It sometimes seems that people at my work talk about nothing but football. Football is our lingua franca, cutting across the pay grades like the need for oxygen. It is the closest thing we men get to a common culture.
But why football? There is no reason. It is just as easy to imagine it being cricket, as it is in the Indian sub-continent or perhaps baseball, as it is in America. I wonder if religion is its equivalent in theocracies. I doubt it, but imagine if it did was! It raises the possibility of anything being the common culture. Imagine what would the world be like if we all chatted about poetry!
Alas, this is not the case. We are stuck with football. And so it is that every Saturday I find myself checking scores, noting my fantasy football stats, reading about QPR, and watching highlights. With the latter, I often find myself losing myself in games - going from neutral to partisan with the merest flick on to a forward. Watching Barnsley’s valiant stand against cheating Chelski, I remembered why I like football so much. And yet, I have decided to give it up.
I picture myself on my death bed, thinking - I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time reading football gossip or listening to football podcasts or pressing f5 to refresh the live score pages. Life is too short for football ephemera and the eternal recurrence of the same old same old. The tarnished glory of a momentary victory, it all amounts to nothing.
Sometimes escapism is a prison.
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