Still talking about football... and being a carer

Yes the World Cup is done. My love for the game is unbowed as is my love for the England players. I just loved this team. At the start I had truly felt it was possible to win it. I felt there was a difference in our captain Harry Kane, his move to Bayern Munich meant he had become used to winning and he has scored a ridiculous record-breaking number of goals. We were being led by a winner, fit and on form. There was an edge to him, his whole demeanour was more aggressive (in a positive way) he was strong. A winner. I could see him lifting the trophy. I kept on and on revisiting that image in my head… until I had to let it go.

I’ll be honest the morning after our loss to Argentina I had a bit of a cry. I felt sad for me, for the team and for this country. I had felt an intense need for the unbridled joy that a sporting triumph can bring. I was so invested in this team. Over the past few weeks I have spent many happy hours, well not hours (jeez hopefully not hours) but quite a lot of time scrolling through reels of the best moments. The ‘Wonderwall’ scenes that celebrated all our victories. The love emanating from the fans to the team and right back atcha from the team to the fans. I imagined that feeling magnified a hundredfold by winning the World Cup. To simply feel SO good about our football team, about being a football fan; an English football fan. To have that glorious possibility snuffed out was shattering. I have not engaged in the endless exchanges seeking to blame and criticise. Football fans can be fickle.

A few days on I don’t feel this team let me down. Their performance against France, the display of both teams to be fair, was a salve. To witness those broken-hearted players, depleted and exhausted finding the strength to go again was uplifting. In the match no team wants to play, the so called ‘Bronze final’, both teams provided us with a thrilling final match, a goal-packed festival of the beautiful game. Players playing without fear, pressure or doubts. I hope it helped the England team feel better, it certainly helped me. It was quite the contrast as it turned out to the actual final… not going there.

I listened to David Baddiel’s Sixty Years of Hurt on Radio 4 prior to and during the tournament. It’s not just about football, it uses the England men’s football team and our relationship to it, to delve into what it means to be English.

It talks about the culture and the social history around the national team and its relation to the nation. It discusses national anthems, maverick players and why they have sometimes been excluded from the national team, the violence, the racism, penalty shoot-outs and how we found our way to win them, and hope; how England fans’ expectations are often way out of proportion to reality. I found it fascinating.

I know I wang on about my care role sometimes but it’s kind of inevitable as it’s such a huge part of my life. This recent series on BBC Radio 4 Who Cares by Mary Bourke is brilliant. Mary, a comedian, became carer to her husband, when he had a devastating stroke. She asks the crucial question; who cares for the carer? It is darkly and brutally funny. It is also inspirational and humbling.

I should perhaps post a spoiler alert here, though it might not be necessary, as there’s a part of me wondering how many of you will be able listen to all five episodes, we are all so very time pressed, though if you can, do give it a listen, they are only 15 minutes each. In the final episode, called Burnout, Mary talks of this poem that was sent to her when her husband Simon was in the ICU.

Simon reads a short extract from it here.

Mary adds this beautiful message at the end.

‘To all the carers out there, I really hope joy finds you and you’re ready when she appears.’

This slayed me. I was more than ready for some World Cup joy. Perhaps it would just have been too much to slither through the cracks; it would have knocked down the walls. I will learn not to invite joy, but to simply be ready for her when she comes.

I think of these football fans in Gaza and I count my blessings.

Eliza Doolittle - Pack Up

I needed a cheerful uplifting song in my world now bereft of football, for now anyway. I love this track which, coincidently, was released July 5th 2010 a week before the Spain men’s football team achieved their first World Cup win in South Africa, land of the vuvuzela… my, we got sick of them! I do love a bit of synchronicity - hope you enjoy.

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