A Puzzle

Enjoyed an excellent game of rugby in the afternoon at the National Stadium. Also managed to enjoy a coffee & tea as I watched, which is a lot more than I managed to get hold of watching Stockport County back in December in the bracing cold of Manchester.

Meditating on my experiences watching footy & cricket & rugby over the years has brought a perplexing question to my mind. It has occurred to me, rather suddenly today, that Dad never took me to any of United’s games when I was a kid, though he was a big fan. In fact, I can’t remember him going at all to games, though he would have only been in his early forties in the period I’m thinking about. And that's the age when Saturdays are often set aside for the Big Game.

I remember him going to a match (I assume involving Man Utd, though I'm not sure) with a couple of my uncles when we were on holiday in Blackpool once and Mum and various aunties not approving. The men played a bit of prank when they got back, pretending one had incurred a black eye in a fight, and fell about laughing at the ladies when they were being rebuked, suddenly revealing they’d made up the whole thing, and the ‘injury’, which they neatly faked, wasn’t real. But that’s the only time I can recall him actually going to a game.

So what was stopping him?

I sort of took it all for granted back then as just the way things were. But age can do strange things to you, I find. You start questioning the 'obvious' of all those years ago. At least, that's what I'm finding myself increasingly doing.