Guardian Online report:
Last Saturday, Luton Town FC broke a losing streak after manager Mike Newell posted a copy of Kipling’s ‘If’ in the dressing room. ‘It is something that I have read for years,’ he said. ‘It’s something I believe in and I have got it pinned up in my office. On Friday, I put it up in the dressing-room for some to read. I don’t think many of the players could make head nor tail of it… I took it down before it could be defaced.’
The Town had played eight games and been defeated every time;
their manager Mike Newell thought, ‘I’ll fuel them with rhyme’ –
the kind that stiffens sinews and goes rippling through the joints.
He chose Mr Kipling’s poem ‘If’, for picking up the points.
On the day before the fixture, he put up the rousing text
in the Kenilworth Road dressing room, the marvellous came next.
The players were bemused by this unorthodox selection,
and bemusement is the key word here – the muse was their infection:
A superhuman streak raced through the players as they ran,
the goalie was as solid as an anchor, not a man.
Carlos Edwards got the second – he’s from Trinidad and Tobago,
and he made the Preston backs look like they suffered from lumbago.
Yes, the players got the message, from what Rudyard had penned.
Mr Newell found the fuel, and the iffyness would end.
Whipps Cross Hospital, 3rd January ’45
Dear Glad,
I’m in the nurses’ canteen, I’ve been nursing the men wounded in the air raid on the RAF base. And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve fallen for one of them. A little Frenchie he is. I’ve always liked the French: romantic, stylish and oniony. He says he wants to start a family and he says he wants to start it with me! He’s been in England since all this started in ’39 and he says he doesn’t feel very French anymore, so I said when he’s up and about, I’ll take him down to Dover and we can look over at France. He says his mum used to dance on stage in Paris. Remember how we used to dance on the bandstand? I’ll take him there and show him. He says if we get married, I’ll have to become a Roman Catholic. I said, ‘But you’ve only known me ten minutes. Seven, actually.’ He said he knew I was the one for him in seven seconds. I said, ‘What took you so long, I thought the French were supposed to be romantic.’
Don’t take too long to write to me, Sis.
Love, Jeanne
No, I’m not calling myself Ivy, now. I’ve started to call
myself Jeanne, as in Jeanne d’Arc, what a woman!