More Football Chat

 The Long Suffering Husband and I had a bit of a tiff yesterday about our memories.  If truth be known, we are a little snippy with each other after 12 days of isolation together anyway, so probably should have decided to do separate things for a while  but as we generally enjoy each other's company we went to the cinema with the grown up kids.  On the way back we were all talking at the same time, as families often do, about the film, football, tennis, Covid and other current affairs. It was when we got the the topic of football hooliganism that we had our disagreement.

Once you get to a certain age and you've seen something happen several times then all those memories roll into one.  For example, if I ask you to describe your childhood Christmas, you might think you are talking about one year but you will roll the memories from several years together to make one perfect celebration.  We appear to have done this with our memories of how people behave after England lose football matches.  

"It was after the 96 Euros when they started to damage German cars because we lost to Germany that I lost it," the LSH informed us.

We weren't quite sure what he'd lost but he seemed very worried about it.

I agreed with him, though.  Since England got through to the finals I've had a gnawing sense of anxiety.  

The violence after the 96 games was legendary and not in a good way.  There were riots in Trafalgar Square, VWs were damaged, the papers were upset about a Russian student who was mistakenly stabbed 5 times, as though it would have been fine if he was German.  

"I was on the Tube home and it's the most scared I've ever been in my life," I told him.

"No, no!" he told me, "There's not way you could have been."

I was confused because I remembered it so clearly.  I remember that it had been a game against Germany and that they tube carriage filled with hundreds of drunk angry men. I tried to make myself small, to shrink against the door and not make any eye contact.  I thought, "They could kill anyone on this train and no one would stop them."

The LSH said that it couldn't have been then because he remembered watching it with some friends so I couldn't have been out as well, as our daughter was only two.  

He wasn't wrong about that but I remembered it.  I remembered the hope and the disappointment that was followed so swiftly by anger. I was on the the way home after a very strange evening.  I had been invited to be in the audience of an Esther Rantzen chat show for reasons I can't work out now.  When I'd got there, it turned out that I wasn't needed but instead of going home they made me sit in the bar, watching it on one of the big screens with a foul mouthed children's TV presenter, who was more interested in the screen with the football.  These details helped me place it to a time before I had children.  

"It was the World Cup, 1990!" 

"No, no.  It couldn't have been then.  We watched that at your friend's house, remember?"

I didn't and started to feel as though my brain had finally let me down for good, however, after a walk that involved lots of stopping for him to check his phone, he has conceded. The game he remembers watching was the 3rd/4th place match and I was in fact, fearing for my life, on the Tube after England lost to German in 1990 on a Wednesday night.

I'm just hoping that England win tonight, so that the Italian restaurants, Fiat Puntos and Croatians who are mistaken for their accent can continue unscathed. I hope that no one has to fear for their life tonight because of watching some men run around a field chasing a ball.  I'm even happy with the pre-mortem beatification of Gareth Southgate that will inevitably happen if we win, if it stops the unnecessary and stupid violence.

Like Simon Templar in The Saint