by Tim Dowling
‘I’ll say your boy was solid at the back,’ the father says. ‘“Despite his diminutive stature, Dowling maintained a solid defensive presence for the” … Oh dear.’ A whistle blows.
‘What happened?’ I say. The youngest one jogs past, his face contorted with frustration and fury.
‘Never mind!’ the other father shouts at him. ‘Foul throw,’ he says to me. ‘They’ve been doing it all day. If they’d just learn to plant themselves, they’d be fine.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Throw-ins,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to keep both feet on the ground.’ I feel a twinge of embarrassment: even my children don’t know that I don’t know this.
‘How’s the other match going?’ the father asks. I look at the ground and shake my head ruefully.
‘It’s really muddy over there,’ I say.
At half-time I return to the first match, where several fathers are indulging in a pastime that often crops up when we’re losing badly: debating the ages of the other team’s players.
‘Look at number seven,’ one says. ‘He’s never thirteen – look at his calves.’
‘It’s a scandal,’ says another, as number 7 scythes through our defence. Obviously there is a broad developmental range at this age, with everybody either side of puberty, but I know better than to mention it.
‘Shocking,’ I say.
‘It’s a scandal,’ the first father says. ‘He’s at least seventeen!’
‘Number twenty-four is even bigger,’ the linesman says.
‘Yeah, the midfielder,’ another father adds. ‘He’s not on the pitch. Where’s he gone?’
‘He probably had to take his kids to the zoo,’ the first father says. Number 7 churns his way past us, a colossus beset by elves. His foot catches, and he drops to one knee as the ball sinks into the mire. A small boy runs up, works it free and boots it over the halfway line.
‘Mud,’ I say, ‘is a great leveller.’
For me the most difficult form of spectatorship revolves around the professional game, where I must watch alongside my children. I can follow a football match on television – I’m even interested – but I have no gift for armchair punditry, and none of the passion of a true supporter. With every fresh attempt to join in, I manage to say something that reveals a whole new facet of my ignorance.
I have had to promise my youngest son that he will have first claim on the next one-on-one father–son opportunity to present itself – he has been sorely short-changed in favour of his older brothers – but after months of waiting, he has given up and taken matters into his own hands. He has won two tickets to a football match.
They come courtesy of an Arts Council initiative called Kick Into Reading. Far from lavishing funding on one-legged Lithuanian dance troupes, as the Tories fear, the Arts Council is wisely spending money on a project that teaches kids that literacy and football are, if not exactly indivisible, at least not mutually exclusive, through a combination of storytelling and free tickets to see QPR play Hull City.
My sons are all Chelsea fans, but I have for some time harboured a desire to transfer a portion of our familial allegiance to Queens Park Rangers. Because their stadium is within walking distance of our house and the tickets are cheaper than those at Chelsea, I have argued that we might participate more fully in the life of the less top-flight club. I am American, however, and fully conscious of the fact that I have no idea what I am talking about. I routinely defer to the older two on football matters, and they assure me that QPR tickets are easy to come by because QPR are rubbish. But the youngest has never been to a match and is blissfully unaware of Rangers’ position deep in the bottom half of the table of an altogether different league. He might yet be converted.
Over the course of Saturday, his mood veers wildly: one minute he wants to leave for the stadium two hours early, the next he is insisting that he doesn’t want to go at all. Like me, he has trouble savouring anticipation of the unknown. It is, however, a sunny stroll to Loftus Road and he has cheered up considerably by the time we get there. In the meantime I have become increasingly apprehensive. The sign above the turnstile reads ‘Supporters Only’. There is no sign saying ‘Dads Who Like A Bargain’. I feel like an impostor.
The boy is not so self-conscious. He may be the only eight-year-old in history who has been told to be quiet at a football match. I can sympathize with the elderly woman in front of us, who had to endure him shouting, ‘WE! ARE! QPR!’ in her ear for forty-five minutes, and I understand why she might eventually feel the need to turn around and suggest that he draw breath. Perhaps I should have admonished him myself, but I don’t know the etiquette, and given that the crowd behind us is loudly accusing the Hull City supporters of indulging a fondness for anal intercourse – to the tune of, I think, ‘Go West’ – his behaviour strikes me as being within local limits of acceptability.
By the second half he has learned to flap his seat up and down to make a supportive thudding noise, and he is so irritated with my efforts to calm him down that he insists on switching places with a schoolfriend’s mother. After that I wash my hands of his hysteria, and try to come up with authentic-sounding things to shout. The old woman, I notice, contents herself with an occasional ‘Come on, Rs!’, but this is a little intimate for me. My mind begins to wander, and when QPR score early in the second half I accidentally shout, ‘Kick into reading!’ I resolve thereafter to confine myself to clapping.
By the end I realize I’m never going to master the rites and rhythms of fandom. Then I think: who cares? They won 2-0. We’re on our way!
One Sunday I come downstairs to find the middle one typing furiously on a laptop while a football match roars from the television. The middle one’s friend is leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen. I lean in, too.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘I’m providing live match commentary on Twitter,’ he says.
‘But you’re not on Twitter,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I just joined for this.’ I watch as he types, ‘tottenham break with lennon but cross is poor.’
‘How many followers do you have?’ I say.
‘None,’ he says.
‘That means no one can see your commentary,’ I say. ‘You’re typing into thin air.’
‘Whatever,’ he says, typing into thin air.
‘You’re slightly missing the point of …’ I stop there, realizing anything I say about Twitter will eventually be proved idiotic. Instead I take out my phone, log in to Twitter and announce his odd enterprise. I read the tweet back to him.
‘My son has set up a Twitter account so he can—’
‘Don’t say I’m your son!’ he shouts. ‘I need credibility! Say I’m a work colleague!’
‘Too late.’ Within minutes he has twelve followers. Unfortunately, most of them arrive just as he tweets the words, ‘Screw this I’m bored.’
‘You can’t stop now,’ I say. ‘I recommended you!’ Shortly after that, he loses half his new followers by announcing a goal when there is no goal. At half-time I tweet from the kitchen to tell him lunch is ready.
Sunday lunch is often taken in front of televised sport, but because the middle one has a friend staying, we are going out of our way to seem convivial. We eat together in the kitchen, off plates, and attempt to converse intelligently about the point of Twitter.
‘I don’t really understand it,’ my wife says.
‘My brother joined and then he tweeted that my mum was his best friend,’ the middle one’s friend says.
‘How lovely,’ my wife says.
‘Um, I think he was being ironic,’ the middle one says.
‘I’m sure he wasn’t,’ my wife says, before turning to the youngest one. ‘I’m your best friend, aren’t I?’
‘Not really,’ he says.
‘But you’ll look after me in my old age. And stay with me always.’
‘I’m going t
o have a bachelor pad,’ he says.
‘What about me?’ I say. ‘Who’s going to look after me?’
‘You’ll probably die first anyway,’ the youngest one says.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but I’m planning to be ill for a long time before that.’
‘Then I would just get bored and pull the plug on you,’ he says. There follows a protracted and uncomfortable silence.
‘You’ve ruined lunch,’ I say. ‘Get out.’
‘Fine,’ he says, beaming. He is already standing, ready for his exit.
‘I’m going to be such a burden to you,’ I say.
‘Bye,’ he says.
‘Two minutes till the second half,’ the middle one says, opening the laptop by his side.
‘Lunch’s duration isn’t dictated by the FA’s timetable,’ I say.
‘I can’t believe how slowly you eat,’ my wife says.
‘What are you talking about?’ I say. ‘I’ve eaten exactly as much as you.’
‘No, you haven’t. I’m nearly done.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘I’m going to weigh our plates. Give me yours.’
‘Let go,’ she says, making a stabbing motion with her fork. The middle one and his friend take advantage of the distraction to leg it. My wife’s phone rings and she goes off in search of it. Alone at the table, I pull out my own phone. There is a new tweet from the middle one. It says, ‘AND WERE BACK.’
My oldest son is sitting in front of the television with his mother, watching the start of the England–Ukraine match. As the camera tracks along the England line-up during the national anthem, my wife says things like, ‘Oooh, I like him!’ or ‘He’s nice!’ When it passes across the face of Ashley Cole, she says, ‘He’s been a naughty boy!’
If I were at home, I would look at my son and we would both roll our eyes. But tonight I am not at home. I’m at Wembley with the middle one. We’re surrounded by thousands of men with shaved heads, all of them singing ‘God Save the Queen’ with alarming gusto. I cannot see the line-up on the field because I am holding up a bit of red card that forms a tiny part of the cross in an enormous England flag spreading across one end of the stadium. In many ways this is a perfectly ordinary father–son outing. In other ways, it’s one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever volunteered for.
After the national anthem, my wife rings.
‘Where are you? Is it exciting?’
‘Behind the goal, and a bit up.’
‘Are you making it special for him?’ she says.
‘Yes, I am,’ I say.
She hangs up. I turn to the boy and shout, ‘This is great!’ but he’s looking down at the field. I follow his eyes. John Terry knocks into a Ukrainian player with long, tied-back blond hair, and the Ukrainian goes down. Everyone around us boos.
‘Who’s that?’ I ask.
‘Voronin,’ the boy says.
‘Get up, My Little fucking Pony!’ shouts a man behind me. I am surrounded by people who believe the Ukrainian player is feigning injury, even though he clearly isn’t. It’s all very well being patriotic, I think, but his nose is bleeding.
At a Premiership match I can usually get away with clapping when everyone else claps, standing up when everyone else stands up and shaking my head ruefully when the situation appears to warrant it, but this is my first international and I’m finding it very difficult to belt out ‘Rule, Britannia!’ with my arms held above my head in a giant V. It’s not just because I’m American; I don’t know any of the words to ‘Rule, Britannia!’ beyond the first two. In principle I find this sort of passion admirable, or at least interesting. Up close, it strikes me as undiplomatic, and a little embarrassing.
Not knowing what to do with myself, I scan the crowd for a role model. Eventually I find him a few seats down the row: a man with a beard who sits with his arms folded, shouting nothing, singing nothing. I decide to imitate him for the rest of the match. When Terry scores late in the second half, I do not join in the hostile, saliva-spraying chorus of ‘You’re Not Singing Any More’ directed at the drooping Ukrainian flags.
‘It doesn’t really work,’ my son says, ‘because they don’t know we’re singing about them not singing.’
I look at him with folded arms and one raised eyebrow, and I nod.
On Saturday evening, there is a sudden outbreak of family harmony that spreads through the house like a virus. One minute I am lying face down on the sofa trying to ignore the terrible television programme I have deliberately chosen to watch, the next I am sitting in the kitchen with my wife and children, laughing and helping to prepare a deeply odd supper made from ingredients we already happen to own. Before we eat, we take a short break to run round the park with the dogs, in the dark, chasing each other and shrieking with delight.
I can attribute this unscheduled merriment to a single cause: it’s the snow. At about 5 p.m., I turned on the outdoor light to show everyone the white flakes pelting the back garden, and the mood instantly lifted. Snow fixes everything.
It also helped, I suppose, that the oldest one was at a friend’s house. Outbreaks of harmony invariably coincide with one of the children being missing – it doesn’t matter which one. This might lead a non-parent to conclude that three children is too many and two the perfect number, but it doesn’t work like that. You have to have the extra one to get the benefit of its absence. Anyway, it was my expressed intention to cite a single cause, and I chose snow.
The goodwill brought about by the snow survives the oldest one’s return, and the night, and lunch with friends the next day. In fact, it lasts nearly twenty-four hours, until a wave of severe ill-feeling overtakes us, followed by bouts of swearing, hot tears, an interval of door-slamming and a brief period of my wife screaming, ‘I will not live like this!’ before changing into her pyjamas prematurely.
This descent into discord also has a single attributable cause: Chelsea. During the car ride back from lunch, their lead over Manchester United dwindles from 3-0 to 3-1 to 3-2.
‘Turn it off!’ the middle one shrieks, kicking the seat-back in fury.
‘I’m listening,’ I say. ‘Don’t be such a—’
‘Oh my God, they’re rubbish!’
One of my failings as a father – from my children’s point of view – is my inability to summon up strong feelings about sport in general and Chelsea in particular. I don’t personally consider it a failing; I prefer to see it as evidence of a healthy sense of perspective. When I greet two opposition goals with a stoicism bordering on indifference, I feel I am leading by example. Or, as my wife would put it, ‘doing nothing, as usual’.
We arrive home in time to see Man U score a third, after which all hell breaks loose. My wife has an extremely low tolerance for high feeling engendered by televised football. An argument ensues, and the older two storm off before the end of the match, slamming doors and punching walls. I’m left with the youngest one, who is standing next to me emitting a sound like a kicked dog.
‘You have to speak to them,’ my wife says.
‘I will,’ I say, ‘but there’s, like, four minutes of added time.’
I don’t say anything until supper, which has been repeatedly postponed on account of the pork being, in my opinion, dangerously underdone. The children eat in cautious silence, fearing I will suddenly declare the meal unsafe and collect all the plates again.
‘Perhaps,’ I say finally, ‘the time has come for you to withdraw your support for Chelsea.’
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ the oldest says.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. ‘You were born into a generation unfamiliar with disappointment.’
‘I’ve only ever been disappointed,’ he says.
‘Just accept that your emotional investment in a bunch of underperforming millionaires was a regrettable mistake,’ I say. ‘You have no ancestral history of support, no one to betray. You can just walk away.’
The children stare at me for a minute. The middle one stands up and
slaps his forearms.
‘You cut me open, I bleed blue!’ he shouts, marching his plate to the sink.
‘No you don’t,’ I say.
‘I’m Chelsea all the way through!’ he says.
I look past him, out of the window, wondering whether it’s naively optimistic to hope for more snow.
After a long break, September comes around once more: the tortoise has begun his long transition from summer’s nuisance to winter’s decorative doorstop; the boiler has undergone its traditional annual collapse; there are forty-seven messages on my office phone from robots wrongly suggesting that I am due some sort of refund, and two dozen old emails on my computer wrongly stating that certain well-known people have tweets for me; and the cat, well, I’m pretty certain I saw the cat yesterday.
More importantly, the football season is in full swing, and I am embarking on my annual attempt to engage in intelligent football conversation. I used to know nothing, but I’ve come so far – perhaps this is the year. I don’t want my children to be taken aback by any sudden display of insight or erudition; I just want to be able to make comments that either meet with approval or go unchallenged. The new season is a chance for a fresh start, and I am brimming with misplaced optimism.
At lunchtime on Sunday I find the middle one lying on the sofa in his pyjamas. The telly is roaring ahead of an imminent kick-off.
‘Who’s playing who?’ I say, even though I know the answer.
‘Liverpool Man U,’ he says.
‘Oh yeah,’ I say, casually. In fact I have secretly been studying the Premier League table in order to determine a Chelsea supporter’s position regarding this match.
‘I suppose,’ I say, ‘that a draw would be the best result for us.’ The boy raises an eyebrow and sticks out his lower lip.
‘I’d be happy with a nil-nil draw,’ he says, before going on to explain the various outcomes he would prefer, due to his complex fantasy football commitments. I don’t understand a word of it, but I nod anyway. My wife comes in from the kitchen to ask me to chop some stuff, which I imagine will give me time to rehearse some intelligent comments.