There could rarely have been a more uncomfortable train journey than the three arduous hours I spent commuting to Glasgow on Saturday morning. There is an argument to be made which says that I only have myself to blame for over-indulging in alcohol the night before and for fooling myself into thinking that I could make enough silly jokes to a woman that she would eventually decide it would be a brilliant idea to date me.
And perhaps it could be said that I should have moved away from my table seat when a gentleman sat opposite me and shortly thereafter a young woman sat in the seat next to him, leaving me unwilling to fall asleep and give them the likely spectacle of me drooling over myself. Despite the fact that my leg room was heavily restricted and I was extremely tired and couldn’t allow myself to fall asleep, my conscience rendered me unable to move to another seat. I couldn’t make things awkward for them by making them think that they had offended me in some deep way, to the extent that I had to immediately leave their company. I would rather things be awkward for myself whilst I curse the two individuals in my internal monologue.
So I sat and listened to Ryan Adams for three hours and wallowed in a sleepy, hung over melancholy.
Everything moved in super slow motion on Saturday, like a tortoise on a skateboard with absolutely no clue how to operate it. And nobody even knows how it got there in the first place, only that it did, which is how I felt when taking my cold, unforgiving seat at Celtic Park prior to kick-off.
Like the train ride before it and the subsequent sorry attempts at drinking a pint of beer, the football was a slow and ponderous affair. Celtic are so dominant at the moment that it is only a matter of time before they score – the polar opposite of my romantic encounters – and you find yourself waiting impatiently for that magical moment to occur – exactly like my romantic interludes.
My tired mind struggled to focus on the action on the field and I often found myself distracted. I could see that there were noticeably more seats empty around the ground than there have been most Saturday afternoons, and while I wouldn’t go as far as to call the official attendance figure of 54,685 an alternative fact, by my haphazard head count there were around five people at Celtic Park on Saturday.
Indeed, I would go as far as to say that there are usually five different types of people who go to the football. There are folk like me and the guy sitting in front of me with the swept back grey hair and the red jeans who keep themselves to themselves and basically sit and watch the game as it unfolds.
Elsewhere in the ground there are supporters who turn up to sing and create an atmosphere, seemingly without paying much attention to what’s happening on the field. There was the chap behind me on Saturday who would intermittently startle me out of my daze with his crude attempts at signing, which mostly amounted to howling three or four words before giving up. He sounded like he was under water.
Spectator group number four would be those who typically only spend approximately 60 minutes at the actual game. They arrive 5-10 minutes after it has kicked off, leave five minutes before half-time to get into the line at the food stalls and then leave the stadium to beat the traffic as soon as the clock lands on 80 minutes. I’d estimate that this may be the largest group.
The vocal minority is the small band of people who somehow believe that everything they shout can have an impact on the match. Whether it is a stinging criticism of a player’s inability to “get stuck in” or a garbled cry in support of the IRA, every solo holler is delivered as though it has the inspirational quality of a John F. Kennedy speech.
Eventually that inevitable magical moment came courtesy of Moussa Dembele and the five people in the stadium could go home happy. I put on some more Ryan Adams and walked back into the city centre with the mobility of an uncertain raindrop on a window pane.
Final scores:
JJ 0-1 The slow and painful passing of a Saturday afternoon
Celtic 2-0 Hamilton
Diaries of a single man 