Wilderspool Causeway

The first friendly of the season was way up at the top of Woosehill. If you read ‘History of the Ashridge Exchange’, a convoluted document describing the genesis of the A329(M), you will realise that the Woosehill Estate became the biggest cul-de-sac in Europe due to council refusal to allow traffic to flow to the precious roads surrounding it, such as Reading (too urban) and Barkham (too rural). The false promise of an interchange was the basis for development; If people want to live in Woosehill, they should be content to be marooned and semi-isolated from long-standing Wokingham residents.

The top of Woosehill is the only place where you can find a degree of meaning and perspective. You can do a bit of forest bathing, touching base with the earth beneath ferns and variegated pylons. Witness bunting and a royal standard fluttering over the Chestnut Park archipelago. On the side of Rainbow Community Centre is the slogan ‘Life is a circle; enjoy the journey’. Enjoy the existential roundabout, take the second exit up to the play park and sit on a revolving disc as the game commences.

This was Evan’s first game back with Wokingham after a year at Bracknell Town disrupted by flooding and early curtailment of the season for obvious reasons. He was placed in centre midfield, reunited with buccaneering leitwolf Connor Mulvaney, with whom he had previously played for four seasons, and Peter Crouch-style striker Hayden Harris. Rangers’ first and only goal was a reprise of a former move in which Evan floats a ball in for Hayden – who has an aerial threat uncommon in players of this age – to bury at the far post. Also returning was the excellent Kian Smith, who had spent last season representing the district team.

As the game developed it became scrappier, interspersed with phases of good passing from each team. Unfortunately, I was at fault for the Oranges’ equalising goal having volunteered to be linesman (activity not posted to Strava to be picked up by the ‘Strava Wankers’ Twitter account, as happened last time). I spotted what was widely deemed to be a clear offside, but hesitated and didn’t raise the flag. The ball was soon in the net and it was too late. That’s why parents don’t generally volunteer as assistant referees – there’s enough material to intermittently niggle away at the mind all day as it is.

Woosehill’s ‘Life’s a circle; enjoy the journey’ is better, in my view, than ‘Discover Freemasonry’ or ‘Scouting and freemasonry: two parallel organisations’, as advertised outside the town hall in Wokingham. You may not be able to get out of Woosehill, other than via a fantastic network of concrete footpaths and woodland crossings, but perhaps you could also question why you might want to. If you do find a way out, rather than the Ashridge Interchange and the abandoned IDR, which is now a series of car parks leading to the library, you will now find a new road immediately parallel to the A329(M): the relief of the relief road, with houses alongside and little islands of winding paths carefully measured so that developers can advertise ‘the best in country living’ on 5 km of spaghetti trails leading to dead ends on every side and back to where you started.