Signing Out

With a French residency visa, membership of the International Addicks, and a 12-month subscription to Charlton TV for the live streams all in my pocket, I can’t really continue under the title of Blackheath Addick. I am now living in France and plan to remain here – here being at present a mix of Lyon and our new place in Givry, Burgundy - for the foreseeable future. Consequently, while signing off from this space, there is a fresh incarnation, Burgundy Addick, which I hope others will look at from time to time - https://burgundyaddick.blogspot.com/.

One of the sadder tasks making the move was to scale down the Charlton memorabilia (inc programmes of course), to fit into an acceptable (to my partner Suzanne) shrine in the new place. In that I am indebted to the Charlton Museum. And when Ben came around to take a look he noticed the photo of me as a nipper on the pitch, the one in the photo on the blog, and wondered if the shirt still existed. It did – and I could hardly refuse.

Perhaps I always knew that my shirt would one day hang proudly at The Valley. I had of course for most of my life assumed that this would be the result of my outstanding career as Charlton’s finest ever centre-forward. As the chances of that scenario tended to reduce through my thirties and forties, thoughts turned to having to buy the club in order to achieve my goal (one essential condition of the purchase being that I would make one sub appearance to get my name in the record books). That scenario too is looking less likely now. I should have known all along that the shirt was always there, just waiting for the Museum to take it away and put it on display. I could not wish for a better place for it.