This Ayr United Thing - More Iliad than Illyria

Club Historian Duncan Carmichael reflects on the curious consequences that supporting a local football club will have. Fifty-five years of writing programme notes have done nothing to diminish Duncan's enthusiasms: practicing stoicism, patience, emotional control in times of stress, perfect knowledge of transport timetables, motorway toilets and recommended fish-and-chiperies. Generations of Carmichaels have found their lives rearranged by fixtures and foul weather, and here Duncan blends family reminiscences with reports of battles won and lost on a journey featuring glorious defeats and routine victories, but as yet no happiness at the still-elusive end. Duncan's databases and archives of epic proportions are the accurate grounding for a fascinating review of one club's mesmeric hold on a typical Saturday foot-soldier.

Duncan Carmichael is the author of 15 books on Ayr United. With his wife Carol, son David, and daughter Jill he has spent rather a lot of money on the fruitless search for a football equivalent of Shakespearean happiness.