Being 42

Sunday 4th January 2026, 2.20pm (day 5,246)

Hull City fans approach their club’s ground for this afternoon’s quite important match against Watford. Both teams are in the play-off zone in the Championship. But what they don’t know yet (and nor, then, did I as I took the picture) that all this anticipation is to be made pointless in about twenty-five minutes’ time. At that point, fifteen minutes before kick-off, the game was postponed, because though the pitch was in great condition, ground staff hadn’t bothered to de-ice the touchlines or the technical areas so the managers and linesmen said, er, hang on — we can’t do our work on an ice rink. I took pictures of that too, and looking at them, they’re probably justified. But all it would have taken was some salt applied at about 1.30. Instead, all these people just had to turn around and go home, including all the poor buggers who had trekked up from Watford on a Sunday and spent god knows how much to do so (and I’m down £35 on the train fare).

The thing is all this happened to me (and, in this case, Clare) yesterday too, at Altrincham. For the same reasons. As I was, almost certainly, the world’s only person to have been at both of these games you understand that I’m somewhat prickly right now.