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The Stadium
Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators.
At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.
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Eduardo Galeano (Soccer in Sun and Shadow)
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A fellow told me one about Wembley yesterday," I said, to help on the cheery flow of conversation. "Stop me if you've heard it before. Chap goes up to deaf chap outside the exhibition and says, "Is this Wembley?" "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "No, Thursday," says deaf chap. Ha, ha, I mean, what?"
The merry laughter froze on my lips. Sir Roderick sort of just waggled an eyebrow in my direction and I saw that it was back to the basket for Bertram. I never met a man who had such a knack of making a fellow feel like a waste-product.
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P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves (Jeeves, #3))
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Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared to the real thing. There is a fearlessness about him. Watching him at Wembley Stadium with 70,000 people, he looks as comfortable as if he were in his own living room.
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Lori Majewski (Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s)
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Fish and chip night was a Kumar family tradition that dated back to when Jaget was courting his wife and they used to meet in the last white English-owned fish and chip shop in Wembley on the basis that none of their relatives would go in there. “It
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Ben Aaronovitch (The Furthest Station (Rivers of London, #5.7))
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It goes something like this: I am one person among 6.5 billion people on Earth at the moment. That's one person among 6,500,000,000 people. That'a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently the standard British measurements for size). And we live on an Earth that is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour through space around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 mph). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you'd have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us.
And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths - just like ours - in other universes.
And that's just space.
Have a look at time, too. If you're in for a good run, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you're going to spend just 0.00085 percent of man's history living on this Earth. And Man's stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the life of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn't turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we've only been around for the last two seconds.
A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you'll be gone (relatively) soon.
So, with just the briefest look at the spatial and temporal context of our lives, we are utterly insignificant. As the Perspective Machine lifts up so far above the woods that we forget what the word means, we see just one moving light. It is beautiful. A small, gently glowing light. It is a firefly lost somewhere in the cosmos. And a firefly - on Earth - lives for just one night. It glows beautifully, then goes out.
And up there so high in our Perspective Machine we realize that our lives are really just like that of the firefly. Except the air is full of 6.5 billion fireflies. They're glowing beautifully for one night. Then they are gone.
So, Fuck It, you might as well REALLY glow.
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John C. Parkin (F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way)
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There’s usually some grain of truth in most rumors. Mrs. Wembley says that as journalists our job is to separate truth from opinion. So maybe there’s some truth here to what people are talking about.
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Justina Ireland (Scream Site)
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I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. ...
There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls.
"?"
"!"
Three minutes later we had joined the Planters.
I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilisation. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.
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P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves (Jeeves, #3))
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Do we ever stop dreaming? I know I haven't. I must have been at least twenty-five when the Spice Girls happened, and I distinctly remember imagining my way into the group. I was going to be the sixth Spice, 'Massive Spice', who, against all the odds, would become the most popular and lusted-after Spice. The Spice who sang the vast majority of solo numbers in the up-tempo tracks. The Spice who really went the distance. And I still haven't quite given up on the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship. I mean, it can't be too late, can it? I've got a lovely clean T-shirt, and I've figured out exactly how I'd respond to winning the final point (lie on floor wailing, get up, do triumphant lap of the ring slapping crowd members' box).
It can't be just me who does this. I'm convinced that most adults, when travelling alone in a car, have a favourite driving CD of choice and sing along to it quite seriously, giving it as much attitude and effort as they can, due to believing – in that instant – that they're the latest rock or pop god playing to a packed Wembley stadium. And there must be at least one man, one poor beleaguered City worker, who likes to pop into a phone box then come out pretending he's Superman. Is there someone who does this? Anyone? If so, I'd like to meet you and we shall marry in the spring (unless you're really, really weird and the Superman thing is all you do, in which case BACK OFF).
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Miranda Hart (Is It Just Me?)
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A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.
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P.G. Wodehouse
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What is funny though is how, with time, people seem to have forgotten that it was this period that really made Rahman what he is. The man is Tamil and Tamil music was how he started out, and some of his best songs are in Tamil. On 8 July 2017, AR performed at Wembley Stadium in London, a concert titled Netru, Indru, Naalai (Tamil for ‘yesterday, today, tomorrow’). Soon after the concert, Twitter went berserk with a number of fans who’d attended the concert taking to social media to attack the composer, accusing him of playing ‘too many Tamil songs’. Some claimed that they’d walked out of the show in protest. AR addressed the issue politely and diplomatically. He reasoned that he had ‘tried his best’, was grateful to his fans and loved them for all they’d given him. As for the walking out bit, he said that some people always tend to leave the venue before he finishes a concert. He said there would always be pockets in the seats, here and there, by the time he got to the end of a show. His actual response though was quite brilliant. For his next set of concerts in Canada, AR cleverly released two posters for two different shows—one of which would be Tamil songs only and the other Hindi songs only. That one move said more than all his statements to the media.
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Krishna Trilok (Notes of a Dream: The Authorized Biography of A.R. Rahman)
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My brothers and I went to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium, and I wish you were with us. I thought of you the entire time. You’re my wonderwall.
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Auden Dar (Maestro: A Love Story)
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Keith Moon in Wembley, England, all facts attested to by the writing on the memorials.
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Jonathan Kellerman (Heartbreak Hotel (Alex Delaware, #32))
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When Prince Charles arrived home from a recent private visit to France she found his presence so oppressive that she literally ran out of Kensington Palace. Diana phoned a friend who was grieving over the death of a loved one. She could sense that her chum was crying and said: “Right I’m coming over now.” As her friend recalls: “She came instantly for me but when she arrived she was visibly unsettled. Diana told me: “I’m here for you but I’m also here for me. My husband appeared and I just had to fly out and escape.’ She was all of a dither.”
As far as is practicable they lead separate lives, joining forces only to maintain a façade of unity. These reunions merely give the public a glimpse into their isolated existences. At last year’s soccer Cup Final at Wembley they sat next to each other but never exchanged a word or glance during the ninety-minute game. More recently Prince Charles missed his wife’s cheek and ended up kissing her neck at the end of a polo match during their tour of India. Even their notepaper which used to have a distinctive intertwined “C and D” has been discarded in favour of individual letterheadings.
When she is at Kensington palace he will be at Highgrove or Birkhall on the Balmoral estate. At Highgrove she has the large four-poster in the master bedroom; he sleeps in a brass bed which he borrowed from his son, Prince William, because he found its extra width more comfortable after he broke his right arm during a polo match. Even these distant sleeping arrangements have led to marital discord. When Prince William asked for his bed back, his father refused. “Sometimes I don’t know who the baby is in this family,” commented Diana caustically. The days when she affectionately called him “Hubcap” are long gone. As James Gilbey notes: “Their lives are spent in total isolation. It’s not as though they ring each other and have sweet chats each evening and say: ‘Darling what have you been doing?’ It simply doesn’t happen.
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Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
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London, its conglomerate nature mirroring his own, its reticence also his; its gargoyles, the ghostly footfalls in its streets of Roman feet, the honks of its departing migrant geese. Its hospitality – yes! – in spite of immigration laws, and his own recent experience, he still insisted on the truth of that: an imperfect welcome, true, one capable of bigotry, but a real thing, nonetheless, as was attested by the existence in a South London borough of a pub in which no language but Ukrainian could be heard, and by the annual reunion, in Wembley, a stone’s throw from the great stadium surrounded by imperial echoes – Empire Way, the Empire Pool – of more than a hundred delegates, all tracing their ancestry back to a single, small Goan village.
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Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
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Long-term results are even harder to measure. On one hand we know that in Graham’s meetings, at home and abroad, some people were alienated by the perceived thinness of his theology and irrelevance of his message to the deeper needs of the times. On the other hand, others found the theology clear, direct, and relevant. One Anglican bishop, looking back, likened Graham’s meetings to “divine adrenaline for a jaded church.” And so it was that thirty years later, Queen Elizabeth II invited Graham to join her for dinner on the royal yacht when it was anchored in San Francisco Bay. As he boarded the vessel, a British naval officer, part of a color guard, broke ranks and whispered two words in Graham’s ear. “Wembley, ’55.
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Grant Wacker (One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Library of Religious Biography (LRB)))
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Champion Spirit by Stewart Stafford
When Freddie Mercury passed away,
Where did his spirit go to play?
Zanzibar, Feltham, or Wembley?
Or did he go and visit Brian May?
Did he stand at the mic in Montreux?
De Lane Lea, Trident, or to Tokyo?
Did he party in Munich, NY, or Rio?
Did his purring cats watch him go?
Did he take a last look at Garden Lodge?
Or whisper a final joke to his old pal Rog?
Waves of affection were hard to dodge,
His superstar status will never dislodge.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
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Stewart Stafford
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Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Debit Credit of Life: from the good books of accounts)
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was more ‘impromptu daytime chemistry class’ than ‘Good evening, Wembley!’ & then the band ‘burst’ on to the stage wearing a set of pensioners’ curtains. In broad daylight. In front of the whole school. Complete & utter humiliation. The memory still makes me shudder. & it was all downhill from there.
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Jarvis Cocker (Good Pop, Bad Pop)
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Despite the focus and intensity that he was feeling, the song always made him smile. ‘We’re one big performance away from doing it and lifting the trophy,’ he reminded himself quietly. It was fifty-five years since England had won a major international tournament, but here they were ahead of their final test against a strong Italy team. At last, there was the clatter of studs ahead of him and the line was moving. He heard the booming stadium speakers announce that the teams were on their way and, seconds later, he emerged onto the Wembley pitch with roars coming from all corners of the stadium. After all the preparation, with the goosebumps from the national anthem and the energy surging through his body, Declan tried to stay composed. England boss Gareth Southgate and the coaching staff had made that point again and again: don’t let the big occasion take you out of your usual rhythm. Declan squeezed in a couple more stretches
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Matt & Tom Oldfield (Rice (Ultimate Football Heroes - The No.1 football series): Collect Them All!)
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Her head was driving her crazy and she needed to get away, leave Wembley, leave her family, leave everything. But still, could a book work those kinds of miracles? At least it was a place to start.
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Sara Nisha Adams (The Reading List)
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Nick Rhodes (musician): My parents would often watch Top of the Pops with me, as they were quite turned on by knowing what was going on in the charts, and I remember they actually liked Bowie. They liked him so much they took me to see him when he played the Empire Pool in Wembley, in London, in 1976, on the Station to Station tour, not once but twice. I’d become such a fan, and he had become such a focus of what I thought I wanted to do with my life at the time.
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Dylan Jones (Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics)
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To win the FA Cup at Wembley made the good times roll. But on the morning after our victory, one newspaper declared: ‘OK, you’ve proved you can win the FA Cup, now go back to Scotland.’ I never forgot that.
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Alex Ferguson (ALEX FERGUSON: My Autobiography: The Sensational Million Copy Number One Bestseller)
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I couldn't under stand anything I saw in the picture at all. How could the players care, after the way they had humiliated themselves (and, of course, me) seven days - seven days - before? Why would any fan who had suffered at Wembley the way I had suffered stand up to cheer a nothing goal in a nothing match? I used to stare at this photo for minutes at a time, trying to detect somewhere within it any evidence of the trauma of the previous week, some hint of grief or of mourning, but there was none: apparently everyone had forgotten except me.
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Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
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I am one person among seven billion people on this Earth at the moment. That’s one person among 7,000,000,000 people. That’s a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently, these are the standard British measurements for size). And we live on a planet that is spinning at 67,000 miles per hour through space, around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 miles per hour). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you’d have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us. And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths – just like ours – in other universes. And that’s just space. Have a look at time, too. If you’re lucky, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you’re going to spend just 0.00085 per cent of man’s history living on this Earth. And man’s stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the age of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn’t turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we’ve only been around for the last two seconds. A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you’ll be gone (relatively) soon.
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John C. Parkin (F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way)
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The place was like a ghost town. I hadn’t seen a football stadium so deserted since I agreed to let Graeme Le Saux use Wembley for his nineteenth-century Russian literature book club.
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Scott Innes (Galactic Keegan)