Читать книгу Taking le Tiss онлайн

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Not all the foreign trips were to glamorous locations. We had a horrible trip to East Germany to play Carl Zeiss Jena before the wall came down. I can’t believe we went there; the club must have received a fair wedge to make it worthwhile. It was a real experience crossing the border, with East German armed guards searching every inch of the team coach. We were stuck there for at least an hour and the agent warned us not to do anything to antagonize the trigger-happy police. Even I knew when it was wise to keep quiet and we all sat there on our best behaviour—apart from John Burridge.

He was as mad as a bucket of frogs. He even slept with a football as part of his pre-match preparation and, when he was relaxing watching television, used to get his wife to suddenly throw oranges at him to test his reflexes. It was like Inspector Clouseau asking Kato to jump out and attack him. Anyway, ‘Budgie’ wasn’t noted for doing or saying the right thing and he kept on at one particular border guard asking him if there were landmines in no-man’s-land, the couple of miles of neutral territory between the two heavily armed border barriers. The guard steadfastly refused to answer him, so Budgie kept on asking. Eventually the guard admitted that there were mines in those fields and Budgie cracked, ‘Well, how do you dig up your potatoes then?’ Not the subtlest remark!