A bottle washes up on Los Cristianos beach, I open it and find a message inside, addressed to me and sent 18 years ago. It’s like a bizarre dream but the electronic equivilant has just happened to me. A friend from Oxford has emailed me a for sale item from E Bay, a copy of an Ice Hockey fanzine (482 Days) that I co produced 18 years ago has been advertised for 3 pounds, original price 40p, but the price is not important, i’m just gob smacked that any copies are still out there.

Lets rewind a little. I got into Ice Hockey with some drinking friends when Oxford ice rink opened in 1984, we all followed Oxford City Stars around the country as far as Glasgow, Irvine, Fife and even to France for a weekend tournament. Eventually, in the late 80’s me and my mate Nigel started the fanzine, very crude and rude in content and construction, none of this hi tech computer stuff, but it raised a few chuckles. Time to fess up, I wrote a lot of the items and got a “friendly” typist at work to type them up and then collated it all at work on the photocopier, when supposedly doing overtime.

We probably sold about 200 each issue at home and away games, they were sporadic, roughly every few months. Nigel quit after 7 issues but I carried on and got to about Issue 20 before stopping, it was even on sale at Sportspages in London and Manchester for a while. The name 482 Days refers to a spell when Oxford couldn’t win a home league game, they drew, won friendlies but went 482 Days without a home league win. The seller on E Bay is apparently a sports programme seller based in the Borders region, so 482 Days has really travelled.

Those Ice Hockey days were happy, and very boozy times, i’m still in touch with loads of the players, even the Canadians and Swedes, but thought 482 Days was long gone. Even over here, my past has reached out to me, well it’s a small world – but you wouldn’t want to paint it!