All in the Mind?

When I was young we used to live next door to a haunted house. Well, I say it was haunted but really it was just unoccupied and in a mild state of disrepair, but to any child under the age of eight who, like me, had lived their first eight years in the late 1970s/early 1980s and been fed a diet of Scooby Doo and The Red Hand Gang then obviously it had to be haunted. The myth was further fuelled by my parents who told me not to go round there but never really explained why. They were most likely concerned that I’d fall down a man hole or be squashed by a falling piece of masonry but I took their lack of explanation as proof that terrible things had happened there, possibly a grisly murder, and therefore it was haunted by those lost souls.

When friends came to visit the conversation would inevitably come round to the haunted house and lead to an expedition through a gap in the fence from our back garden round to the haunted house whilst my mum was distracted. The garden was terribly overgrown and we had to fight through brambles to get to the back of the house and peer through the window.

It always looked like someone had left in a bit of a hurry as there was a dirty mug by the sink, and an old browned newspaper on the floor. The curtains were tatty and hanging down and the door to the stairs was intriguingly ajar. On more than one occasion we convinced ourselves that we heard ghostly footsteps coming down those stairs and that the door had slowly creaked open.

We never stayed around long enough to see what horror would emerge as we’d worked ourselves up into such a frenzy that we had fled back through the brambles at top speed and returned to the safety of our garden, all giddy and out of breath, just in time for my mum to come out and investigate what all the shouting had been about.

At some point during the late 1970s the vicar came round to visit. I’m not sure why exactly, we weren’t church goers but I guess that in those days in small villages on the Isle of Wight that’s what vicars did. In any case, as he was leaving I decided to tell him about the ghosts next door and so pointed out the house and said “That house is haunted”. The vicar, a wiry, white haired chap, looked at me sternly and said “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Terence”.

Being about four or five years old at the time I didn’t have the wits about me to enter into a meaningful debate on paranormal activity and its relation to theology so just stayed quiet, considering how wrong this vicar was. How could he stand there and say that and yet he’d come to our school and talked about miracles, claiming that he had prayed for help when he couldn’t get his bonfire lit one evening and then God intervened and before long he had a fully blazing bonfire with flames higher than his house, or something equally as absurd. Things just weren’t adding up.

Fast forward to the mid-1990s and I worked in a bookshop in Southampton. My interest in ghosts had subsided and been replaced by my interest in UFOs. I used to lie awake at night wondering whether I was about to be abducted. I blame The X Files.

It was a large bookshop spread out over three floors and I worked on the top floor, in the academic book section. We used to open until 8pm on a Thursday evening and I often volunteered for this as it meant I could go in later in the morning and the shop was usually nice and quiet in the evening.

This was one such evening during early autumn, it was wet and cold outside and customers were thin on the ground. The layout of the store meant that I was behind a large counter at the top of the stairs which for some reason made me feel like Noel Edmonds on The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, just without the purple dinosaur. From my vantage point I could see each and every person who came onto the floor.

This particular evening I was busy writing out the usual postcards to people to inform them that their ordered book had arrived when a chap walked up the stairs, looked vaguely around and asked me where the French language course books were. Having not seen a customer for an hour or so I was in a benevolent mood and managed to extract myself from behind the counter and point him in the right direction. As I did I glanced down in to the main part of the shop floor and saw an old man I’d not spotted previously, a little chap with white hair, glasses, and a beige coat, stood the opposite side of the small ‘General Science’ shelves, thereby looking at my recently put together ‘Astronomy’ section.

I was surprised to see him as to all intents and purposes I thought I was on my own up there. The guy thanked me for showing him where the French books were and as I turned to return to the counter I glanced down again to see that the old man had gone. This was all in a matter of seconds and to me this sudden disappearance was deeply suspicious. I therefore made the assumption that he had ducked down behind the shelves and was probably filling up his coat with Planispheres and Patrick Moore books.

Believing I had a shoplifting pensioner on my hands I sauntered down across the floor in a casual but really obvious manner, half heartedly straightening books on my way, and I eventually reached the ‘General Science’ section. I turned the corner to see…..nothing. I looked round, there was no way he could have got past me and no other exits, so where the hell was he? I quickly did a search round but no old man. I was genuinely open mouthed.

I returned to the counter and considered this for a moment. I’d heard tales from other employees about the possibility that the building was haunted but I’d always dismissed it as bored hysteria. Now, with my own eyes I’d seen an old man who wasn’t there which must mean, I could hardly believe it, I’d seen a ghost. I wasn’t scared, I felt quite exhilarated. I told colleagues and they were excited for me, I was the man who’d seen the fabled ghost of Dillons, and he was just some normal old bloke, probably a former customer who had travelled back from the afterlife for a browse. When you put it like that it’s a nice, almost heart-warming, story.

In the intervening years I’ve read books such as Oliver Sacks’ ‘The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat’ which tells true stories of the strange neurological cases of people who, through illness or otherwise, had radically different perceptions of the real world. For a time I even worked in a Psychiatric department of a local hospital (yes, I definitely worked there, I wasn’t a patient with delusions of grandeur and special shoes) and I used to be fascinated by the case notes of people who would start to hear their name being called when no-one was around, or would be thinking about a word or a thing and then suddenly the person on TV or on the radio would mention the same word or thing and instead of just putting it down to coincidence they started to become obsessed by it and noticing these things more and more often until the radio DJ or the news reader was, to their mind, talking directly to them and instructing them to do things. It was all quite scary because this was all created by their mind and there was nothing they could do about it.

So, rationally my old man wasn’t a ghost but was an illusion created, for whatever reason, by my own mind, and that can’t be right, can it? Thankfully I’ve not gone through life seeing things that aren’t there and I haven’t noticed Chris Moyles or Steve Wright telling me to go and throw myself under a bus so all is well and I’ve not lost what is left of my marbles.

So all things considered then it must have been a ghost as the alternative is that I was hallucinating. Either way I shall call in Derek Acorah at once to settle this once and for all. What’s that you say Derek? "Mary loves Dick". Hmm, maybe not then.

 

Love You Long Time

It’s not very often that I get emails via Facebook. Usually when I do it’s from friends passing on a new address or mobile phone number or sometimes an invitation to a party, or even to share the odd bit of gossip. It’s rare, in fact completely unknown, to get an email from someone totally random. Today I did, and I was a little surprised.

I received an email from a Chinese lady living in Ghana who was keen to know whether I was looking for love or whether some “lucky lady” had “won my heart”. Rather than wait for an answer she had obviously decided to crack on and state her case, explaining that I “look like a nice person and a man worth getting to know”. She obviously hasn’t been looking at my Facebook photos in too much depth as she would have seen me in various states of inebriation, often wearing a novelty hat on my head, or worse still, a video of me singing “I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester” on karaoke after too many cocktails.

Mind you she may be aware of my newly found sporting prowess. The running is going well. I say running, it’s jogging really, I’m not going to be mistaken for Usain Bolt anytime soon. However I can run/jog all the way from my house right up to the new Tesco (via a housing estate). This will mean nothing to most of you but it was only two weeks ago when I could barely get out of sight of the house before collapsing in a sweaty heap on the pavement. Anyone who has seen ‘Run Fatboy Run’ will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I have to say, the present Mrs Hayward is also running and she’s doing well, even if she keeps complaining that her legs hurt. She’s even started a Zumba class. I don’t really know why, we don’t know anyone who speaks Zumba.

Then there’s the swimming. OK, so I haven’t stepped into the murky waters of eternal doom yet but, a week or so later than I promised, I went to Bourne Leisure Centre to enquire about adult swimming lessons. Pleasingly no-one laughed at me either. I met ‘Manager Lee’ who cheerily told me all about how it worked and when lessons started.

Apparently there are two instructors, one who works with the improvers and the other with those who “are petrified of the water”. He gave me a knowing smile as if to say, ‘but of course you’re not one of them’. I pointed out that I was indeed in that camp, in fact the first lesson will most likely involve prising me away from the edge.

He suggested I might like to go along one Thursday evening for a taster session before enrolling for the new term in May. I agreed that this would be an excellent idea, especially as you have to pay for the full course up front. That’s £88 in one hit. That made me splutter and I haven’t even swallowed a mouthful of pool water yet. I guess it’s so that people who don’t like it after the first lesson keep going. Maybe it’s because they drown after a moment of bravado on week three. Who knows?

‘Manager Lee’ said that it was a good group and they often have little social activities outside of the pool environment. Maybe this is some sort of cult or swingers club, either way I’ll keep you informed. I’m not sure what my new future wife from Shanghai will think about it.

Talking of which, her email became a little forward at one point. She explained that we should get to know each other so I could make up my mind about her “and after that is when we can decide where we want to go with this”. To be fair there is no ‘this’ but she’s obviously not shy in coming forward, especially when she went on to explain that she was looking for “a serious relationship or marriage”.

I decided that I probably shouldn’t respond to the future Mrs Hayward without sharing this communication with the present Mrs Hayward. After all she was the one who “won my heart” first and I didn’t really want her to stumble upon this email by accident, wonder what the hell was going on, and decide to nail important parts of my anatomy to the wall. Seriously, if you'd read the email you’d think that the mystery lady and I were acquaintances of old.

As it was she thought the whole thing was bizarre but amusing. We looked through the photos of Miss Shanghai which evoked the comment “she’s quite pretty” from my good lady wife. I suggested that perhaps we could entertain some sort of bigamist relationship but Mrs Hayward doubted I had the stamina for it, and she’s probably right. Not with all the running and swimming and stuff. As for my shin splints….

So, whatever Miss Shanghai is, either real and weirdly desperate or an elaborate ploy to steal personal details off gullible men who believe that an attractive mysterious woman who posts photos of herself in a bikini are really going to be attracted to them despite not knowing a jot about them, she briefly became a talking point this evening.

Who knows, perhaps she’s genuine and just likes a man who enjoys a drink, sings out of tune and occasionally likes to wear a fez? After all, who wouldn’t?

Turning Japanese

This day was coming, it was writ large in the skies, but it was still unexpected when it happened. Let me explain.

I had plainly made a bad decision to go and have a meeting with a client in London at lunchtime without taking any kind of sustenance with me. I just feel it would look a little unprofessional to rock up with my own picnic hamper and start munching on Quails Eggs and Caviar, because of course that is what I usually eat. Doesn’t everyone? Well that and a bag of Hula Hoops.

It meant that by the time I got out mid-afternoon I was Hank Marvin as they would say in cockney rhyming slang, and this was apt as I was in East London at the time. Seriously, I could have eaten a horse but the little shop by the tube station didn’t have any. They did have a Curried Egg sandwich mind you but even in my famished state that didn’t look appealing.

So I headed back towards Kings Cross with a rumbling stomach that echoed all the way up through the tunnels of the Northern Line. I checked the time and realised that when I got back to civilisation I had to stop off for a conference call. I concluded that Kings Cross may not be the ideal place for this as, at the moment, it’s noisy and crowded due to the fact that they are re-building the place and, just for fun, penning everyone in with ticket barriers.

I decided to wander across to St Pancras to grab a sandwich and maybe sit down for the call. I staggered in clutching my stomach surprised that people couldn’t see that I was visibly wasting away. I wandered deliriously past Costa Coffee as I could see that it was rammed full of exchange students and pensioners, and then past a place called Paul, which I didn’t trust as it was too empty.

I could see a branch of Boots in the distance and for a moment I could almost taste a meal deal but by now I was almost on my knees dragging my empty husk of a body along the floor. Then I saw it, bright orange and shiny, with little plates of food which appeared to be gliding magnificently amongst the diners within. I was drawn in by this neon nirvana and I staggered closer for a better view, and then through my bleary eyes I could see that a young smiling woman had approached me. “Have you been to Yo! Sushi before?” she asked.

I hadn’t, and through my tears of hunger I explained how I, to my eternal shame, was a sushi virgin. You see I’ve seen them before, there’s one in Selfridges in Birmingham that’s always caught my eye, but I’ve never quite had the courage to join the young and hip punters in case I didn’t like what was on offer and ended up embarrassing myself by choking on a squid’s tentacle. That and the fact that the present Mrs Hayward believes that eating raw fish is “dirty”.

The young lady escorted me to a seat and explained to me how it all worked. I could just make out what she was saying above the increasingly deafening growls from my stomach but I understood that you took what you fancied, that the colour of the bowls the food was in indicated the price of the dish, and there was water available which I could drink until it was coming out of my ears. She handed me some type of catalogue that was supposed to identify the food that was shimmying around in front of me like prizes on The Generation Game and she left me alone to ponder.

I poured some water and contemplated the manual but gave up with this approach as once I’d seen something and worked out what it was the plate was half a mile away. So I used the more direct approach of choosing with my eyes and when I saw something that looked like chicken and salad I grabbed it. I glanced around for cutlery and found the idiot’s chopsticks, joined together at one end so that cack handed morons like me didn’t keep dropping either them or the food on the floor.

The cuisine was excellent and brought me back to life just in time for me to join the conference call. At this time of day it seemed to be a good venue for suited souls like me, a red faced man with a posher laptop than mine was calling another red faced man on his phone, insisting he joined him there for a meeting.

I participated in the call with ease and aplomb and hopefully no-one on the other end heard me tucking in to a Spicy Crab Cake. Once I’d finished the call I decided that I would grab one last thing before I headed off, this time a proper sushi looking thing, all rice and seaweed and raw fish, although it turned out to be crab again, but this one was sweet and lovely.

As working lunches go this one was marvellous. I was only there about half an hour but even with a call in the middle I felt really relaxed afterwards, the environment was really chilled out.

When I paid I explained to the guy at the till that I had just popped my sushi cherry. He asked if I was from London. I said I wasn’t, that I lived just north of Peterborough and we don’t have a Yo! Sushi there. He looked sad for me and said wistfully, “Maybe you will have one day”.

I can only dream as Yo Sushi has now become my new favourite place but given that Peterborough is only just getting a Nando’s, and I’m fairly giddy about that as I’ve not been there either, I think it’ll be a long time before the good people of Peterborough can enjoy the magical conveyor belt of delicious sweet and savoury treats of Yo! Sushi, and that’s a shame.

 

Be My Valentine

Did you get any Valentine's cards yesterday? Or a gift? Or a meal at a posh restaurant? Or all of these?

Well, some of you will have embraced the occasion and showered their loved ones with gifts or flowers, after all when you order flowers online it’s very easy to add some chocolates or a bottle of something fizzy or even a little toy rabbit clutching a heart, which is meant to be lovable but is actually quite sinister if you think about it.

A click here and a click there and it looks like you give a damn. Job done. Unfortunately the present Mrs Hayward is aware of this ruse so I have to make more of an effort.

Let’s be honest, we all know it’s a money making scam by unscrupulous card manufacturers and devious florists but it’s personal choice whether you join in. Some couples will say that they don’t celebrate it as they don’t like being told when to be romantic. To be fair you’re not being told to do anything, it’s just a suggested day for such activities, a bit like Easter but without the chocolate eggs and crucifixion stories. Having said that, St Valentine himself was supposedly beheaded so at least it’s a traditional celebration involving someone being executed. We’re a grim bunch when you think about it.

If you decry Valentines Day as a tacky marketing ploy then that’s up to you, it doesn’t really matter. So long as you cast the runes of romance on occasion then that’s fine, you carry on. Nothing to see here.

Then of course there are the singletons. I’ve been you, loudly declaring how I don’t care about such fripperies and yet secretly hoping that a card from a secret admirer would drop through my letterbox. Oh, you’ll say you don’t want one, and you’ll never let on, even in the face of constant questioning and mild torture, but deep down you do. We all do.

When I was a single man I would have loved to have received a Valentines Card from some mystery lady but I have to face the facts that it didn’t happen to me. Well not since I was 8 and, to be honest, I knew who it was from. No, it wasn’t my mother before you ask, it was from a girl in the year below me. Her name was Kate and I’d once had to fight another boy for her hand in Country Dancing. It didn’t do any good on that occasion, I was always a rubbish fighter which was why I stopped becoming embroiled in fisticuffs soon after this incident, and she still chose to dance with him. Mind you his parents ran a pub and he allegedly knew Worzel Gummidge so he was quite a catch.

Being single on Valentines Day can be an appalling situation but at least you can just ignore that it’s happening. Unless of course you live with other people who are in a relationship, then you have to witness their happiness which feels both nauseating and deeply unfair when you’re not loved up yourself.

When I lived in a student house, for the first couple of years I had the downstairs front room as my bedroom, where the front door was. People didn’t use it as such, that would have been weird, but the letterbox was there and so on 14^th February each year I would be laid in bed trying to shake off the inevitable hangover when I would hear the letterbox click. I’d glance over and see a collection of red envelopes on the floor and I would let out a sigh. Seriously, it was heartbreaking to hear.

I’d pretend that they weren’t there and, in any case, even if they were there was nothing for me. Why would there have been? It was madness to consider anything else but I’m a glass half full kind of guy when it comes to affairs of the heart and so I would find myself going against all my student instincts to stay in bed until at least lunchtime and saunter over to the door, bend down to pick up the cards, glance though them, sigh once more, and wander out into the lounge so as to fling them on the coffee table before retreating back to my room to contemplate why I was so unloved. It really was a tragic situation.

What I came to realise was that it didn’t matter, you can still enjoy it. Go and buy a cake with a heart on it, enjoy a Valentines themed ale, and spread the love. If you have no-one to love then love yourself. No, not like that, I mean in a more spiritual and enlightening way so put the fruit bowl down and return that sink plunger back to where you found it.

For me and Mrs Hayward, we choose to celebrate Valentines Day as it’s any excuse to go out for a few drinks and buy each other amusing gifts. Just don’t take it too seriously, after all it’s just for fun.

The Running Man

As of today I still can’t swim. Despite well meaning people telling me that once I get into the water I'll be fine and I’ll just float I have to point out that I have carried out some research and discovered that, on average, 427 people drown in the UK every year and that 95% of all people who drowned whilst swimming were male.

This worrying information comes from the good people at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents who also warn the public against alcohol, bravado, carelessness and recklessness. Funnily enough all four of those were reasons I ended up in The Burghley Arms on Friday night, but that’s another story.

Then there’s non-fatal drownings which I didn’t even know existed but that can lead to memory problems and the loss of basic functioning. Now that reminds me of Saturday morning. I blame the ‘Dr Pepper Bombs’ myself, which strangely don’t contain Dr Pepper but do contain Lager and Disaronno.

So the application form for adult swimming lessons has gone nowhere for now, but I promise I’ll pull my finger out at the weekend and drop it off at the pool. Lessons are due to start in April so I don’t want to miss the bus, unless of course that bus is careering off a bridge and into a ravine full of crocodiles.

Despite this fail on the swimming front, on Sunday I took the first steps towards the non-water related New Years resolution. I put my trainers on and started to run. If you believe the hype, man (and woman) is built to run, we just stop doing it when we get older.

These words of wisdom were firmly at the front of my mind as I headed off down the road and surprisingly I felt good. I built up to a reasonable pace, the wind was flowing through what’s left of my hair and I was jogging along nicely.

Marathon runners will tell you about ‘hitting the wall’ after about 20 miles. I hit the wall approximately 1 minute and 8 seconds into my turn around the block. Seriously, I nearly vomited blood from my ears it was such a shock to the system.

Undeterred I got back on the proverbial horse and carried on walking and before I knew it I jogged a little more and walked a bit and jogged a bit and….well, I’m no Haile Gebrselassie just yet but then who is? Apart from Haile Gebrselassie of course. OK, so I had to Google ‘famous marathon runners’ but maybe one day my name will be on that list. In fact I might go and add my name on to Wikipedia now and see if anyone notices.

What I’m saying is I am on course for October and the little 5k race in Peterborough which at the moment feels like it may as well be a marathon. I went out again yesterday and I don’t feel too bad for it, apart from the fact my legs feel as if they’ve been hit with tiny hammers, probably by leprechauns.

I even have a tricky route that I run. I don’t mean that it’s uphill or anything but it goes past both a pub and a chippy. Mind you I did note on my way past that the pub was selling Woodforde’s Wherry as a guest ale, and some of the regulars were wearing leisure wear so I would have blended in just fine but I resisted and made a mental note to pop back at some point when I wasn’t sweating out all the fluid from my body through my face.

I’m not the only one who has entered the world of athletics, the present Mrs Hayward is also on the run, so to speak. She’s been out twice as well but we don’t go together, we’d just get competitive and try to out-run each other which would only lead to one or both of us collapsing on the side of the road possibly whilst coughing up a lung. We’re going out separately, at our own pace, and that works well for now, mostly as it means that one of us cooks tea whilst the other one is pounding the streets.

So the Haywards are staggering into the world of physical fitness. By the summer I will be slim, toned and energetic. Either that or I will have just had my second stroke. No really, I’m not getting any younger. That would just be weird.

Mind you all this exercise makes a man thirsty, and the pub is only a couple of minutes walk away. In the words of Homer Simpson, “Mmmm……beer”.

The Big Match

I don’t recall the exact moment that I became a fan of a football club but the indoctrination to support Southampton started at an early age. Back in 1981, when I was just 7, I had a poster on my wall, given to me by my brother, of the Southampton squad. There on the poster stood a selection of shiny haired individuals beaming out at the world, but in amongst them was the most famous footballer of his day, Kevin Keegan.

It’s difficult to remember what a surprise it was in 1980 when Keegan joined Southampton. The equivalent now would be David Beckham signing for Blackpool. But there was the mighty permed one on the turf of The Dell along with our other stars of the day like Mick Channon and Alan Ball, staring down at me from my bedroom wall. When I went to school my friends would be supporters of more fashionable 80s clubs like Liverpool or Spurs but I stuck to my guns and that is why last night I was stood on the terraces at London Road, home of Peterborough United, being frozen to the core by the kind of harsh wind last felt by Captain Scott on his way to the South Pole.

I have heard that football is like theatre. That in the days of Shakespeare the average man and woman on the street would go along to a performance of 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' and join in with the same sort of vigour, calling out to the performers on the stage about how Hamlet was offside and how Lady Macbeth should have gone to Specsavers. This of course doesn’t happen today, people don’t go to the West End to start shouting profanities during Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals, although perhaps they should. It would certainly have made 'Cats' more interesting.

I did consider pointing out the ‘theatre of football’ analogy to my fellow Southampton fans but realised that they may not appreciate what I was saying and consider me an undesirable element, probably from the wrong end of the M27, and forcibly eject me in a thoroughly undignified manner.

I sort of get what is meant though. I find myself partly watching the crowd as much as the football, particularly those vocal individuals who, in amongst the seemingly nonsensical ranting, are painfully funny.

Much has been said of football chants by other more notable individuals than I but you gain a better understanding about your team from them. I heard yesterday via the medium of song that Rickie Lambert is lauded for being Southampton’s goal machine, that Lee Barnard is short and hard and, allegedly, wanted by Scotland Yard, and that Darren Ferguson is a……..well, perhaps this isn’t the forum for that sort of comment, but you take the point.

The great thing is you inevitably join in. There’s just no point going along to stand there in silence. The guy next to me seemed to be, on the face of it, a normal, sensible, smartly dressed man in his 50s who was quite reserved, but once the whistle blew he seemed to blurt out words and pepper sentences with profanities that would make a nun blush. The guy to my right said nothing as he had his radio on, presumably listening to the match commentary rather than finding some inner peace by listening to Classic FM, although being a Southampton fan can drive you to that sort of behaviour.

Then there is the pantomime of half time. Usually this is the time to get some liquid refreshment and/or go to the loo but I had a good spot so I didn’t want to move, however that meant that I was faced with the half time entertainment. I have seen all sorts of things over the years and this was nothing special.

We had a presentation to someone or other, a lap of honour by some local kids team who we all applauded, well most of us, I saw one chap gesturing at them, and a lap by someone dressed up in a giant mattress costume for some reason. It made me wish I’d gone and got a Hot Dog. I’d heard that in days gone by a brass band would come out and play which would be a welcome alternative to this half-arsed display.

Mind you, on a previous occasion when I came to London Road a giant Peperami was taking part in a goal scoring competition, to which my learned friend, Ned, pointed and shouted at the pitch “It’s a giant turd!!!” We may have been drinking beforehand.

The entertainment yesterday was in the game. If you’d told me at the start the final score would be 4-4 I’d have said fair enough, honours even, a game of two halves, and similar tired old clichés. As it was I felt that we lost the game having been two goals up twice during the 90 minutes. To be fair it was a good game to watch, end to end stuff, and lots of argy-bargy (you can’t help but revert to clichés when writing about football, maybe I could be a sports writer).

I, of course, remained calm and composed and not once shouted for the referee to be involved, well apart from the moment caught on slow-mo replay on Sky Sports when Chaplow was brought down in the penalty area and I can be clearly seen in the crowd with my mouth open. That and the moment when we scored the second goal and I was caught, again in slow motion, reacting to the goal about a second after everyone else, as if I was on satellite delay.

Mind you, I couldn’t be missed in my Saints hat that doesn’t quite fit my head. It kept riding up into a point so every now and then on the TV coverage you can catch sight of a guy in the crowd, just behind the goal, looking like a garden gnome. That’ll be me then.

At the final whistle the Peterborough fans were jubilant and we were initially a little deflated. After all, we were the same team that last week held off Manchester United, supposedly the best team in the country, for over an hour. This time we couldn’t hold back the Posh. Don’t ask me why they’re called that, I really have no idea, and I sort of don’t want to either. There really should be some investigation by Trading Standards, I mean have you seen Barry Fry?

So I made my way back to the car to meet up with the present Mrs Hayward and the wife-in-waiting as they had been down the opposite end with the locals. Despite feeling that my team had run out of steam during the second half I felt exhilarated and really want to go to the next match.

That’s what a live game of football does to you. Television is a marvellous invention but it doesn’t quite capture the atmosphere of being at a live game. I would defy anyone to go to a football match and not enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be football, try rugby or motor racing, or even cheese rolling, they come alive when you’re actually there.

Who knows, it might have inspired me into actually doing some exercise today. After all, it’s February now and there’s a little thing of those New Year resolutions.