This is my fifth week of blogging. Intended as a retirement project the previous blogs have all centred around park run and my now completed attempt to finish one hundred different venue park runs along with ones starting with every letter from A to Z. This effort is a little different although it does start at park run.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m at Arrow Valley park run. Not only to complete the run but to meet up with one of my great fellow football loving friends. For the best part of the last fifty years I have followed Liverpool FC across England and Europe and he is one of the gentleman I have spent much time doing this with. In my car boot there is a large collection of Liverpool FC programmes that I am about to hand over to him.

I think it’s important to mention at this point that nothing I ever blog on football will be discussing the relative merit of particular teams or players. Anything football related will be pondering the unexpected friendships or feelings it can generate or why hitherto sensible people go to such great lengths to watch it.

The programmes most certainly come into the unexpected feelings category. A gentleman called Dave Roberts (who I was saddened to find has now passed away) wrote a fantastic book called ‘32 Programmes’. Basically as part of a move abroad he had to reduce his thousand plus programme collection down to a mere 32. My position was not quite as drastic but substantial pruning was required.

As part of a divorce process all my programmes had returned to a spare room at my mum’s house and sat there doing nothing for over a year. That was a good reason for a large amount of them to go in itself. There were other reasons as well though.

When I was younger I always imagined that many of them (cup finals for example) would be worth a decent amount of money. They’re not. Unless it’s a real niche anyway. Additionally when I first started collecting you either had to be at the game to get a programme or send a postal order and stamped address to a dealer. The internet era has put an end to that exclusivity. Finally and perhaps most disappointingly many teams now produce a digital version of their programme. The printed version seemingly dying a slow death and belonging to a different era.

So as I sort through them for the cull I firstly give grateful thanks to all the fantastic games I’ve been fortunate to attend over the years. Then briefly I catch site of the programme from the 1988 FA Cup semi final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Played at Hillsborough the year before the disaster. I was in the Leppings Lane end on both occasions. The massive difference being that on the first occasion we were directed away from the already full centre pen by police stationed outside it.

Although that is obviously a most extreme example I find that each programme can take me back to exactly where I was in life back then just by looking at the front page. Then ultimately that’s how I decide on the very few I will keep. Nothing to do with value, rarity or quality of game but simply what memories they bring back which will hopefully serve me well into old age.

Back at Arrow Valley I stagger across the car park to hand the programmes over. The sheer weight of them has managed to rip the handle off the large bag they were in which is now cradled in my arms instead. My friend has my permission to do whatever he wants with them. Hopefully they give him as much pleasure as they gave to me.