Happy 20th Birthday Charlton Life!

I'm getting a bit misty-eyed about this, thinking about the last 20 years. 

I'm attending the funeral of a really good friend of mine tomorrow, I wonder if I have run over a family of black cats given my run of loss in the last few years which is probably triggering that. 

Anyway, growing up not in SE London or the surrounding area, it was a great source of joy for me discovering a Charlton supporter in my neck of the woods. Then invariably finding out they were a massive chod. 

False dawns all over the place. Me and my dad going, then dad losing a bit of interest, me then working away a lot, playing football on Saturdays or working. Dragging mates along to away games, home games and very, very occasionally doing a game on my own. Then a couple of things happened in relatively quick succession. 

@carlsberg decided to lower his standards to playing for my sunday side in Chatham, that led to meeting @Ketman all years before this site was a tickle in @LoOkOuT and @AFKABartram nutbags, that led to meeting @MCS and before I knew what was happening I'd found @Medders, @Gumbo, @WSS and a few others who probably don't want to be associated with me. 

Landmarks are the west ham home game in 2007 and putting faces and human names to handles/usernames which is something I've still not wrapped my head around. The charity game at the Valley. @northstandsteve and @Ketman getting their cue ball heads together and arranging a coach to Ipswich and meeting a load more new people who all shared my affliction. @Stu_of_Kunming is one of the most unintentionally funny people I've ever been lucky enough to meet in my life, he's also remarkably intelligent and charming but those go out of the window when he's puking fish and chips up in my garden or accidentally flashing a pub in rochester getting mixed up with drawstrings in jogging bottoms. @charltonDan was a great bloke and a good friend, to be in his or his dads company was to experience joy in its fullest and I miss them both hugely. 

Then a bit of a turning point for me, the takeover by shitarse and his ho. I was so glad when the rose-tinting lifted from everyone and they saw what those gimps were about and the protesting came alive. No way would they have fucked off without the collective action we took. What they did to the club and my own subsequent boycott really knocked me out of the habit of attending games as regularly and made me a stern adopter of streaming games, once in the car after turning up to protest then sitting in my car for 2 hours caning mobile data to watch the sacks of jism playing for us at the time fart out a performance worthy of the shredder. 

I'll have missed a lot of people in that tribute, what I'm going the long way about saying is I've been lucky enough to make some friends for life through this medium, shared some great memories that I don't see how would have happened if it wasn't for 2 very pure-hearted and passionate "people bringer-togetherers" taking a leap of faith before fibre optic broadband and 5G was a staple of life. 

I've shared some stories, anecdotes that I haven't told my non-charlton friends using a thin veil of anonymity to feel safe and distant without thinking some of you have only my shite on here to judge me by and when being unlucky enough to be introduced to me are either disgusted (maybe unfairly, maybe correctly), amused, disappointed, in awe or just confused as how someone so handsome, charming and eloquent can have come out with half of the shit I have on these pages. 

On a personal level in some very dark moments over the past 5 years I've found myself at 3am logging on and reading about @oohaahmortimer dairy-milk powered sprints to the can, his batting average, about peoples cancer journeys, the usual suspects fighting over a damp sock on an otherwise trivial thread (no offence meant, you know who you are and I'm sure you all love it really), about cars people lust over, stag do stories, blokes who met a woman in Blackpool in the 60s and want to finish the home run 50 years later,  @Leroy Ambrose and his penchant for belly-laughter inducing stories be them about cats, women with morgue fetishes, or my favourite, abusing arsehole argie players in their native tongue. And they gave me moments of distance and distraction from the darkness. That and some help from my medicinal plants when the need dictates 

I dread to think of where we would be as a collective if we hadn't found this abstract sanctuary. Its the people that make a community and this is a great community and I'll always be thankful to the people who took an insane leap of faith to start this one