<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used to be a big football fan – but Arsenal cured me of that. I finally realised that I didn\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So during this years Euro\u2019s I\u2019ve been pretty Bah Humbug and loving it. For those that believe people can\u2019t change I find it interesting watching the heated debates and vociferous nature of the football fans and wondering \u201cWas I really like that?\u201d (yes, I was).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So on Wednesday night, July 7th, while England played Denmark in the semi-final of the Euro\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think we all know how that turned out, so I won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I landed in London just after 4.30 and started to make my way to the platform for Orpington. \u201cPerfect\u201d I thought, \u201cpoxy 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).\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, \u201cIs this the right platform for Orpington?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLess than a minute away\u201d He reliably informed me, and as the train pulled into the platform I answered, \u201cIf it\u2019s any consolation, I think that we might get a seat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s last major football final – but perhaps July 7th might now have a positive association for generations to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to be a big football fan – but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[531],"tags":[24,48,77,154,157,266,292],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-2","tag-7-7-london","tag-arsenal","tag-british-rail","tag-england-v-denmark","tag-euros","tag-manchester-utd","tag-muslim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/2205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}