugh through the miserable times. It's like being in the army this steward malarking I reckon sometimes.

We sat in the stadium for a bit. An hour or so.  Just having brief chats with the rest of our crew. We watched fire flames pipe up at random moments and a weird re-mix of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles." kept playing.