A conversation within Laurence Inman
By Laurence Inman.
- So, Spain won then.
- Did it ? When ?
- Last Sunday.
- What did it win then ?
- The football.
- One football. A whole country.
- You’re just being a prat now.
- I’m not that bothered.
- You were bothered when Villa won the European Cup.
- No I wasn’t.
- Villa! Villa! Come on Bluenose! Join in!
- Youthful exuberance.
- You were thirty-two!
- Alcohol exuberance. You’ll be the same when….oh no, you won’t will you ?
- Don’t start.
- Because a team from a lower division has never won Europe’s top football trophy.
- I’ve told you.
- Never scaled the rarefied heights of football glory.
- I’m getting my axe.
- Never looked out, silent upon a peak in Nechells, and realised that it’s all a meaningless memory.
- That’s what you’ll be in a minute.
- It’s different over there of course.
- What is ?
- Football. The fans have real power. Pick the team. Interview the manager.
- Really ?
- Yeah. It’s in their contract. You can phone them up and have them round playing with your kids in the back garden.
- Honest ?
- Oh yeah. If they’re free, obviously. They’ll even mow the lawn. Do the washing up.
- You’re pulling my pudding.
- Who’s the prat now ?
- I wish it was more like that.
- Give it ten years. Blues’ll be in the East Birmingham Paper Boys League. Playing down the park. Jumpers for goalposts.
- Stop it.
- You’ll only be seventy-two. They might give you a game.
- Seventy-two!
- Terrifying isn’t it ?
- I wonder how much I’ve spent since 1957 to be wet and miserable for two hours every other Saturday.
- Same as me probably.
- And now it costs fifty quid or more.
- Straight in the pocket of a multi-millionaire.
- Who lives in a moated mansion in the country.
- Imagine turning up there and asking him to come for a kick-around with the kids.
- He’d probably let his Mossad-trained Rottweilers loose.
- Shake you warmly by the goolies.
- Doesn’t bear thinking about.