THE RACING CLUB WARWICK GANTRY...

Escaping the Gantry

(Racing Club Warwick kindly offered their gantry to me, so that I could get a better position to film their FA Vase Round 3 game v Wisbech Town. It proved tough to access, due to an awkward ladder, scaffolding and overhanging tree branches. 

It was even more hairy descending after the final whistle…

Loved it though…)

The grandstand’s corrugated metal backdrop

Was marked by grim, green slime

In patches of damp, dull grime;

A narrow path, leaf-smothered,

Led between the shelter’s wall and a chaos, a shambles

Of unkempt bushes, gnarled trees and clinging brambles,

To an aluminium ladder, leaning precariously

At eighty degrees for a shaky climb, access and entry

To an exposed and rudimentary viewing gantry…

The cold, damp scaffold piping pierced

Encroaching branches at the ladder’s awkward reach,

Like a break, a hole, a barrier’s breach;

A slippery roof lay there, wet and weathered

And I hunched, clambered and rambled,

Through the spiky foliage I scrambled

Over horizontal scaffold limbs, connected deviously;

I twisted, I turned, I crouched on the slope of the ‘stand

Then hauled myself onto the gantry, soiling my hands…

The platform’s moss-encrusted planks glistened

Wet and slippery on the primitive dais wooden,

Upon which I stood in December’s drizzle, sodden;

Soles clung but shoes might have slithered,

As I watched, filmed and commentated

And players argued and gesticulated

In an FA Vase match won conclusively

By Wisbech Town, before in gloomy darkness I wondered with a worried frown,

How via obstacles, branches and the wobbly ladder, I would get back down…

Pete Ray

December 2017 

  

   

BEFORE THE LADDER...

THE SCAFFOLD TREE...

AH, THE LADDER...

LOOKING DOWN:
IT WAS DARK AT THE END OF THE GAME...

VIEW RIGHT...

VIEW LEFT...

VIEW ACROSS...

THE MOSSY, SLIPPERY PLANKS...