People

As well as witnessing a huge football match along with 84,505 other supporters, yesterday was also about people. I spoke with several fellow human beings apart from Tony and Karl with whom I spent the entire day.

1. Middlesbrough fans by Wembley Way

I needed somewhere to eat my Marks and Spencers "meal deal" - a tuna mayo and cucumber sandwich, a little tub of sweet grapes and a bottle of Diet Coca Cola. There was a concrete construction barrier under  a shady tree so I  went over there. Five Middlesbrough fans in their red and white were also hanging out there. Soon I found myself in conversation with them.

Gary was thirty years old. He seemed to know more abut Hull City's squad than I did. He was married with five children below that age of seven. He told me that he was a season ticket holder but had managed to see only a few matches this past season.

I asked why and he said, "Family commitments". He confided that  his sixty two year old father is dying from cancer. There were tears in his eyes.

Another fan in the group spoke about his prostate cancer and the treatment that had left him with, "Erectile dysfunction", admitting his frustration about no being able to have sex with his wife.  It was more information than I wanted to hear.

2. Lewis the London Tigers fan

After the game and the inevitable wild celebrations, the sea of amber and black Hull City supporters edged slowly to Wembley Park tube station. On the Metropolitan line platform, I met a London-based, East Yorkshire exile called  Lewis. That name was printed on the back of his Hull City team shirt. He was my age and knew the underground system like the back of his hand. 

We boarded a train to Baker Street where he kindly helped us to move seamlessly to the Hammersmith and District Line for a connecting train back to St Pancras. He was a man I would happily have been pals with for the rest of my life but when we split it was forever.

3. Helen and Dan on the train home

The 20.35 train back to Sheffield was cancelled like the 20.02 train before it. We climbed aboard the 21.02 train and it was as crowded as hell. We could not find a seat. I was grumbling like a bumble bee in a glass when we made it to the little storage vestibule just behind the driver's cab. There a young couple were squeezed upon the guard's drop-down bench.

The young man looked up at us and said, "Do you want our seat?"

I replied with surprised thanks, adding discreetly that a member of my little team had a "medical condition". Their kind and selfless act  meant that Karl had somewhere to sit on the two hour journey home. His face was looking like uncooked pastry with beads of cold sweat.

Before the couple disembarked at Chesterfield,  I shook their hands and made them chuckle when I said I  would nominate them for a "Pride of Britain" award, insisting that not many people would have done what they had done. They had been down to the capital to see a matinee performance of the stage musical, "Titanic". 

⦿

There were others too. The three birthday women who sat opposite us on the way down. The Coventry City supporter who boarded the train home at Derby. He studied Geography and Transport at The University of Leeds. The young British Asian mother with her two children on the steel benches near the Sheffield platform at St Pancras and the tattooed young man with long ear lobes I met in "The Sheaf Island" pub as I walked home before midnight from Sheffield Midland station.

"You'll get relegated next season," he claimed.

But I did not give a damn for we had won the match on a truly magical day when the sun shone and all was well with the world. I felt entirely alive.

"City till I die!  I'm City till I die! I know I am, I'm sure I am. I'm City till I die!"