The Beautiful Game

The first football tournament I got obsessed with was Euro '96 when I was ten. I'd not long "discovered" football via the medium of my dad taking me to watch Manchester United in the pub across the road from our house where we had to crane our necks to see the screen from the family area as I was too young to sit in the bar. I developed a football addiction very quickly, reading Match magazine every week, and it was from Match that I discovered international football tournaments. Then, as now, the hype was ridiculous so by the time the tournament kicked off my excitement was at fever pitch. I was convinced that England would win, possibly simply by the poetic fact that it was exactly 30 years since England had won the World Cup - Baddiel and Skinner have a lot to answer for - and was predictably devastated when they lost the semi-final on penalties.

Football was one of my first loves and one of the first things I ever had to prove my love for as well. The boys in my year six class refused to believe I actually liked football until I brought in my dog eared copies of Match. The boys in my street wouldn't let me do anything but watch their endless games of kickabout and I ended up joining the Girls' Football Team briefly in high school simply because they would actually let me play. However I could not play football so that didn't last very long... As an adult I've driven across the country to sit in the freezing cold at Old Trafford, queued time after time with about a million other people for the last tram back to Altringham, and sat in so many bars on my own to watch United. International football has however never quite felt as magical to me as it did in 1996.

I'll be honest I wasn't really planning to watch much of this World Cup. I can't remember the last time before a few weeks ago that I voluntarily watched England play and I was gutted that Wales didn't qualify after their amazing performance in Euro 2016. England as a football team over the last ten years or so have been a little bit like that crappy teenage boyfriend who's messed you around one too many times. I also now live in England where the St George's Cross starts getting affixed to everything at least a month before the tournament starts so my level of ennui was high long before the opening ceremony. But this ludicrous, unpredictable tournament has somehow pulled me in. I spent all of last weekend watching football and all of Tuesday evening inexplicably glued to the England match, so over-invested I got incredibly angry when Columbia equalised and could barely stand to watch the penalty shoot out. As I write this I'm listening to the build up to the England-Sweden game and hoping against hope that maybe this is the year when football comes home.

P.S. I still think that Three Lions is perhaps the ultimate football song - which probably explains my current addiction to the "football's coming home" meme...

Stuff I've Enjoyed

Reading:
I finally got around to reading the second half of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I began reading it on the plane back from the US at the start of June, stopped because I was sleep deprived and couldn't take it in properly, and then somehow failed to pick it up again for a month. Eleanor is socially awkward, deeply lonely and clearly struggling in the aftermath of some unspecified childhood trauma. The book tells the story of how she starts to let people into her life and to overcome the awfulness of her past to realise that life can perhaps be more than just fine. It's an incredible piece of storytelling and so perfectly captures the way in which we as a society often fail to care for or empathise with those who seem different in any way. Top tip though, don't read it in public - I kept having to stop myself crying much to the consternation of the businessman sitting opposite me on the train.

Watching:
Mostly football (as above) but I also did manage to finally get around to starting the second series of Luke Cage. For those who aren't massive nerds, it's a Marvel series on Netflix about a ex-con black superhero with super-strength and bulletproof skin. The original comics started in the '70s but the Netflix series are set in present-day Harlem in New York. The first series was quite an establishing one, following Luke as he came to terms with who he was, but it was great and I've been excited for series two. It's early days as we're only two episodes in but it's already setting up an interesting dynamic around the consequences of Luke's new-found fame and increasing certainty of his own invulnerability.

Listening to:
I finished the first series of Reni Eddo-Lodge's About Race podcast which was excellent. Eddo-Lodge is the author of Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race which is a book absolutely everyone should read. Her podcast digs further into race and racism in the UK and attempts to understand recent British political history around racism and where the anti-racism movement in the UK is today. Eddo-Lodge interviews a wide variety of people (from Diane Abbott to Sisters Uncut) and delves deeply into questions of race, class, activism, and power in modern British society. It's a nine episode series and it's really worth your time.

Doing:
I ran in a charity challenge event with my running club last Sunday - a load of the Leicester running clubs get together to each run 100 laps of the athletics track at Saffron Lane Stadium to raise money for Rainbows Hospice. Rainbows are an amazing charity and the only hospice in the East Midlands providing care for children, young people and their families. It was really tough in the heat last Sunday afternoon but I ran my fastest 400m in quite some time, had a really great time with my running club buddies, and raised some money for a fantastic cause.

I'm off to watch the football now (just for a change...) but thank you for reading!
See you again in a week or so... Cx