how can you lie

‘You don’t have to like sports to like sports; you just have to like feelings.’

I had the memory of feelings, the recollection of nights behind the goal that left me high and hoarse, the knowledge that I was there and that happened and I will never again experience anything like that in my life. I knew that I ought to have feelings.

Perhaps I was numb from the pills, perhaps I was numb from my numbing life. It didn’t matter either way. Perhaps it’s because I’ve slowly become disconnected which is not assimiliation so much as de-similation. I went into it with a wish but not a blind desire. And perhaps it was better that way, not to be drawn in like I was drawn to Trafalgar Square 25 years ago when it was meant to be coming home, because what’s even home? Better to stay aloof because the face of what I once called home has hardened and become spiteful, and those chancers who started from spite and then appropriated immense achievement couldn’t wait to snarl when the outcome didn’t provide everything that they felt they deserved without ever earning.

‘How can you lie there and think of England
When you don’t even know who’s in the team?’

Now I mostly know who’s in the team, know what they’ve faced and will face, and I’m glad to know it.