I used to be a big football fan – but Arsenal cured me of that. I finally realised that I didn’t care if Samsung outperformed Apple or if Barclays outdid Lloyds. So why would I give a flying toss if Arsenal PLC out performed Manchester United Ltd?
So during this years Euro’s I’ve been pretty Bah Humbug and loving it. For those that believe people can’t change I find it interesting watching the heated debates and vociferous nature of the football fans and wondering “Was I really like that?” (yes, I was).
So on Wednesday night, July 7th, while England played Denmark in the semi-final of the Euro’s, I sat outside the unit with a cup of coffee with my Albanian pal Gilly. We were kept up to date with events as we chatted – the shouts and screams were easy to interpret so we knew when Denmark scored, when England equalised etc. etc.
But at some point I remembered that this was July 7th, the day was 7-7, anniversary of those bombs in London. I told Gilly that I had been in a cafe in Welling as news started to break over the crappy radio. Gilly is a Muslim and I felt ashamed that I remembered being sat in the cafe and my first thought was to hope that the bombers were Muslim – I feared having an Irish accident in London if the IRA had started their terror campaign again. I really was a sad, narcissistic wanker.
I think we all know how that turned out, so I won’t labour the point. But around a week later I was working in Bexley-Heath when my colleague got an emergency phone call. I told him to get on his way in the van, that I would tidy up and get the train back to Orpington – sure it was only a spit away. Little did I know that in one of those anomalies of British Rail there was no direct line from Bexley-Heath to Orpington – I would have to travel all the way up to London and then back out again.
So I landed in London just after 4.30 and started to make my way to the platform for Orpington. “Perfect” I thought, “poxy rush hour and squashed into a sweaty train with a load of numpties now while he has the air conditioning in the van (I told you I was a sad narcissist).” I alighted from the escalator onto the platform and my mood was not improved with the mass of bodies ahead of me. I started to push my way along the platform and spotted something odd – there was a large area of platform empty. I shrugged it off, they must be tiling the ground or something, but as I got closer I realised what was going on.
Standing just behind the yellow line at the edge of the platform was an Asian guy with a backpack draped over one shoulder. He was nervous. He was also alone with a perimeter of white-faced, suited suburbanites some dozen feet back. I broke through the invisible barrier and strolled up to the loner, “Is this the right platform for Orpington?” I asked him. He happily assured me that it was, in fact he recited the stations we would be passing through on the way in a bog-standard London accent.
“Less than a minute away” He reliably informed me, and as the train pulled into the platform I answered, “If it’s any consolation, I think that we might get a seat.”
We did. As we passed through stations, new arrivals started to fill the seats around us. The loner was still on the train – and unexploded – when I got off at Orpington and I headed for the pub (I used to be a big-drinking narcissist) where I shared my storey.
So here I was, 17 years later, a profoundly changed man chatting to an Albanian Muslim. I am no longer a football fan, no longer a drinker or smoker and far less narcissistic. As for England, this game not only healed the pain of 55 years since England’s last major football final – but perhaps July 7th might now have a positive association for generations to come.
