What better way is there to start a holiday than with a football match? In this case it was a game against newly promoted Bristol City.
To be honest it was a bit of a nightmare!
There was a season ticket holders offer to buy up to four tickets, for a tenner each for the match, I had already got two for Sharon & Tracey during the week. Max asked me to get a couple more, which I duly did and printed them on Saturday morning.
Half an hour before we left home Max asked Harry if he wanted to go to the game. I went on-line and tried to get him a ticket at 1.15pm but was blocked out, so I spent the journey into town emailing the club and telling them that I would be seeking a refund for the difference in price etc! As it turned out they were more than helpful at the ticket office and printed him one out, so all seemed well.
We made it to the K Bar with the time ticking away where we met Tracey, who had been to work and was running late. It was then that I realised that while I was flapping about worrying about everybody else's tickets that we hadn't brought our own, which were pinned on the office wall at home! So off we marched back to the ticket office where they kindly printed two tickets off for us. The match was about to kick-off by the time we made it into the ground.
The first half was fairly tame, we didn't create too much and Bristol seemed content to play out for a stalemate - even that early on.
Luke Chambers opened up the scoring for Town within a minute of the restart, heading in Jonas Knudsen's cross from close range and so everything seemed rosie in the garden, surely it wouldn't be too long before we'd score a second goal to get our stuttering season back on the road - or so l thought.
Surprisingly though City levelled things up in the fifty-third minute when a shot from Luke Freeman deflected off Tommy Smith and past Town keeper Dean Gerken. Even worse was to come three minutes later when they took the lead through Jonathan Kodia, surely we weren't about to throw the game away, were we?
With Just four minutes remaining Ryan Fraser gave Town a lifeline reacting quickly to a Freddie Sears cross to level things up. As much as we tried though we couldn't find a winner and so I along with several thousand Ipswich fans left the ground very disappointed.
Back in Degeroes I learnt that the ticket office had printed out Ali and Reece's tickets for Sharon and Tracey, in section 6 of the Sir Bobby, so when Ali and Reece attempted to get in they were denied! They had to go to the ticket office where Sharon and Tracey's tickets in section 4 were printed out! What a balls up all round - never again!
Tracey seemed to be up for a drink, her and Sharon returned from the bar armed with two bottles of Prosecco "It was buy one, get one half price."
We ended up getting a lift home, not very graciously I might add, from Max after buying some food for a TV picnic from Waitrose and having a quick beer in The Arcade Tavern. He was driving Sharon's car and was the only one of us with a door key.
It was hardly worth going to bed, by the time that Tracey went home, so we just got Max to drive us to Stansted - our flight to Naples was due to fly out at 6.10am.
What should have been a nice relaxing start to the holiday for Sharon & I and three points in the bag for Ipswich, turned out to be a very fraught one. Too many bad decisions made - will I ever learn?
Foot note: To make matters worse, Napoli were due to play Juventus on Sunday afternoon and we had planned to go to the game, the kick-off was brought forward to Saturday evening so we had to forfeit it, or pay another £150 to fly a day earlier.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
