Seventeen years ago today on Monday April 8th, 2002, I went to watch Boston United play Stevenage Borough (as they were known back then) in the fifth tier of English football. The game ended 0-0 and I can not remember a single thing that happened on the actual field of play. Yet I recalled the evening well enough for the game to become the backbone to Chapter 12 of The Quiet Fan, 'Reconciliation'. It was the first game that my long since divorced parents, myself and my sister had been to watch together as a family in a quarter of a century.
Here's a short extract:
That Monday afternoon my dad had come round like a moping teenager to just sort of hang out at his ex-wife’s, and said he had no plans for the evening. And so we thought we should do something together, which wasn’t something that had ever gone well. In the 1970s this meant trips to stately homes (I would always throw up, usually in the car because I was too afraid to admit I was feeling ill), Sunday walks in the Wolds (my sister in a perma-huff, walking either 100 yards ahead or behind), a day in Skegness but with none of the fun (I wasn’t allowed to waste money in the arcades), or weekends with relatives or family friends my parents would complain about all the way home. Whatever the trip, my sister and I always, always wanted to stay at home.
I proposed Boston United v. Stevenage Borough. Boston was a club that had
been striving for Football League membership since the 1970s, when they won the Northern Premier League a number of times, but their league applications had always been rejected by the stitch-up that was re-election. Now they were on the verge of automatic promotion to the fourth division. ‘It should be quite exciting,’ I reckoned out loud to a reluctant gang of three. There were only six games left until the end of the season, and they were just ahead of their nearest competitors, Dagenham and Redbridge. My dad gave a doubtful smile, my sister didn’t say anything, and my mum said, ‘You must be kidding.’ Someone suggested the cinema, but there was nothing on that all four of us wanted to watch. Going out for a meal on Monday night didn’t seem right either. After all, we’d just spent the entire weekend sitting around and stuffing ourselves at a wedding. There was a short silence. I could feel Boston United v. Stevenage Borough hanging ripe from a low branch, just waiting to be plucked. What else was there to do? My mum looked at me, laughed and caved in. ‘Alright, let’s go to the football,’ she said, and immediately I set about laying out the timetable we’d need to get down there, park, find a fish and chip shop, and settle down with the match programme in a decent seat.
been striving for Football League membership since the 1970s, when they won the Northern Premier League a number of times, but their league applications had always been rejected by the stitch-up that was re-election. Now they were on the verge of automatic promotion to the fourth division. ‘It should be quite exciting,’ I reckoned out loud to a reluctant gang of three. There were only six games left until the end of the season, and they were just ahead of their nearest competitors, Dagenham and Redbridge. My dad gave a doubtful smile, my sister didn’t say anything, and my mum said, ‘You must be kidding.’ Someone suggested the cinema, but there was nothing on that all four of us wanted to watch. Going out for a meal on Monday night didn’t seem right either. After all, we’d just spent the entire weekend sitting around and stuffing ourselves at a wedding. There was a short silence. I could feel Boston United v. Stevenage Borough hanging ripe from a low branch, just waiting to be plucked. What else was there to do? My mum looked at me, laughed and caved in. ‘Alright, let’s go to the football,’ she said, and immediately I set about laying out the timetable we’d need to get down there, park, find a fish and chip shop, and settle down with the match programme in a decent seat.
Boston v. Stevenage: Why It Was Significant
It wasn’t just that we were going to a game, the four of us. There could hardly have been any occasions at all since 1979 when we were sitting in the same room together, alone, as that original family unit of four. And yet, despite a bitter 10-year battle over maintenance and other money matters, including court appearances, court summons, never-ending mutual recriminations, hurt and slander, sneaking lawyers, threats and sleepless nights, here were my mum and dad chatting away, drinking afternoon tea and eating cake, and I was probably reading the paper, and my sister was probably waiting for something bad to happen, but the worst that ever happened now between my mum and dad was the occasionally bitchy, back-stabbing comment under the guise of a humorous remark. And for years, at least until my mum lost a ton of weight, my dad would confide in me, after seeing my mum, that she was looking older and had put on weight. And then my mum would confide in me that my dad was looking older and had put on weight. Perhaps ‘confide’ is the wrong word, given that I would delightedly tell one parent that the other had said exactly the same thing (neither thought this at all amusing).
My mum and my sister had had so many fights down the years that this book would need a separate appendix to list them all. One way or another, we’d all had our moments, like in any family, although in some families it’s possible that the rifts we had experienced would have been well beyond repair. Family members, though, however much they are thrown together and forced into each other’s company and compelled to make an effort to get along despite a million differences of opinion, have an amazing capacity to heal. Arguments that in friendship would have simply meant a permanent severing of all contact are, within a family, somehow either forgotten or forgiven, or both. Apart from the extremely dysfunctional cases (rather than the averagely dysfunctional cases that most families are, like ours), families can correct themselves. Once you get used to the idea that, short of changing your identity and moving to El Salvador, you cannot swap or drop your family, you learn to love it, albeit in a qualified way. Families are a need more than a want. Your family will exasperate you, baffle you and drive you to tears, but it’s painful as hell to imagine what it would be like if they suddenly weren’t there. Oh, go on – say it. Just like your football team.
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