Souper

As I type this, I still have tears running down my face. I have cried until my face is red. My nose is still in a rather unspeakable state. My ribs ache. I have almost choked. And it’s all Mr TLC’s fault.

What has he done to cause this? He decided he wanted to watch Football Gaffes Galore whilst we ate our belated supper (homemade cream of celery soup, since you asked).

Now to be honest, I’m not really interested in football. Mr TLC insists, as some sort of point of principle, that I should support my childhood team; so I do, in a rather half-hearted way. (Well, they may have been my Granddad’s beloved team and my Dad may count himself amongst their faithful followers (slightly lapsed), but I only ever supported them on the basis that in my first primary school anyone who didn’t was liable to get beaten up.) My interest increases mildly when they are doing better than Mr TLC’s preferred team – which is all the time to be honest – but essentially I’m not really interested in football.

The prospect of an hour of footie watching wasn’t exactly filling me with joy, but lovely Mr TLC really wanted to watch it, so we did. Despite my misgivings, it was indeed a most joyous experience; I may not be a great fan of football, but there’s something inherently marvellous about watching prima donna footballers make total prats of themselves.

I giggled and snickered at missed goals, incompetent goalies and players who seemed to have a strange inability to remain upright. I laughed at own goals, at useless but expensive strikers who couldn’t get the ball anywhere near the net and defenders who seemed to have forgotten whose side they were on. I howled as some hapless player missed a penalty kick – not missed the goal, actually ran up and missed the ball! Once I found myself seizing the opportunity to shout ‘Shocking defending’ at an inept Alan Hansen I was definitely laughing way too much to safely continue eating soup.

I continued to try to eat my soup.

By the time Chris Waddle (is it strange how many times Wednesday & ex-Wednesday players featured in this gaffe fest?) kicked that penalty into the sky I was struggling, but it was Rhod Gilbert’s commentary that finished me off “As my Dad used to say, ‘When that comes down it’ll have snow on it!'”

The soup disaster was commencing. Do not eat soup when laughing hysterically. It is bad.

“Well when this comes down it’ll have ozone on it!”

Do not eat soup when laughing so much that you are crying and your ribs are hurting. And you should definitely try to avoid that interesting cream of celery soup up the nose moment. I can assure that it’s much worse than doing it with the proverbial Coca Cola.

Oh Mr TLC, I think you might just have converted me. It turns out that football is a beautiful game after all. Wonderful.