The Iron-On Line

In which the supermarket amuses my childish side

2009-07-06T22:20:36Z

It's the first week of the month, which means I get another dose of food pron. This time, there's a feature about having your friends round for "their favourite Sunday joint".

This is not, in itself, amusing. It's quite obvious that it's referring to a joint of meat, rather than some other kind of joint. What had me in stitches was the starter that goes with this joint: Smoked Salmon Hash Cakes.

Losing faith

2009-06-30T05:16:25Z

There's an epic thread on slacktivist that's been going in all directions for a week. One particular strand of conversation (now fallen by the wayside) had to do with the expression "losing one's faith", and the problems that ensue when you assume this means the same thing as becoming an atheist.

I can't really remember when I became an atheist. I can only remember that I was reading the Skeptic's Dictionary and realised how much sense the religious parts made: obviously it was something I'd already figured out on my own, because there was no sense of earth-shattering revelation about it.

(It actually reminds me of the Santa thing. At the age of about ten, having not really given it much thought for years, I read some reference in a book to "when you find out Santa is really your parents". "Oh," I thought. "Yeah. That makes sense, doesn't it?")

I still had a lot of fuzzy spirituality going on, and I nearly had my atheist card revoked for defending the right of religious believers to be convinced of their religious truth if it made sense to them, but I was pretty much a proud atheist. And I had a lot of faith in irrational, unprovable, completely non-supernatural things.

I believed that love was a force for good. I believed that, when things get bad, you just have to hang in there; life will give you a chance, and if you take that chance, things will get better. I believed that Scunthorpe United would eventually give me "the victory that makes it all worthwhile".

That was my faith. In the autumn and winter of 2004-05, I lost my faith.

And while we're on the subject of toilets

2009-06-25T22:08:22Z

I was in the shopping centre last week, and I noticed a sign on the toilet door warning customers that the toilets would be checked by male and female attendants.

You know what this means?

What's to stop a rapist dressing up as a toilet attendant and sneaking into the Ladies' to rape everyone in there?

Fun with training and toilets

2009-06-24T20:24:41Z

I did my food hygiene course today. The instructor explained at the beginning that it was mostly common sense, and indeed that's how it proved. That didn't stop me from feeling violently sick as the final test rolled round, but since I was sick with nerves the day we practised exam conditions in school, I think that's something I'm stuck with.

There was one horrendously hard question on the exam paper, though: one that might have caused me to fail the whole thing. On the front part, after the bit where it asked for centre number, tutor number and full name, it invited me to place a cross in one box: male or female.

The instructions were adamant that leaving it blank was not an option. I filled in all the rest and went back to it. My birth certificate, and presumably my records with the DWP, say I'm female. The letter from the psychiatrist says I'm living as male, and if I was more organised, my driving licence would say the same.

I finally decided that marking the male box was a legitimate part of living as male. Hopefully, they were only asking so they know whether to write Mr on the certificate, because if they were planning to somehow verify my identity with this information, I might be screwed.

One other amusing moment: I signed in as Nicholas, but I still look like a girl. Just after lunch, I asked someone in reception where I could find the toilets. "Outside and turn right," she said. "Or left, whichever." To the left lay the Gents'; I'm assuming the Ladies' was on the right. Now, they were single-occupancy toilets, so it didn't really matter which I used, but given the seriousness of the Toilet Question, it gave me a bit of a smile.

The problem with consumer lusts

2009-06-12T22:54:22Z

Suppose you have a website, and that website has a shop. And suppose you decided not to keep the shop going any more, and remove the link from the home page. Guess what? Google won't know the shop's fallen by the wayside, and neither will I, when I come blithely surfing in. I shouldn't have to make a Paypal payment, wonder why it's still unclaimed after four days, email you and get a bounce message before I realise what's going on.

While I'm in a complaining sort of mood - Google? "Citron" and "citroen" do not mean remotely the same thing. If I'm looking for essential oils, I don't want car parts.

What might have been

2009-06-12T00:38:20Z

The morning of the Tranmere game, I asked my dad if he would help me rack some wine, "If we don't make the play-offs." We made the play-offs, I had quite enough other things to worry about, and the wine didn't get racked until today.

If we'd lost to Tranmere, the disappointment wouldn't have been the only consequence. I'd have been better off by the price of three sets of tickets and two sets of train fares. With three weeks' head start on the Summer Spell, I'd probably have got to about chapter 14, and some of my other summer projects would be a lot further along.

Now, I already mentioned that being in the Championship makes up for a lot. But how would I have felt if I'd spent all that time and money and we'd lost against Millwall? I'm fairly sure I would have cursed Cliff Byrne even unto the seventh generation.

If I'd known ten years ago what I know now, there are any number of things I might have done. I might have gone to the open day in 1999 and tried to interview God Himself. I might have stayed on at Liverpool and done a PhD - in a different world, I could have been Dr Kiddle by now. I might have started testosterone five years ago. (I might, of course, have chickened out, realised I wasn't that into academia, and been unwilling to risk my fertility respectively. We'll never know.)

I used to be angry about all the time and resources I wasted, all the opportunities I left behind, for the sake of a dream that was never going to come true. It just seemed so stupid, so pointless. Now, it seems pointless on an even deeper level. I can't be sure that knowing would have made any difference: my behaviour these last five years seems to suggest any changes would have been superficial at best.

Don't be mistaken, don't be misled. We are not Scousers: we have GID

2009-06-08T15:19:47Z

Andrea told me today that when people ask what her mummy's name is, she tells them "Nicholas," and when people ask whether mummy's a boy or a girl, she tells them I'm a boy. I thought maybe I ought to prepare her for the fact that, to some people, this is a controversial statement.

Me: Some people think a boy is someone who has a penis and a girl is someone who hasn't got a penis. And what you have to remember about these people is that they're wrong. There are lots of boys who don't have penises, and lots of girls who do. The proper word for that is "transsexual". Can you say "transsexual"?
Andrea: No, I can't.
Me: Oh well. It is quite a big word. We say "trans" for short - can you say "trans"?
Andrea: Tranmere!

Democratic right and duty

2009-06-07T20:57:17Z

It's old news by now, but we had elections here last week. Who I voted for is between me and my conscience¹, but the actual process of voting brought one slightly uncomfortable moment.

I've got most things switched over to Nicholas by now, including my entry on the electoral register. The only thing I still haven't changed is my driving licence, which would come in extremely useful when people suffer some uncertainty about whether I am, in fact, the person whose documents I'm using.

I'm getting used to the awkward moment in the bank where I hand over my card or passbook and the teller says, "This isn't your account." I generally say, "Yes it is;" I've been asked to confirm my date of birth once or twice, but people seem reassuringly willing to believe I am who I say I am.

Still, I was slightly nervous walking up to the polling station. I don't have any illusions about the good my vote would do, but I didn't fancy being disenfranchised² on the grounds of non-passing.

I handed over my polling card and confirmed my address. The bloke behind the desk wrote down whatever he had to write down, and was just about to hand me my ballots when he realised the incongruity. "Nicholas Kiddle?" he said, in a slightly disbelieving tone. "Yes, that's me," I said, as matter-of-fact as I could manage. It seemed to do the trick.

I let Andrea help me by putting one of my ballots into the box. I've told her that if she practises really hard at writing Xs, I'll let her make my cross in the general election.

¹Liberal Democrats. For all the good it did.
²Is that what would happen if MK Dons got kicked out of the league?³
³Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Toddlers, body parts and recreational arguing

2009-06-02T22:43:58Z

Lately, I've been illustrating Andrea's extreme love of contradicting me by saying that we had an argument about whether Grandad has a vagina. The usual response this gets is something along the lines of, "Okaaaaaay," accompanied by some nervous shuffling.

Just in case you too are tempted to shuffle, I'll put this argument in context. I was going through the drawers in my bedroom in Caythorpe, and I found an opened packet of sanitary towels. Since my period always comes as an unpleasant surprise, I decided to take them to Grantham with me, so I would at least have some in. The discussion went something like this.

Andrea: You can't take them! They're Grandad's.
Me: No, they're mine.
Andrea: Grandad needs them.
Me: No he doesn't.
Andrea: Yes he does.
Me: These are for people who bleed out of their vagina. Grandad doesn't need them because he doesn't even have a vagina.
Andrea: Yes he does.
Me: *headdesk*

So what did I do wrong there? I think Andrea's having some difficulty with the concept that I know things that aren't immediately obvious to her, but I can't see a better approach than explaining each time, with as much patience as I can manage, what's happening. That's not what causes the nervous shuffling.

There is this idea that we shouldn't be teaching toddlers about things like vaginas, presumably on the grounds that it will somehow defile them to know that thing between their legs has a name. I have my own squeamishness about the word, but I decided I need to make an effort not to pass that on to Andrea. Discovering, at the age of ten, that there are people who bleed out of their vaginas came as a terrible shock to me, and making the discovery less painful for Andrea is part of being a not-completely-sucky parent.

But it seems like this is far from the majority view, so instead of being a story about Andrea's love of arguing, it becomes a story about how weird I am for teaching her the word vagina. Don't I have any allies? What about my mum, who has long declared that children ought to learn the correct medical terms for their body parts without adults imposing embarrassment?

She thinks it's not surprising Andrea will be confused, when I keep telling her that Mummy is a boy.

Luton and Luis

2009-06-01T14:20:48Z

In the flat days after Luton, one of my friends on League Portal tried to console me, telling me we might still go back to Wembley and win, "and if you do that day against Luton will be a distant memory." I wasn't consoled. Not because I'd set my heart on the Johnstone's Paint Trophy and nothing else would do - I was quite willing to believe that a Wembley win would be a more than adequate cure for that ache. No, my problem was with that little word "if".

If we won, wonderful. But if we went back to Wembley and returned in disappointment for the second time in two months, that would just intensify the pain of Luton, wrapping it up in one huge bundle of failure and shattered dreams. To lose once was gutting enough, but to lose twice would be unbearable. The only way to get through those first days of misery was to tell myself it was never going to happen again.

And the thing about shattered dreams is that the closer you get, the more it hurts. No-one cries over losing in the first round of the paint pot - no-one even cares. If avoiding pain is the greatest good, it's best to lose as soon as possible. So, in the days between Luton and the end of the regular season, I hoped we would finish seventh. It would be disappointing, of course, but it wouldn't be heartbreaking.

But there's a part of me that will not give up hope. However many times I told myself that we stood virtually no chance of succeeding, that the best I could ask was to get the failure out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible, a little corner of my mind was imagining how glorious it would be to win at Wembley after all we'd suffered. I knew that, in all probability, that hope would do no more than torture me, but I didn't want to let it go.

On a fundamental level, I'm not as pessimistic as I pretend to be. When Cliff Byrne equalised against Tranmere, I didn't have an instinctive rush of dread that we'd taken another step towards Wembley heartbreak: I punched the air and whooped with joy. Getting what we needed out of that game was a short-term high, even if the long term implications worried me.

I've tried, for the past five years, to reconcile myself to the relationship equivalent of finishing seventh. Going all the way to Wembley and winning is an even bigger ask for me than it was for Scunthorpe, and the price of failure is a lot more far-reaching than a few weeks of numb disappointment. It's not that finishing seventh is good in any kind of absolute terms; it's just the best outcome that's actually on offer.

But then someone who doesn't live in Somerset and doesn't support Yeovil comes along and does the relationship equivalent of getting his head to an 88th-minute free kick, and I'm not sure my response is under my conscious control.

Changes for the better

2009-05-27T23:24:51Z

I was listening to ClassicFM just now for the first time in a few weeks, since I was superstitiously afraid to retune from Five Live until now. They played Simple Gifts, which reminds me of a song we used to sing at Scunthorpe when I first started going, was it really 20 years ago?

It went to the tune of Simple Gifts, or rather Lord of the Dance, and the words were approximately: "Dance then, wherever you may be, we are the boys of the SUFC, and we'll see you all, wherever you may be, and we'll see you all in Division Three." We were at that time playing in Division Four, which is now known as League Two, and aspiring to a promotion we never managed.

Division Three, the Second Division, League One - whatever they decided to name it, it was the Promised Land for most of my formative years. It was where we longed to be, the focus of all our hopes, the prize that hung tantalisingly out of reach.

It's still an incredible thing to me that Division Three is where we'll end up if we get relegated next season.

My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why...

2009-05-26T20:20:48Z

My washing machine takes in water every time I use the sink and then leaks it all over my floor. My sink is consequently piled high with dirty dishes I daren't wash. I owe sixty pounds to my dad, thirty-five pounds to Fluffy, forty pounds to Andrea, and twelve pounds to my mum, quite apart from what the washing machine repair's going to cost. I have sixty pounds with which to buy this week's food and electricity and pay this month's credit card bill. Andrea keeps amusing herself by climbing on the settee, eating a variety of things that aren't food, and refusing to tidy up her toys unless I threaten to set fire to them. And Scunthorpe are in the Championship.

As great weeks go, this one's probably in the top five.

Play-offs

2009-05-25T10:54:41Z

A couple of years ago, I said I'd post about the play-offs, and for some reason, now seems like the perfect time.

The top two teams (or three, in League 2) go up automatically, and the next four teams contest the play-offs. In the semi-finals, the highest placed team plays the lowest placed, and the two middle teams play each other. The winners of the semi-finals meet in the final, at Wembley, over the May Bank Holiday weekend, with League 2 playing on the Saturday, League 1 on the Sunday, and the Championship on the Monday. The winners of the final get that coveted third promotion place.

I'm a big fan of the play-offs, and not just for the obvious reason. The main argument in their favour is that they keep the season alive for much longer. If it was a straight fight for the top three places, most teams would be out of the running by the middle of April, and there would be a lot of meaningless mid-table games with nothing much at stake. With four play-off places to aim for, there's a far bigger chance that matches on the final day will make a difference to the promotion battle, which means more supporters will show up, and they'll be more passionate about what's on offer.

There are two arguments I've heard against the play-offs, neither of which I find all that convincing. The first is that having the possibility for the sixth placed team to get promoted when they've earned eleven fewer points than the third placed team is either unfair or somehow makes a mockery of the league season.

Unfairness is a simple one to dismiss. The rules are set out quite clearly, and everyone agrees to them at the start of the season. If you want to get promoted automatically, you have to finish first or second. It's only unfair if you think the third placed team has some sort of divine right to an automatic promotion place. Back in the days of the Third Division North, the only promotion place going was for the champions, and no-one was calling that unfair.

But, runs the objection, the third placed team is clearly better than the sixth placed team, otherwise how did they get eleven points more? If they were that much better, they would have had no difficulty beating them over two matches. If they should happen to slip up, they can't have been quite so obviously superior.

There still remains the mockery objection: you put in forty-six matches worth of hard effort, and it all comes down to two games. But that's how the regular season sometimes goes too. Take the showdown between us and Tranmere - admittedly it was for sixth place, but the same thing could have happened for third, in a world without play-offs. Over forty-five games and eighty-seven minutes, Tranmere had done enough to finish sixth. By the end of the last match, they were seventh. Does that make a mockery of everything that came before?

The second argument I've heard against the play-offs is that they hurt like hell. And there's no denying that they do. Losing to Lincoln in the semi-finals in 2003 was perhaps my worst moment following the Iron, and losing at Wembley in 1992 was my first taste of real Scunthorpe heartbreak. This season, I kept saying I would rather finish seventh than go through that pain again, and yesterday, with the score 2-1, I profoundly wished we had.

But in a strange way, this can be an argument in favour of the play-offs as well. The play-offs hurt because football always hurts when there's something at stake and you finish on the losing side. The play-offs, in fact, represent football in its most concentrated form: the dull parts are gone, and all that remains are the stark extremes of joy and despair. The commitment we make to our team involves accepting a certain risk of heartbreak on the understanding that there will be some joy mingled with it somewhere, and the play-offs could be seen as the perfect celebration of this bargain.

So let's hear it for the play-offs. Congratulations to Gillingham, now of League 1; commiserations to Shrewsbury and Millwall, and may your day of joy come soon. And to Burnley and Sheffield United, may your match be a classic, and may the team most deserving of a Premiership place get it.

Millwall 2 Scunthorpe 3

2009-05-24T22:16:18Z

Grantham station was improbably dusted with claret-and-blue, with almost a dozen Scunthorpe fans waiting for the 0931 to Kings Cross. I wandered round asking everyone what they thought the day would bring, while trying to avoid either tempting fate or destroying the mood.

Superstition was the order of the day when I arrived in London: I had decided that the only way to give us a chance of promotion was to recreate precisely my route to the stadium from 1999. Accordingly, I made my way to Tottenham Court Road, and walked down to the Bricklayers' Arms, locked up and empty of Scunthorpe fans today. On the way, I passed the Burger King that was the site of my greatest moment following the Iron. The pitch invasion against Huddersfield, the sight of Andy Crosby lifting the League One trophy, Cliff Byrne's equaliser and Tore Andre Flo's penalty miss combined - I don't think I'll ever experience anything to match the feeling of getting promoted when I didn't believe it was possible.

I continued on my superstitious way by taking the Central Line one stop, waiting for the next train for one more stop, then changing to the Jubilee Line. The extreme foolishness of this last became apparent when I boarded the Jubilee Line train to discover it was packed with extremely noisy Millwall fans. But noisy was the worst they could be accused of, and they responded with humour to the sight of a lone Scunthorpe fan in their midst.

Wembley Park station looked exactly as it did seven weeks ago, except that the orange hordes had become blue. I doubted the Scunthorpe fans would feel any particular need to take pictures from the top of the steps this time, but my first sight of Olympic Way and the arch provoked a moment of wonder that we were back here again so soon.

The parallels with 1999 went one step further, as I rolled up fifteen minutes late for the rendezvous with my dad, Fluffy, samholloway and, most importantly, the tickets. We made our way into the ground, stashed the pushchair by the turnstiles and started going up. And up, and up. Our seats were in the top tier, from which dizzy heights I could barely tell the players apart. I went deep into debt to buy a programme, hot dog, balti pie and Fanta, and the fire-and-glitter show rolled out again.

The first five minutes brought an attack for each side, and the nervous dread I'd been feeling for twenty-four hours started to get the better of me. I decided that I hated the beginning of games, especially any game in which there was something at stake. Then we had another attack, the ball flew across goal, the Millwall keeper just parried it, and Matt Sparrow fired it into the net. Six minutes: a quicker goal than God Himself managed.

For the next few minutes, it looked comfortable for us. From our vantage point, it was easy to see how the Iron turned defence into another lovely attack, and it seemed only a matter of time before we had a second goal. Andrea demanded a trip to the toilet, and while we were up, another attack brought a deflection from a Millwall defender. For one glorious instant, it looked as if it had gone into the net, and I laughed with joy. Then I realised it had just ruffled the net from the outside. Oh well.

By this time, Millwall were getting back into the game. We returned from the toilet to learn that they had just missed a chance, with Fluffy commenting that she had no idea how it hadn't gone in. I remembered how badly we'd regretted not killing Luton off when we were on top - would lightning strike twice?

The blow fell just after the half-hour. Gary Alexander got the ball way out, controlled it, and shot. The ball curved past Murphy's despairing hand and into the top corner, and fifty thousand Millwall fans gave cheer. In three previous visits to Wembley, we scored the best goal of the game, but this time, barring something incredible, the honour would go to Millwall. And, from nowhere, they were level.

Before we'd come to terms with this blow, they were in front. This was a more orthodox attack, and our defence ought to have been able to deal with it. I can only assume that they too were struggling with the sudden disappointment.

If I'd felt sick earlier, now I was heartsick. I cursed Cliff Byrne - if he hadn't equalised against Tranmere, the wound would have healed by now. Having been two minutes from failure in that game, then one penalty kick from failure against the franchise, I'd almost come to believe fate was on our side. But what would that avail us now, apart from giving me enough hope to torment myself with.

I pulled my shirt over my nose, a procedure that's helped us back into games recently, and Andrea rummaged in my bag until she found her doggie. But as the second half got started, we looked sluggish. My dad said we'd lost our legs - and then spent a couple of minutes explaining to Andrea that he didn't mean it literally - but it looked to me as though Millwall had tightened up now they had the lead. We needed more to break them down, and we didn't have it.

When Millwall attacked, I no longer bothered to say that they were going to score. Three-one or two-one, what difference did it make? I suggested that my dad needed to buy a drink for his Stockport-supporting mate, since they suffered in 1992 the fate we were about to suffer: losing in both the Football League Trophy and play-off finals.

We forced a corner, and produced a minor scramble in front of goal. But no-one could get the ball across the line, and although it went out for another corner, that one was an easy catch for the Millwall keeper. The slow, painful fading of hope was beginning.

And then Woolford had the ball, running up the left, riding tackles and putting a cross into the heart of the penalty area. Sparrow was there, perfectly placed. He controlled the ball with a composure I'm sure none of us could share, and stuck it in the net to become the first Scunthorpe player ever to score twice at Wembley. We were back in the game, but the dread wouldn't leave me: this was exactly how it had gone against Luton.

I was sitting next to my dad by this time, Andrea having decided she wanted to sit between me and Fluffy. I can't remember whether we were talking about anything in particular, or whether I just looked up at the clock on the scoreboard and realised we only had five minutes left to play. "Extra time again," I said. "No. Thank. You." Five seconds later, the ball was in the Millwall net. I can't remember a single thing about the goal - I was at Kings Cross before I even found out that Woolford had scored it - except the sudden rush of joy and wonder it sent through me.

Millwall came back towards us. An instant equaliser would be devastating, "So make sure you keep this out," I muttered. We did. From another attack, Murphy caught the ball, and we applauded him. I kept applauding long after everyone else had stopped, desperate for something to do with my hands to keep them from shaking.

Four minute of stoppage time. We were booting the ball out anywhere by now, out of play for yet another throw-in, this one slightly further from danger than the one before. The big screen was showing Millwall fans on the verge of tears and Scunthorpe fans dancing. For some reason, it never showed me, my face still half-buried in my shirt, praying we could hold out.

We made one last run forward. My dad was counting down what, by his estimation, were the final ten seconds of the match, and we worked the ball into a shooting position. The shot went way wide, but as the keeper retrieved the ball, the referee checked his watch. Once the goal kick was taken, he blew the final whistle, and I burst into tears.

I hugged my dad, Andrea, Fluffy, said something completely incoherent, and followed it up with something perfectly banal about not playing in the paint pot next season. The Millwall fans started draining away. The tannoy played "Hi-Ho Silver Lining"; I sang, with great gusto, "Hi-Ho Scun United", and clapped until my arms ached.

Unlike 1999, I knew it was possible, but I refused to believe. There were so many ways to fail painfully, and only one slim chance of success. But we've done it. I think I'm still waiting for my Burger King moment - it may not come until the fixtures are out. For the moment, there's only an incredible sense of joy.

MK Dons 0 Scunthorpe 0 (After extra time, 1-1 on aggregate, Scunthorpe win 7-6 on penalties)

2009-05-16T10:58:02Z

For some arcane reason only understood by the train companies, the cheapest route from Grantham in Lincolnshire to Bletchley in Buckinghamshire goes via London. This meant that, as Andrea and I tried to make ourselves comfortable on a packed train out of Euston, we passed a certain stadium. "Do you know where that is?" I asked Andrea. She wasn't sure, so I gave her a hint: "It's where we'll be playing next Sunday, if we're lucky. If we win tonight." "Wembley!" she cried. "Wembley with the great big arch!"

We had hoped to meet Lindsay, but I'd left my mobile phone - under suspicion of bringing us bad luck - on my desk at home. We arrived earlier than I'd told him we would, and had to hang around until he arrived, on the train I'd said we would be catching. After a quick look at the map, we made our way in the direction of the ground, meeting a couple of fellow Iron fans along the way.

Stopping for food at Tesco, we met a Luton fan who expressed the fervent hope that we would beat the franchise, and a couple more Scunthorpe fans. One of them was confident we would win, but predicted it would take extra time and maybe even penalties, a prospect I dreaded.

Outside the ground, someone was selling merchandise, including Wembley scarves from the paint pot final. Andrea's spent the last month hoping we'll go back to Wembley to get her one, so I was relieved to have the chance to buy one at what I was sure would be our final game. We made our way to the away end, and a couple of juvenile franchise supporters passed with the sort of witty and original banter you would expect from someone as steeped in football history as a franchise fan: "Scunthorpe are shit."

As we waited outside the away end for Karen, the team news came out over the tannoy. Gary Hooper's name went completely unmentioned: neither starting nor on the bench. Given his recent form, he would probably not be desperately missed, but it was another reminder of how threadbare our squad was.

Peering through the driving rain at the first half, that was even more apparent. Paul Hayes seemed to be our only striker, and Ian Morris was once more doing his best at left back. Play ran exhaustingly from one end to the other, with a half-chance each in the opening stages. With the exception of Liam Trotter, none of our players looked particularly good on the ball, which persistently refused to bounce kindly for us.

We finished the first half with five minutes of pressure, but since someone just behind me observed that it would be a good time to score, we didn't manage a goal. At half time, Andrea didn't just get chocolate buttons: there was also a bag in the shape of a cuddly dog, which she spent the remainder of the match stuffing with her hat and gloves.

It seemed like the franchise had spent half time getting a thoroughly inspiring team talk, while we'd spent it contemplating how exhausted we were. They pounded us in the opening minutes, and I had to adapt the well-used ritual to new circumstances. "They're going to score! Always works and nev- They've still got the ball - they're going to score now. Always works and never fails."

Eventually, we wrested a little bit of control back. There were plenty of terrifying moments, like the ball Murphy picked up, only for the referee to decide it had been passed back by a Scunthorpe player; the indirect free kick seemed horribly close to the goal, and we could only put it out for a corner. But we had our chances too, notably when Hayes attempted a delicate chip over Willy Gueret in the franchise goal. It was a little bit too delicate, and Gueret saved it easily.

Play grew more frantic as the 90-minute mark approached, with both teams knowing that a goal now meant almost certain victory. We had the ball, and for a second I could almost imagine dreamland. Then they had it, and I told myself that at least the agony would be over quickly. Five minutes of stoppage time; no goals.

Without my phone, I had no means of letting Lorna know the match wasn't over. I'd warned her that it was a possibility and advised her to listen to local radio, and I asked Karen and Dan whether I'd done all I could. Dan suggested I could have put the ball in the net to prevent extra time, but I pointed out that, not being a Scunthorpe player, I would just have been thrown out of the ground. Even if I somehow managed to pass as a player, the man with the flag would have given me offside.

So, for the second time this season, we faced extra time. Jonathan Forte came on, and provided plenty of energy and pace but nothing his teammates couldn't manage in the way of touch. The lads in front of me started discussing potential penalty takers. "Crosby will take one - he's never missed." I was just setting him straight on that count when we won a free kick just outside the area. Exactly Grant McCann's preferred range, but this time he did nothing with it.

By this time, I couldn't imagine the game coming to an end. I tried to imagine a Scunthorpe goal, then a franchise goal, then a penalty shoot-out, but none of them rang true. We would be sitting here watching this game forever.

In the second half of extra time, we laid seige to the franchise goal, with Forte at the heart of everything we created. One shot slammed against the base of the post, and for one glorious second I thought it was going in. We forced about two dozen corners, but they all ended up either soaring out of play or simple for Gueret to pluck out of the air.

And then it was over. I walked up to the back of the stand for a chat with my dad, but the preparations for penalties seemed to take an age. "I'm going to die," I said. Andrea put her arms round me. "Stay alive." I explained that I wasn't literally going to die, but that the next fifteen minutes weren't going to be pleasant. Finally, the penalty takers were chosen, Murphy went to familiarise himself with the goal at the far end, and we were ready to begin.

Grant McCann took our first penalty. He knows how to do this; no need to shout advice. He scored. The Scunthorpe fans cheered, but I felt only relief. The first franchise player stepped up and scored.

Paul Hayes went next. Given the number of penalties he's missed in games this season, I considered that pretty courageous of him. He scored. The second franchise player scored.

Andy Crosby took the third penalty. I'm not sure if he's taken one since his solitary miss last season, but he scored this one. The third franchise player scored.

Cliff Byrne, the hero of two weeks ago, took the fourth penalty. Someone shouted, "Keep it down," which advice he would have done well to heed. The ball soared higher and wider than any penalty I've seen.

I put my head in my hands. "Are you sad, Mummy?" said Andrea. "Here, cuddle doggie." I held it tight, and Joe Murphy saved the fourth franchise penalty. I would have felt relief, if I'd been capable of feeling anything.

Liam Trotter scored our fifth penalty; the franchise player scored their fifth, and we were on to sudden death. So called, I assume, because it's even more terrifying than a normal penalty shoot-out.

Matt Sparrow took the sixth penalty. He scored one in his testimonial the other week, but the almost ritualised scoring of a testimonial penalty doesn't bear much relation to a shoot-out. His penalty hit the bar and bounced down, and for a moment I wasn't sure if it had gone in. Then the gleeful contortions of the franchise behind the goal told me it hadn't.

I grabbed Andrea's doggie again. She protested, and I told her I needed it. "I'm very sad - we're about to lose." Joe Murphy saved the franchise penalty, and the danger was averted.

Jonathan Forte took and scored our seventh penalty. I held the doggie again, but apparently it only works when we're in danger of losing: the franchise player scored. Sam Togwell took and scored our eighth penalty. Willy Gueret took the franchise's eighth: goalkeepers always put away their shoot-out penalties, and this was no exception.

Ian Morris took our ninth penalty. I thought he looked horribly vulnerable as he stepped up, but he stuck it away confidently enough. By now, the Scunthorpe players gathered in the centre circle were celebrating each successful kick with almost manic joy.

Tore Andre Flo stepped up to take the franchise's ninth penalty. Like Sparrow's, it hit the bar and bounced down. For a minute, the franchise behind the goal were cheering as if it had gone in. Then, suddenly, the Scunthorpe players were running wild in celebration. I looked around for confirmation - was it really over? Had we really won?

We had. The players dived onto the wet pitch, and the franchise fans started to slink away. I wanted to stay, but we'd kept Lorna waiting long enough. There was only time for one chorus, going for pure volume and ignoring such concepts as tune: "We're the famous Scun United and we're off to Wemberlee!"

Scunthorpe 1 MK Dons 1

2009-05-10T01:49:56Z

I'd arranged all the omens I could muster, but I no longer trusted any of them. The franchise made us look stupid at Glanford Park a few weeks ago: another performance like that, and the season would be painfully over. What's more, we were fast running out of players, especially at the back. Over a pre-match meal in Frankie&Benny's, I resolutely refused to make any prediction beyond an unspecified "bad feeling".

The Donny Road end was full and noisy, with the fans rolling out all our favourite songs, presumably for the benefit of the Sky cameras. I took up my old spot behind the goal and joined in, without losing the dread.

The early stages of the match only intensified my fears. Ian Morris was pressed into action in defence; he did his best, but he didn't seem to quite know what he was supposed to be doing, and he was up against the franchise's fastest attacker.

There must have been three terrifying attacks in the first five minutes alone. From one of these, the franchise had the ball in the back of the net, but everyone in the ground had seen the linesman's raised flag. I don't know why the franchise player didn't get booked for a shot that was clearly only going to waste time and wind us up.

Our only option to break up the string of attacks was to get the ball and start some attacks of our own. The view from the terrace wasn't great, but we could see clearly enough as the shot went in, the franchise keeper half saved it, and someone stuck the rebound in the back of the net. And, over the noise, I could just about hear the tannoy announcer crediting the goal to Martyn Woolford.

I spent a couple of minutes bouncing on the spot, animated by a sudden rush of energy that had nothing to do with any hopes I might be entertaining. I looked at the scoreboard and tried to figure out what proportion the minutes remaining represented of the match, and of the tie. We'd passed a quarter of the match - an eighth of the tie - when I remembered what happened the last time I did calculations with time remaining, and quickly tried to think of other things.

But the damage was already done. The franchise poured towards us again. Grant McCann stuck with their player and managed to play the ball off him and out for a goal kick. At least, that's what it looked like to us - and to the Sky cameras - but the referee decided to award a corner. "They're going to score from this now," I said. Usually works and rarely fails: a moment later, the ball was in our net. "Offside!" the bloke in front of me yelled. Unfortunately not.

Reasoning that anything I did at half-time against Tranmere could be held responsible for Cliff Byrne's late goal, I tried to replicate my behaviour, wandering down towards the Grove Whar corner, then looking for the collection buckets to drop some cash in. By the time I'd sorted that, the players were back on the field for the second half.

With Scunthorpe attacking towards us, we got the chance to observe the franchise defence we admired so much back in April. Except that, as far as I could see, their strategy consisted of two things: getting as many players in the penalty area as was physically feasible, and hoping that was enough. It was our turn to batter them, and we so nearly found a breakthrough.

Paul Hayes sent a shot in that was going to drift just wide. Someone popped up on the right to send it into the net - it was Hooper. He'd ended his goal drought at just the right time ... no, wait. The linesman had his flag up, and Sky backed him up. Damn.

We kept pressing, but the franchise still looked dangerous whenever they won the ball. Our players took it in turns to run themselves into the ground for the cause, leaving someone else to pick up: first Woolford, then Hayes, and finally Matt Sparrow. Krystian Pearce came on, and so nearly got us a goal from a corner.

With just a couple of minutes left, the franchise had another counterattack, and I knew this was it. After all our efforts, they were going to score. Murphy saved it, but before the ball was cleared, he went down and stayed down. After some treatment, he left the pitch, and Lillis had to replace him. Play restarted with a highly contested drop ball, but we cleared the danger somehow.

Five minutes of stoppage time was probably fair, but I was sick by this time. All I wanted was for the ordeal to be over. At last, the referee delivered us, and I escaped to the Iron Bar. Adkins was on Sky, grinning as he talked about our chances. Not for the first time, I envied him his belief. For me, the hope that still remains is the worst part.

Asymmetry

2009-05-06T09:31:27Z

Much of the heartache I've suffered over the years came from what you might call relationship asymmetry. I think he's The One, but he thinks I'm just a fuckbuddy.

I've responded with, at different times, "He's a callous fuckwit," or "I'm an idiot." My current thinking is that neither of them really captures what's going on, however much I want to find someone to blame.

He can hardly have missed the fact that I think he's The One, but I've been offered abundant evidence that he thinks I'm a fuckbuddy. I can hardly control the stupid places my heart wants to go, but he didn't ask me to fall in love with him, and can't do much about it now I have.

He does profit from my love. If he stayed well away and made absolutely no claims on me, it would break my heart even more, but at least I'd be better off by the amount of time I would no longer be spending sucking his dick. I could find something else to do with my life; it might not be in quite so many glorious colours, but at least it wouldn't break my heart.

The worrying thing is how closely this all describes the one true love of my life.

Scunthorpe 1 Tranmere 1

2009-05-02T21:52:43Z

The arithmetic was starkly simple. Win or draw, and we would be in the play-offs. Lose, and Tranmere would snatch the sixth spot, leaving us to regret what might have been. Certain people, their own teams secure in mid-table, expressed the opinion that this was what football was all about. I was too busy panicking to care.

We travelled up to Scunthorpe in my dad's Polo, bursting at the seams with Fluffy, samholloway and Andrea's bulky car seat. After much pleading, my dad agreed to take the A607 rather than the A46, and head down through Scunthorpe rather than taking the M180, since I didn't know which part of the route caused our failure last time. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, and parted at the turnstiles - my dad, Fluffy and Sam heading for the Grove Wharf while I took Andrea on the terrace.

With a good hour to go until kick-off, there was no shortage of balti pies, and it was simple enough to stake out a spot from which Andrea would be able to see some of the pitch. But as the minutes ticked by, what I'd taken for pre-match nerves matured into a fully-fledged digestive upheaval which even two trips to the toilet couldn't ease. By the time the match got underway, I was already in agony.

The early stages of the match took place at breakneck tempo, with Tranmere knowing they had to score and Scunthorpe uncomfortably aware that defending is not our strong point. Whichever side scored first could have claimed it was deserved: we had more chances, but Tranmere's were of a much better quality. But Josh Lillis, who I had to keep reminding myself had replaced the injured Murphy in goal, seemed to be able to handle everything.

Half time was just about in sight when I decided I could no longer stand the discomfort in my guts. I fled for the toilets, but both cubicles were occupied. While I waited for one to be free, we heard the distinctive sound of the crowd acclaiming a goal. It sounded unpleasantly distant, as if it was coming from the away end. "That doesn't sound good," someone said. I went to check: the Tranmere fans were capering behind their goal, and the scoreboard read Scunthorpe 0 Tranmere 1. Exactly the scoreline we didn't want.

It was nearly twice as bad before I got back to my place: Cliff Byrne gave away a corner for no readily apparent reason, and there was a nasty moment before we cleared the danger. I asked around about the goal I'd missed. A fluke, someone said, but someone else conceded that the ball had bounced around the box uncleared for so long that we had no-one but ourselves to blame.

We made it through to the interval somehow, and Andrea and I drifted around the terrace exchanging words with people I used to stand with. As the players returned to the pitch, I reflected that this would probably be the final 45 minutes of our season. I tried to be philosophical - after all, I'd said myself that finishing seventh was better than going all the way to Wembley and losing again.

The equation had changed. Now it was Scunthorpe who desperately needed a goal, and we searched for it with everything we had. We poured forward, roared on by the terrace, but what shots we managed to get in were nothing like on target. Gary Hooper was by far the worst offender, sending shots spinning just wide when once he would have buried them in the net, his accuracy getting worse as the game progressed. When he sent an effort soaring into the terrace from about a yard out, I knew it wasn't going to be our day.

There were three minutes left when a Tranmere defender tackled Martyn Woolford and left him sprawling. The referee charged over, signalled a free kick, and waved a yellow card, then a red, in the defender's direction. As he trudged off for his early bath, I reflected gloomily that we wouldn't have time to take advantage. But the Tranmere players shouted and pointed as they tried to reorganise - perhaps we could manage something while they worked it out. Hope refused to die.

The free kick soared across the penalty area. Cliff Byrne jumped, headed it - it was heading for the net. It was in the net. I let out a quasi-orgasmic yell of "Fucking hell yes!" as the terrace went crazy. Some bloke I sort of know picked Andrea up and hugged her, then hugged me. With two minutes to go, had we rescued our season?

There was time for Tranmere to win a corner, which came to nothing. There was time for us to make a run, and look for one glorious moment as if we would make absolutely sure, but that too failed. Half the terrace, living in the moment, celebrated noisily; the other half, looking nervously to the future, fell into silent prayer. Some of the former group started to sing "1-0, and you fucked it up"; I stuck my fingers in my ears.

The final whistle blew. In spite of all the club's pleas, half the terrace immediately poured onto the pitch. Andrea and I headed for the Iron Bar, to wait for the rest of our party. There were two topics on everyone's lips. Byrne's goal - that moment when failure turned to beautiful success - and the task that still lies ahead. This season isn't over.

A request

2009-04-21T22:32:53Z

Words can be funny things, floating around from one meaning to another and blurring at the edges until you don't know what you're saying. That's why, if you want to have a meaningful discussion about anything, it helps to get your terms defined before you start.

If depression is a specific disease having to do with chemical receptors in the brain, you can go right ahead and eradicate it if you can figure out a humane way to do it. But you can't interdiagnose me with depression every time I say something slightly cynical, because saying cynical things isn't a disease.

If, on the other hand, depression is a symptom that happens to depressed people, then you can point out that I suffer from it - although I'm not entirely sure what it adds to the conversation. But I can tell you right now, there's no humane way to eradicate it during my lifetime, and I highly doubt there will be afterwards.

Either way, oscillating between the two possibilities is unlikely to produce anything sensible. Pick one definition and stick to it.

Scunthorpe 0 MK Dons 1

2009-04-18T22:55:31Z

My dad was going up to Scunthorpe for the franchise game, which conveniently meant that I could get a lift with him. Unfortunately, a combination of my own disorganisation and Andrea's ability to extend lunch almost indefinitely meant we didn't leave Caythorpe until nearly half past one. There was time to fit in most of the usual pre-match stuff, but when I called at the refreshments for my usual fare, I discovered they were out of balti pies. Fearing the worst, I paid for my hot dog and Fanta, and took my seat just as the players took to the field.

In the early stages, we gave the appearance of great activity without actually doing much. The ball spent most of the time gratifyingly far away in the franchise half, but nobody could get on the end of it. A bunch of people behind me reminded me why the Grove Wharf stand isn't one of my favourite places, insulting everyone who didn't meet their arbitrarily high standards, which worked out to just about everyone on the pitch.

As the half progressed, the franchise started getting more possession, aided by a referee who seemed incapable of penalising them when they fouled us. We broke up their attacks, but we still weren't doing anything, and it was only a matter of time before disaster struck.

This particular disaster took the form of a ridiculous series of defensive blunders. Cliff Byrne tried to head the ball clear, and only succeeded in sending it almost vertically. When it finally returned to earth, Byrne and Andrew Wright opted for some completely unnecessary fancy footwork, which had the predictable effect of presenting the ball to the franchise. Two of them were clean through on goal; I put my head in my hands, and thus didn't see which of them put it in the back of the net.

We looked all out of ideas for the rest of the half. At half time, we found Karen, who had brought a packet of chocolate buttons for Andrea. Unfortunately, in the blazing sunlight, it had become a packet of melted chocolate, but Andrea did her best to eat it anyway. Karen asked me whether I plan to see any more games this season; I have no plans to see any of the remaining league games, and unless we improve, the season ends there.

Back to our seats for the second half, and the criticism from behind was unabated. Martyn Woolford, who I'm sure was subject to his fair share of harsh words in the first half, became "the only one who's doing any work" when Adkins decided to replace him with Ben May. Shortly after this, Andrea climbed on my knee and started trying to pull my nose off; I told her that if she couldn't behave, I would take her out, at which point she burst into tears.

"See," said the man behind me. "That little girl's crying because Ben May's come on." I turned to explain the real reason for the tears, and he pointed out that leaving early was more of a reward than a punishment at times like this.

But in spite of the nay-sayers, May sparked us into life. We pushed forward, and although there still wasn't a great deal of skill in evidence, there were chances. Hooper made one glorious run to set up a shot that the franchise keeper had to save athletically, and we forced enough corners that on another day we might have got something.

By now, I was convinced that the referee and linesman were either from Milton Keynes or Grimsby. It was the only explanation for what happened next. A franchise defender wrestled May to the ground in the penalty area. It looked remarkably like the penalty Liverpool won in mid-week, but with two essential differences. The linesman, despite having a clear view, kept his flag to himself, and the referee ignored it altogether. A couple of minutes later, the same thing happened again, and that one went unnoticed too.

The referee belatedly realised he had a yellow card in his pocket, and booked a handful of franchise players for various petty offences as the match ran down. As the five minutes of stoppage time began, Lansbury went down - I joked that if he was badly hurt, Arsene Wenger would come and sort the franchise out - and had to be replaced by Pearce. The makeshift attacker had one chance that looked for a moment as if it would come to something, but like so much this season, it faded.

News from elsewhere was mixed. Wolves' promotion to the Premiership means a tasty add-on from the Keogh transfer, and Tranmere's defeat at the hands of Leeds means it's not quite time to panic yet. But the news from League 2, coupled with our result and performance, has left me very dejected about what's still to come.

Twenty years ago

2009-04-15T15:20:05Z

Fluffy and I were spending the weekend with our mum. Liverpool were my dad's second team, and he had said something vague about using his free weekend to pop up to Sheffield for the cup game against Forest. He often talked about going to this match or that match, and he never did. In this instance, I'm very grateful for that.

We went to Scunthorpe's game the following week. Kick-off was at seven minutes past three, so that we could hold a minute's silence beforehand. I don't know how much I really took in; it was only a matter of weeks since I'd first stood on the Blundell Park terrace, and what I didn't know about football would fill a library.

I know more about football now, but it still seems unreal to me. The police effectively herded fans like so many cattle, failed to notice how dangerously they were packed in, treated them like dangerous animals even as they died. How could something like that happen?

Something Steve Wilson said struck a chord: "If you are lucky enough to be able to take your children to a match and sit in safety; to be treated with respect by those who police our grounds and to get home again without being crushed or scared, give those 96 a thought." Now, my dad took Fluffy and me to Grimsby back in the bad old days, there being very little danger of a fatal crush at a Scunthorpe game. But he didn't take me when I was Andrea's age, and probably with very good reason.

I have my quarrels with the new football, chief among them the fact that the "families" they cater for are somewhat more affluent than mine. But we're treated like people now, not cattle, and that can only be a positive development.

In memory of the 96.

Imagination gone wrong

2009-04-14T21:30:54Z

I've discovered a side-effect of writing novels that no-one ever warned me about: I see ideas everywhere. An advert for Leeds Library ambushed me yesterday, insisting that it would make a truly wonderful idea for a story. The worst thing is, I'm sure it would - it's just that it would take a novel to tell it effectively, and I can't spare the time to write that novel just now. With great regret, I told the advert to go bother someone else.

This, however, is merely a minor irritant compared to my mind's insistence on treating every whimsical daydream like a potential novel. Supposing I want to spend a happy half hour at the end of a long day imagining I'm in bed with Gary Hooper. This would seem to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but my novel-conditioned mind has other ideas.

What would Gary Hooper be doing in your bed?

He drank too much and couldn't drive home, so I offered to let him stay.

What was he doing drinking in Grantham anyway?

It wasn't in Grantham. I went up to Scunthorpe and booked into the Travelodge.

Why couldn't he book a room for himself? Why would he have to share with you?

I don't know, and I don't care! This is just a daydream, OK? It doesn't have to make sense. I'm in bed with Gary Hooper, and we're starting from there, now shut up.

Fine, if you say so.

...

So does he see you as male or female?

Hartlepool 2 Scunthorpe 3

2009-04-13T21:24:30Z

If we were going to fulfil our defiant promise of a swift return to Wembley, we needed to return to our pre-final form. Another bad result at Hartlepool wouldn't kill the dream, but it would put it in some danger. As usual, I was dreading the game, I turned out more for the sake of writing a match report than anything else.

We should have caught four separate trains on the way out: to Leeds, to York, to Thornaby and to Hartlepool. As it turned out, the train to Hartlepool was cancelled due to cable theft - news which struck terror into my heart - and we made the final leg in a taxi, courtesy of the Manchester City fan whose children Andrea had been playing with since York. We reached the ground in time to watch the players arrive, a little pleasure that made up for some of the dread.

Another little pleasure was the Hartlepool catering: hot dogs twice the size of the ones we had last Sunday, for about two-thirds the price - who want to go back to Wembley anyway? Andrea was still chewing on the remains of her half as the match got underway.

We didn't look all that good in the opening minutes, although my view was somewhat disrupted by repeated toilet breaks. I was beginning to think my fears would be realised when Henri Lansbury made a run that ended when he was clipped by a Hartlepool defender. The referee awarded a free kick, which, after a brief delay, Grant McCann despatched to the back of the net. Suddenly, everything looked more promising.

For a few minutes, we basked in the April sunshine, singing "Who needs Mourinho" just as if we were back to the good old days of 2007. Then we conceded a free kick of our own, the defence went to sleep, and Hartlepool were back on level terms. None of the words of abuse or encouragement that sprang to my lips could check the dreadful sense of deja vu.

Half time brought the unwanted news that Tranmere were winning, but it also brought chocolate buttons for Andrea, which I hoped would bring our luck back.

As seagulls circled ominously above the stand, Karen and I fell to talking about horror films. The Birds or Jaws might be frightening, but nothing can inspire the same terror as a ball played into our penalty area when we're looking shaky, and the conversation was punctuated with regular gasps of, "They're going to score from this!" The other subject of conversations was the paint pot. I suggested we would return to Wembley next year to win it, to which Karen retorted that we would be in the wrong division. "Not playing like this we won't."

But eventually, we managed to take the lead. A slip by a Hartlepool defender let us in, the ball bounced loose, and Hayes reacted quickest to drive it into the back of the net. When the celebrations died down, I checked my watch, checked the clock on the scoreboard opposite, and hoped we wouldn't try to hold on. To my horror, that was what we did; it was almost as if the players shifted down a gear once we had the lead.

The minutes ticked by, and Hartlepool had more and more of the ball down at our end. They didn't win much more than a couple of throw-ins, but they kept possession and worked the ball into the penalty area. There looked to be no more than the usual danger, but suddenly the ball was in the back of the net and we were listening once again to the opposition fans cheering.

Our hearts didn't sink very far this time. Gary Hooper made one of his trademark runs. The Hartlepool defender pushed him wide, and his shot skimmed across the face of the goal. It looked to be going wide, but it hit the base of the post and flew back into play. Straight into the path of Paul Hayes, who calmly put away his second of the game.

Andrea, unsettled by my screams of relief, needed yet another toilet break. As we returned, I realised there were just five minutes left to play. This didn't reassure me, since the last time I saw us play at Hartlepool, we conceded an equaliser with virtually the last kick of the game. I invited Karen to bet on whether this would happen again, which didn't remotely impress her.

Three minutes of stoppage time. Afraid now to even think in case a fate-tempting idea flitted through my mind, I murmured "Come-on-Scunthorpe" like a mantra until it became meaningless. "Quarter of a minute to go" someone said, and the ball was up at our end. Surely it would be OK now? Finally, the referee signalled the end of the game: a welcome return to ways. And, with the reverse of Sunday's scoreline, a fitting way to ease the heartbreak.

Two things I've been thinking

2009-04-11T19:41:49Z

If "real love" can sometimes hurt, it might still be worth pursuing. You can only decide for yourself whether the pain is an acceptable trade-off. But if "real love" never hurts, it's not worth pursuing: how would you ever know you'd found it?

If you have dreams for yourself or your team, and you really believe in those dreams, it will hurt like hell when they don't come true. But if you have no dreams, or don't much care about the dreams you have, what motivation do you have to do whatever you do?

Analogy time again

2009-04-09T22:42:42Z

My dad used to like sweet things. Not just Mars bars and licorice allsorts, but homemade Victoria sponge and gingerbread men too. And not round the clock, but just making sure there was always something sweet to hand when he fancied it.

Then, a while back, he found out he's got Type 2 diabetes, and he's had to teach himself not to eat all those sweet things any more. He started out by declaring all sugars to be "poison" the moment the subject came up, but as he grew new habits, he became more comfortable with me ordering a slab of Daim cake, to take a recent example.

I'm sure it can't have been easy, teaching himself to basically override one of his strong instincts. But he did it, because he felt it was the best way to stay healthy in the long term. However pleasant it might be to eat sweet things, he wasn't willing to face what it would do to his body. For him, it wasn't worth it.

Now, it could have been harder. You see food pron adverts from time to time, but it's not as if advertisers are implying that a bag of sweets will be the reward for wearing their brand of deodorant. It's not as if literature and film are swimming in examples of the eternal quest for gingerbread men.

And it's also not as if people keep saying things like, "You're being so punishing. Why do you think you don't deserve sugar?"