Get Her Off the Pitch! (6 page)

Not that it was restful. I learned not to get settled too comfortably at football, because you were always having to jump up when anything faintly interesting happened. I also learned that, when a corner is taken, you don't stay standing up, but you don't sit down either: you assume a halfway position with a lateral twist which manifests the presence of hope, but is quite a strain on the buttocks. As for the England team, on this occasion I enjoyed them most when they had their backs to me - simply because this gave me a chance of identifying them. ‘Turn round, for God's sake, so I can see who you are,' was my continual grumble. It was like the old days of watching
The Flowerpot Men
, with its teasing song, ‘Was it Bill or was it Ben?' and the ritual infant response of, ‘Don't know! Don't know! They're identical!'

But I remember that some of the players' individual footballing contributions started to stand out even in that first game of Euro 96: it seemed to me, for example, that there was no point in Steve McManaman running quite so fast with the ball up the sides if nobody else from his team could keep up. Screeching to a halt, he would realise his lonely predicament and then have to entertain the ball all by himself in the corner, where he was in clear danger of having it taken off him by a bunch of bigger boys. I wondered: should he be instructed to look round to check occasionally, or would this put him off his (considerable) stride? Thank goodness I wasn't in charge of the national
team, with decisions like that to make. Meanwhile, I also noticed with interest that the crowd's high expectations of Paul Gascoigne - they stood up and made approving noises suggestive of ‘This is it!' or ‘We're off now!' or ‘Yes, yes, yes!' whenever he got possession - were almost always doomed to early disappointment (groans all round, as he expertly passed to a nearby space with no one in it). Oddly, however, they never, ever learned from the experience.

I wrote a piece about the match, and I did not compare it (in any detail) to colonic irrigation, which I think was a relief to all concerned. But I did not start to love football at this moment. Over the following couple of days I watched umpteen group-stage matches on the TV, in fact, and lost the will to live. I found that I started doing other tasks at the same time as the footie - tasks which grew in complexity as the days went by. For example, during Germany v Czech Republic (on the Sunday) I did some dusting; during Romania v France (Monday) I made some curtains, and during Switzerland v The Netherlands (Thursday) I translated Kierkegaard from the Danish. It did not help that this was a particularly low-scoring tournament taking place in weirdly half-empty stadiums. Nor did it help that none of these foreign players was a household name in my particular household. When I now look at old footage of Euro 96, I see Dennis Bergkamp and the teenaged Patrick Kluivert, Luis Figo and Zinedane Zidane (with hair), Fabrizio Ravanelli and Gianfranco Zola, Jürgen Klinsmann and even Ally McCoist. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and so on. But to me in 1996, all these blokes were just talented exotics, some of them with unexplained Elastoplasts stuck across their noses.

Meanwhile, the commentators said bizarre things like, ‘That was a bread and butter ball,' and I'd get distracted thinking about types of open sandwich. The sound from my living room had become the sound from millions of other living rooms, of the droning, ‘Here's Grumpy…to Dopey …back to Grumpy…good run from Sleepy, oh, Bashful's found some clearance!' All against the repeated background crowd noise of ‘Ooh' (indicating a shot off target). I was wondering whether I should give up footie before it was too late. After all, I had a novel coming out in a month's time; I had a lovely regular job reviewing television; my nice boyfriend liked to see me happy but he really wasn't interested in football; my best friend actually preferred Sheffield Wednesday to this Euro stuff. Perhaps I should call it off.

So my bosses decided to get me out of the house again. Bizarrely, they sent me to Macclesfield to watch the Germans make peace with the local community - but it was nevertheless a clever move. As a television critic I led a life that rarely required me to put on outdoor shoes: the mere idea of stepping outside my front door and shutting it behind me twice in one week was alone enough to thrill my senses. Good heavens, I would have to catch a train and then reclaim the fare; indeed, I would have to find out where Macclesfield was. It was explained to me that the German team, under coach ‘Bertie' Vogts, had been billeted to this Cheshire market town, you see (birthplace of the Hovis loaf ), possibly as some sort of punishment for being too good at football. Naturally, they complained. In particular, they caused a local uproar by claiming that their practice pitch at the Moss Rose (nice name) had
stones and bits of glass in it. By the time I got there, they had apologised for any distress caused, and the
Macclesfield Express Advertiser
carried the headline, ‘
VOGTS BACKS DOWN IN FACE OF FAN'S FURY
' - the placing of the apostrophe suggesting, unfortunately, that Macclesfield Town
FC
had just the one fan.

The point of sending me, I think, was that the Germans had decided to do some open training, so the locals could watch, and I could get all excited seeing the charming and popular Klinsmann at close quarters; so it was a shame that I didn't know what he looked like - a Macclesfield teenager eating chips on a dismal concrete terrace had to point him out as a blond-headed dot in the distance. As a pr stunt, the whole thing did lack something. ‘Are there going to be any autographs?' asked the kids. ‘
Nein
,' was the reply. As a way of deepening my interest in the tournament, the press conference (in German) wasn't much better. They gave me a T-shirt with ‘Say no to drugs' in German on it, but I realised I couldn't wear it with any conviction. Drugs were starting to seem quite attractive, compared with Euro 96. I liked all this getting out and about, but the football? I watched a bunch of Germans in the distance play another bunch of Germans, with a German referee. I wondered if I was looking at the future. And the experience taught me something else: that the downside to travelling halfway up the country with a bit of footie hope in your heart is that, afterwards, you have to travel halfway down the country back again with nothing to console you for all those wasted hours.

So the only thing keeping me going, at this stage, was the
BT
pager, which had started off the tournament
delivering quite terse and factual reports (‘England 1, Switzerland 0, Shearer 22 mins'), but by midweek was employing interesting value judgements and adjectives. It was fascinating. I loved it. I hung on its every word. It described team performances as ‘spirited', and so on. ‘Dutch substitution de Kock for Seedorf (lucky not to be sent off )'. The worst thing was, I loved the way it went off at unexpected moments: it made me feel all connected and indispensable. I was at the checkout in Waitrose at 6.30 on the Thursday evening (packing cat food) when the balloon went up, and I had no choice: I stopped everything I was doing, grabbed the pager, and held it in front of my furrowed face, pressing its buttons. The checkout lady was impressed. She probably thought I'd be performing a kidney transplant within the hour. The message read, ‘Please keep posted for tonight's crunch match between The Netherlands and the Swiss - goals, etc.' Unable to pass this on, I solemnly pursed my lips and waved a hand over the groceries as if to say, ‘Well, it puts all this in perspective.' (Which was true.)

Then came England v Scotland. This time, the paper wanted me to watch footie in a local Brighton pub - and, as I write those words, I do start to think it was all a plot to destroy me, after all. They gave me some spending money in an envelope, and suggested a small, murky pub, forgetting to tell me that I needed to start camping out in front of its giant screen on Friday night if I wanted to have any chance of a seat for the match on Saturday afternoon. Robert and I arrived 90 minutes before the match, and the bar with the TV was already crowded with professional layabouts ordering beer in enormous pitchers and crisps
by the box. All the seats were taken, and most of the floor space was taken, too. It was hard to see the attraction of watching footie in a pub - especially when the match was being broadcast on terrestrial television and therefore available in one's own home. The only interesting novelty in the experience, as far as I could tell, was the stickiness of the floor, which meant that, however roughly one was barged from the side, one could always regain the vertical. The screen was dreadful - a blurry, washed-out picture; meanwhile the half-light was a pickpockets' charter, the crowding was ghastly, the air was full of cigarette smoke, people were already quite rowdy, and worst of all, you couldn't hear the telly. How was I supposed to take detailed notes in these conditions? Someone really hadn't thought this through.

But there was something behind my grumbling, I realised. Something unexpected. I was tense about the football. A match was about to take place, the outcome of which might be decisive for England's progress through the tournament. Suddenly the previous Saturday's 1-1 result against Switzerland looked like a wasted opportunity: why hadn't England played better, tried harder, got more goals? Hadn't they understood what was at stake? Hadn't they had a couple of years to prepare for that match? With an hour to go before England v Scotland, I felt sick. The pager had sent me a message on the Friday with, ‘Pressure on England and Scotland to win tomorrow', and I had thought this a bit superfluous, but now, as I waited grimly for kick-off at 3 p.m., I hated the fact that, yes, both teams really needed to win this if they were to survive the group stage of the competition. Scotland had only one
point; England had only one point; The Netherlands had three. England was to meet The Netherlands the following Thursday at Wembley, and that was the last of the group matches. In less than a week's time, before the knockout stage started, England might actually be out. ‘Come on, England!' someone shouted across the pub - and this was half an hour before the match, you understand. But it didn't seem such a banal thing to say, all of a sudden. ‘Come on, England!' does sum up one's feelings in this situation pretty well. I tried to unclench my jaw, but it was hopeless. I tried to take an inhalation of breath without choking, but that was hopeless, too.

It turned out to be truly a game of two halves, that Scotland game. The first half, watched from that ghastly pub, was pure, goal-less misery; by the end of the 45 minutes, I'd had enough, and so had Robert. At half time we made a dash along the sea-front - all ozone, seagulls, energy and sunlight - and threw ourselves into a light, colonially decorated bar in one of the big hotels where the screens were of a normal
TV
size, and awkwardly bolted to the ceiling, but at least we could sit in upholstered white wicker chairs and hear the commentary. It was here that we saw the England team score its two goals against Scotland - and David Seaman save the penalty from Gary McAllister, don't forget, which was just as momentous (they said it was the first penalty saved by an English goalkeeper at Wembley since 1959). Gascoigne's tremendous, genius clincher - flipping the ball over Colin Hendry's head, dodging round him, and then volleying from some distance into the net - is one of the greatest ever moments of three-dimensional football, only slightly ruined by the way it's
followed by him lying on the ground with his mouth open for the ‘dentist's chair' goal celebration (a highly contrived reference to the England team's recent drinking excesses while on tour in the Far East). I'm always disappointed by that rush of Gazza's to assume the dentist's chair position. All that beauty and spontaneity followed immediately by something so yobby. It perfectly encapsulated Gazza's tragic misfortune: that the downside to having a foot like a brain is that you get a brain like a foot, to go with it.

The following Thursday, it was England v The Netherlands, the last of England's group games. The championships had been going for only 10 days. Against all expectations (and precedent), England beat The Netherlands 4-1. It was a historic night for English football. I watched the match from an airship circling Wembley Stadium. No one ever believes me when I tell them this. They think I am making it up.

It does sound suspicious, I admit. Why did the Fuji airship people offer
The Times
a place on board that evening? Well, who cares? My orders were to arrive in the early afternoon at a field near Woking, bringing a fearless friend if I wanted to. My friend Susan brought a straw hat and a pair of binoculars (clever). I brought the pager and some chocolate cake. A freelance photographer joined our party - but, aside from the pilot, that was it. Nice men from Fuji's German publicity operation met us and showed us the silvery airship as it rested in long, parched grass. A warm breeze rippled the tops of trees. All was peaceful. Susan and I asked intelligent questions about how the
airship had flown here from Germany, what was its exact length, weight, age, mix of gases, pet name, number of flights, and so on - and basically tried ever so, ever so hard not to mention the
Hindenburg
.

In the end, sensing our English reticence, they mentioned it themselves. All thoughts of the
Hindenburg
were to be banished from our minds, they said; the canopy of a modern airship was emphatically non-flammable. The worst that could happen with a damaged modern airship was a very, very gentle descent, landing with a soft bump, probably somewhere open and safe and absolutely lovely like the middle of Richmond Park. Our American pilot, whose name was Corky (how marvellous), had flown airships round Superbowls hundreds of times; and so confident was he of the non-flammability of the vast, gas-filled canopy that he actually chain-smoked at the controls. The only thing we had to be prepared for, Corky said, was that being in an airship gondola was less like flying; more like sailing. Thermals made the ship both pitch and roll, especially in the full heat of a June day. He didn't add that, at the same time, there is a deafening noise from the propeller, and no bathroom. (We would find these things out soon enough.)