How to avoid those self-goals

It was with great tremulousness that I discovered the answer to a question that has taxed the very greatest minds: how to buy time. It came to me as I sat and watched the television and saw trailers for the World Cup, and tried to work out why each mention of it saw me tense and then sigh with relief. Then I realised: I didn’t care. And not just about the World Cup; I didn’t care about Wimbledon or cricket, or indeed any sport.

It was as if my entire summer had been taken away from me, then given back, so that I felt as newly grateful as a reprieved lifer in Texas for the days and weeks ahead that were now free. I could go on holiday whenever I pleased and say yes to any social engagements without first checking a fixture list. And were it not for having a job and a family to look after, why, I could read or even write a book, or reproduce the Houses of Parliament in chain-stitch. The relief was as immense as when a very chatty drunk comes to sit next to you on the bus and you realise that it’s your stop next.

You can get a lot done if you’re not interested in sport, as Shakespeare would have told us. No prime minister has ever given himself entirely over to sport while still in office (it is said that as soon as John Major lost power he went to watch the cricket, and that Clement Attlee had a teleprinter put into Downing Street solely for the purpose of receiving cricket scores)…

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At least football has a time limit to it; with Wimbledon you can find an entire afternoon sacrificed to hypertension and prayer. Once you’re thoroughly involved with a sport your emotional landscape becomes one of peaks and troughs; your mood is entirely dictated by the results. It’s a wretched way to spend a lifetime.

Excepted from an article by Annalisa Barbieri in ‘The Guardian’, June 7