Reports that abuse increases during football matches shines a welcome light on an often hidden part of our lives, but it’s a lot more complicated than simple game stats
There is a house I pass on the way to work that is covered in so many England flags that it has stopped being a house and become something quite else: polyester and paint, it glows slightly in the shade, a patriotism for living in. Sometimes people toot their car horns driving past. For every moment of togetherness and excitement, for every man loudly caressing his friend in a drunken expression of joy outside my local Wetherspoons when England wins, there is a counterpoint of trouble.
Last Sunday, I was walking slowly through the evening heat, while my daughter danced off ahead, and passed a man who was increasingly frustrated that his girlfriend, at whose flat he’d been watching the football, was not picking up the phone. “LUCY!” he bellowed up at her balcony, a polo-shirted Romeo. “LUCY! If you don’t open the car so I can get my toothbrush I’m going to smash it in with this rock.” She couldn’t hear him, the window was closed, but still he screamed, swearing a little more, kicking her car, weighing up suitable stones. The car alarm went off. She opened the window, and he swore up at her while she looked for her keys, finally bleeping it open from her balcony. So then he turned to me, all that anger with nowhere to go, not even a car window to break, and shouted words as I continued up the quiet road, the dust of insults in my wake as I smiled at my kid and pretended to her that nothing was happening.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IH8yWL
0 comments:
Post a Comment