We start last year, and the World Cup tournament. Most notably, the romantic notion of the Flea’s destiny being realised, if not quite perfectly, pretty much as near as.
Whilst Messi was working wonders over in Qatar, my own little wonder was scoring six in a 33-1 victory and we celebrated the result at the first of many seasonal parties. It was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, what with the various plays, presents still to purchase and Christmas food progs to watch despite this one’s menu being slightly different. The Christmas lights on our street were turned on, too, and we dressed up to celebrate.
Still, the lights weren’t the only thing we watched in December.
A lovely long weekend off allowed the chance to do some Christmas shopping and return home, in more ways than one. It was wonderful to return to The Giant Axe, an intriguingly named place and the stadium of my youth, for our first Marine away and to reminisce the early days of my own playing career. ‘We’ won 3-1, and I even spotted a hero from yesteryear at the tea hut who was happy to have a chat.
On TV, though, it was all about the excellent Dark Horses documentary, about Italy’s surprise triumph in 2006, and the eerie but very cool Wednesday which transfixed our own little Addams daughter. We also started the new series of Dead to Me, and the excellent but bizarre films entitled How to With John Wilson: the one about what New Yorkers throw away (or don’t) was particularly insightful.
Then came the Final to beat all Finals, a glorious afternoon spent sat in my lucky shirt kindly bought for me by two good friends in work and I’d worn it for every game after Saudi Arabia… Elijah even joined in the ritual for the latter rounds, thinking his Messi PSG kit might somehow bring the Albiceleste luck.
Well, reader, it worked and a little tear came to my eye: this little magician has been a part of my football supporting life for seventeen years, I’m lucky enough to have seen him play three times in technicolour and I’ll take that to my grave, one occasion being my stag party for two and I’ll forever be grateful to him for entertaining and inspiring so many of us over the years.
‘Obsessed’ said one silly sausage, presumably incensed that one can find it possible to not be parochial in one’s outlook to heaving heroes (or, one could say pragmatic given that very few boys in blue can offer such moments of genius to be enjoyed) but I brushed that off and enjoyed the moment.
It was so wonderful to watch the highlights again and again… but there was another big event on the horizon.
As the big day approached, illness struck the house we turned attention to a great new find, thanks to my sister’s recommendation, Only Murders in the Building, a clever and funny series which also makes us fall back in love with New York. Similarly, the one-take instant classic Boiling Point – I’ve worked in restaurants and this is a brutal but brilliant reminder, not dissimilar to my present experience of precise preparation for an unforgiving audience and the pressures that often go unseen.
What’s sad is that my viewing it coincided with the sad passing of an inspiration, who actually taught the excellent Stephen Graham and loved to tell the tale of how in school, when young Stephen announced that he would be a famous actor one day, he responded with ‘what, with a face like that? No chance!’
I think Roy would be smiling down when Graham’s recently announced MBE is presented.
My own memories of him are the press ups on the dance floor, the guessing what he had for breakfast (a smorgasbord of unusual choices every Sunday) and the wisdom that made him a wonderful mentor, teacher and man but also a champion Egghead and the pride he showed on the night he took us out to celebrate his victory will forever be remembered.
Sadly, other greats were lost: the indomitable Pele, the always classy Vialli, and therefore the new year got off to a strange start. More suspected Scarlet Fever, meaning – and this is no slight on those wonderful people who work for the NHS – a half hour wait on hold before being able to speak to someone at the surgery about it; a subsequent four hour wait (on tenterhooks) to be called back by a doctor; meanwhile, I was enduring emergency dental treatment which cost me £250 for 27 minutes of care, and – without a phone due to the pending consultation – I couldn’t even use a phone box to ring home to check on the patient as the minimum call cost is apparently 60p! Britain is indeed broken… as are many hearts.
Still, we have to go again…
Ciao.