Tree species The 1992/93 season saw the inauguration of the Premier League era, Newcastle United began it in the second tier, that had just changed its name to the First Division.
This season is without doubt the greatest of my time supporting the Toon and one of my best away trips came when we visited Notts County (5 December 1992).
A raucous weekend started on the Friday afternoon with a Tyneside pub crawl with my mates, which ended up with yours truly scoring with one of the ‘Jack the Rippers’ in a Wallsend bar, that shall remain nameless.
After she had kept me up through the night with her repertoire of tricks, I eventually crashed out at about five in the morning.
I was awakened by my frantic mate Simon Jones a few hours later, calling from a phonebox and asking where the hell I was.
He and Ashington Mick were in the town waiting to get the Barrett bus.
I hurriedly got some togs on and phoned a taxi, before telling my new acquaintance to let herself out later and lock my front door.
I made it a few minutes before the bus was about to pull away from outside The Goose.
The bus was full of enthusiastic young-uns and this was a change for me, Simon and Ashington Mick, who usually hired a transit or Luton van.
The bus was taking ages and we calculated that we were’nt going to be able to have a few pints in Nottingham at the rate we were going.
At the service stop Mick found a transit of Winlaton Mags and after explaining our predicament, they agreed to let the three of us jump in with them.
There wasn’t a seat in the back but gallons and gallons of booze.
Everything was going great until Simon mentioned one of the lads’ haircut.
He had one of them Mick Hucknall long curly fringe styles that hung over the eyes.
After Simon had asked why he had it, the lad replied that with a face like Simon’s he should have one too.
The whole van was p…ing themselves laughing but Simon had took the hump.
This lad was obviously one of their ringleaders and had been holding court.
We had a p… stop a few miles later, when Simon informed me and Mick that he was about to sort the “clever shi.. out”.
After we explained that it was a joke, that we were outnumbered by about three to one, that we would be left stranded on the motorway, he reluctantly backed down and our journey was resumed.
We arrived in Nottingham with plenty of time to sup and it was in the first boozer that we met the notorious England football hooligan Paul Scarrott. He was a Forest fan and told us that he knew of a few boozers we should go to with him. He was obviously trying to set us up and so me and Mick decided to let Simon off the leash.
I don’t know what was said but Scarrott quickly got the message and was swiftly sent packing with his tail between his legs.
The game and atmosphere later turned out to be great and the Toon recorded another impressive 2-0 away win.
Before we left the ground one of the young Gremlins started a bit of bother with some of our own fans and no prizes for guessing who sparked him.
We should have known that someone was going to get ‘Gu-dooshed’ Batman style, the moment that the Winlaton Mick Hucknall had made Simon look daft.
We returned on the original Barrett bus and straight back on the lash when we got back to Newcastle.
I eventually stumbled into my flat in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The Jack the Ripper was obviously long gone and I was able to get some kip at the end of my two day bender.
It was Ashington Mick who asked me to tell our tale of this Notts County trip.
This is probably because we are now coming up to the fourth anniversary of Simon’s tragic death.
He really was the gamest and loyalist of lads, was Simon Coley Jones.
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