It was an immensely busy work day, and at around 6.30 the Gentleman Friend and I went out looking for somewhere to watch the semi-final match between England and Croatia. The reason for this unusual decision was two-fold: one, so that the GF could share in excitement from fellow Englishfolk – I find it hard to leap around in excitement for Pakistan, so England is a distant prospect indeed. Second, the match was on ITV and the smart TV at the house does not play ITV for some unknown, perhaps unknowable, and certainly extremely annoying, reason. So watching earlier matches on ITV had a slightly complicated solution: I downloaded the app on my iPad, then used Apple TV to show it on the TV. But because the room with the TV doesn’t get an internet signal, the ipad has to be located elsewhere, and the quality of the picture (and signal) is poor.
Anyway, down we went to West Hampstead to find somewhere that would not be too unpleasant. The place to be was a pub with hundreds of people in and outside it, all singing and shouting raucously.(The actual place to be in London was Hyde Park, where there was a screen for 30,000 but you needed to have applied for the free tickets in advance). All the way, the GF was quivering with excitement, and since I had slightly rather that England win than Croatia (not many teams I can say that about), I was pleasantly excited. The song of the moment, ‘Four lions’, was echoing in the streets – ‘it’s coming home’ etc.
We found, of all places, a kosher cafe with a large screen, a pleasantly not-drunken atmosphere and a table available, and settled in there. The match began, England scored in the first five minutes, it all looked very promising. A group of teenaged boys, very polite, came in and we let them sit in front of us and they were very careful not to block our view as they sang, chanted, and drank beer. (The beer, it turned out, was from a supermarket, so they were expelled at halftime).
Then things started going wrong, and England’s failings – its long passes, poor communication, became evident and eventually the Croatians won.
With that the banana republic finally collapsed; the warm weather has diminished, England is out of the World Cup again, the economy is still in the doldrums, the government is still collapsing and Brexit is still happening. ‘Now we can all go back to normal again and moan,’ the GF said, cheering up as we walked past the raucous pub, where the strains of ‘Four lions’ had been replaced by ‘Bittersweet symphony’.