Mid-Life Crisis Songs #87: Football Chat

The supermarket delivery man arrived at my door last Friday and, as I was unpacking his boxes, asked me that hoary old question that's always guaranteed to strike fear into my heart.

“You watching the match tonight?”

This is the curse of being a man who does not like football. You have to pretend or lie or bluff your way through all manner of male social interaction revolving around the movement of a bag of wind with a 68 cm circumference across a patch of grass in its attempts to avoid the boots of overpaid dullards… or you can just be blunt and tell the truth and accept the metaphorical leprosy that comes with it. I’ve probably written about this before, but bear with me: this is the M. Knight Shyamalan, twist in the tale, version of that story.

Let’s return to my conversation with the Tesco driver.

“You watching the match tonight?”

“Well, my lad will be. I’m not sure I’ll get chance.”

You see what I did there? I think that’s what you football types might call a deflection. Expertly played, if I do say so myself. Not an outright, “I’d rather cut my arm off with a rusty scabbard”, but just enough of a hint of tacit comradeship (by proxy) to keep me in the game.

“Me neither,” the driver replied.

“You working all night?”

“Till 9. I think it’ll be over by then.”

Still halfway through my unpacking, I was now faced with the awkward position of having engaged in a conversation I knew nothing about and then had the ball passed back to me to take my own shot.

“How do you think they'll do?” Take that, Maradona! “They... they won the last one, didn't they?”

And then, just when it looked like I was ahead on points... then came the kicker.

“Yeah... 6... 6 something, I think. I'm not really a football fan myself.”

Ooh. So we’ve both just wasted a whole conversation pretending to be interested in something that neither of us actually is, purely because of the pressure of societal norms? Talk about a kick in the goolies.

“Me neither,” I mumbled. “Just my boy.”

“Maybe he'll grow out of it.”

“Yeah. We can but hope.”

And with that, he took his empty boxes off into the night. A definite no-score draw, and no mistake.

Those of you serving a life sentence with no chance of parole on this blog will have heard me wax lyrical about the undeniable brilliance of one Hugh Anthony Cregg III many, many times. For those of you who haven't, here's another peerless moment of pop perfection from the former Mr. Cregg and his News. This is from their third album, Sports, the one that shot them into the major leagues (in the States at least); it's one of only three songs on the album not released as a single. Clearly it should have been though, because it's much better than football.