The Hanging Gardens of Grangetown
Dylan Moore remembers afternoons at Ninian Park, before the future began
If I were able to pause Cardiffian time, I would suspend Robert Earnshaw in mid-air, a Sonic the Hedgehog blur of blue fire energy, the pure white blaze of the perfect 10 on his shirt-back floodlit in the green-field glory of Ninian Park, late on a Saturday afternoon sometime in the early 2000s.
It would be a Leckwith Still Life in the shadowed stadium, not centred on a particular match or goal – this is not sportswriting, neither Nick Hornby nor Nick Fisk – just Earnie suspended in amber as a period piece, trademark somersault encapsulating those uncertain early years of the present century, before social media and the smoking ban, when the Millennium Stadium played temporary host to Cup Finals while the FA rebuilt Wembley, the Millennium Centre was still mired in recriminations about the non-adoption of a design by Zaha Hadid, and the newborn National Assembly for Wales still met in a mundane chamber deep within a redbrick office block, making it easy to mistake for Glamorgan County Council on stilts.
The goal celebration of my Cardiff dreamtime would be emblematic, following just one of the 86 that Robert Earnshaw scored for the Cardiff City Football Club during that prolific first spell, the dates of which – 1998 to 2004 – coincide with my own uncertain youth and young manhood, when Kings of Leon still had beards.
It would be a winner of course, or a late equaliser – the kind of strike that seems to lift the very sky, blowing the brains of fifteen thousand souls, dopamine bursting through veins already thick with adrenaline and booze; the kind of goal where ball-in-net bulge sends scores of Burberry-clad boneheads careering down the concrete steps of Bob Bank and Grange End; fathers, grandfathers and uncles ruffling roughly the heads and necks and torsos of sons and grandsons and nephews, while still more grown and grizzled men embrace strangers with wild nightclub abandon.
And with the goalscorer himself poised upside down, hands outstretched above the glow-green turf, my Cardiff freeze-frame also finds overzealous teammates crashing over advertising hoardings, swallowed by exuberance, lost in a forest of flailing limbs and bluebird tattoos on varied body parts, faces lit with unbridled joy among scarves and caps and copious Stone Island coats.
While we are on pause, let us also stop to consider what all this feels and sounds like, and what it smells like too. For this is not simply the sight of a blue-shirt army, arms aloft in spontaneous ayatollahs that will later coagulate into ritual prostrations around the four sides of Ninian Park. It is also the deep volcanic roar from behind the goal, a sound that shakes seagulls from the rafters of the rickety old ground, this crumbling century-old temple of peeling paint on terrace railings, steel pillars and plastic seats, wooden signage and corrugated iron roofs.
Behind the corner flag between Grandstand and Grange, riot vans park next to burger vans amid the fug of slow-burn cannabis resin, the odour of asphalt and onions, Bisto steam, stale beer-farts and wet Alsatians. The glower of impending violence haunts the melancholy web of netting that shields off the away fans behind fluorescent jackets, orange stewards and yellow police. But in this moment, which flickers back now into a moving picture – Earnshaw landing on his feet to be mobbed by beaming teammates, players now half-forgotten by all but the die-hards – the song is simple. Unlike so many of the unsavoury chants that have skidmarked the afternoon with their casual bigotry and threats of violence, suddenly the singing is wholesome and cheerful and clean.
It is a wartime song about sunshine. A song about love. Its original release – oh so appropriate – on Bluebird Records. It goes like this: You are my Cardiff, my only Cardiff, you make me happy when skies are grey… A paean to our city as much as to our team.
Above us all, the sky is a Ffestiniog shade of slate. And for those thousands of us standing rank and file in Bob Bank and Grange, or sitting in the serried seats of Grandstand or Canton – those of us who have made the pilgrimage here on foot from Roath and Riverside; on buses from Llandaff and Llandough, Penarth, Pentwyn and Pentrebane; trains from Aberdare and Aberfan, Ystrad Mynach and Ystrad Rhondda, the pathetic fallacy is strong.
Streaming to the ground via pints and songs and plenty of swear words, in pubs that have now closed down or changed their names, we have come to the ground with our lives tucked away in back pockets like the crumpled blue stubs of our tickets: dysfunctional families back in Danescourt, ex-wives in Adamsdown, broken dreams in Butetown and Barry and Bedwas.
Later we will laugh and sing and lean across bars in the Neville and Mitre, Cornwall and Corporation, Westgate and Goat Major, in Dempsey’s and Kitty Flynn’s, the Old Monk and the New Addie, the Clifton and Canadian, the Bertram and Splottlands, the Admiral Napier, Royal Exchange and Canton Cross Vaults.
And before we are taken by taxi or train or bus, crawling back to every corner of this sad and sodden city, there will be a döner wrap or chicken off- or on-the-bone, our spirits lifted for an hour or two by beer and curry sauce and the memory of Earnie in flight, before our own lives touch down like discarded polystyrene trays, washing down the gutters of Crwys and City, Cowbridge, Corporation and Clare – our Cardiff arteries clogged with Miss Millie’s and Chicken Cottage, Uncle Sam’s and Rocket Joe’s.
But in this moment we come together, we feel together, we are together, truly. And the feeling finds expression in the simplicity of the song. You make me happy when skies are grey – you’ll never notice how much I love you, so please don’t take my Cardiff away…
As Earnshaw spins, the city is set in aspic, set out in diorama like another developer’s masterplan. Only this time it’s not what the future looks like, but the present exploding in the past. Ninjah banging bin lids in the middle of Jim Driscoll’s funeral, Toy Mic Trevor crooning across Crockherbtown Lock, Shaky-hands Man bothering people for a penny as they alight from trams amid the terraces of Temperance Town.
And then of course, Earnie lands, and Ninian Park itself comes crashing down, and a brand new field of dreams is turfed out across Bartley Wilson Way.
But with footballer in flight and floodlight, we can’t yet see the future unfurl. A man with a topknot and thunderous thighs lining up a freekick. A septugenarian folk singer fighting back tears in the rain. Bucket hats. Sage Todz. We can’t see the smoking ban or social media. We can’t sense the sudden unfurling of the rest of our lives, marriages and children, and the way perhaps that goals won’t always mean this much.
All we can see is the beaming smile of an upside down striker. And for today, that’s more than enough.
Dylan Moore is co-editor of Cwlwm.