When he found out that we had both been in Barcelona that year when they won the cup he was beyond delighted, just like that I was his darling and it was some kind of fate that years later we should have met. I want to take you to see them he said; I didn’t want to but I went anyway, curious to see what it would be like. I was curious, and it seemed a way to get to know him better, to see what he was passionate about.

He had a season ticket, it had been handed down to him from some older relative, and he went to all the away games, and most of the home ones, driving the 200-odd miles up the motorway to the stadium. Imagine that kind of commitment. I could not yet drive in that time, and the idea of travelling so far so often was incomprehensible. In time I did come to understand the kind of magical thinking that goes into that kind of dedication — it wasn’t so different from my own, which I poured into other ventures that he himself never understood.

This is how I watched them play at nearly every ground south of Birmingham. I’ll have to take you to the home ground one time, he said, the atmosphere is fantastic. You know, my uncle was the kit man for Partick Thistle, he said to me once, and it sounded to me like the kind of thing spies say to each other, sitting apart on a park bench. I think he must have known even then that I was unmoved.

Anything can be exotic, if it’s unfamiliar.

But I did not like the crush in the underground tunnel at one of the grounds which led to the stands, televisions hung from the low ceiling playing a match between a hated rival and some other club, hemmed in on all sides by seething men. The smell of Bovril and meat pies. I did not like the walk back to the car, police on horseback high above me, or the cold, it seemed always to be raining. When we were sure enough of each other I must have said something along those lines because it stopped being a special treat to take me to matches.

What I did like: they always sang, and sometimes it was funny, sometimes obscene, sometimes it was comical threats from men in no position to enact them. Once, this might have been during a match against Chelsea, they were singing about their flag, and they sang ‘will never die, will never die’ loud and mournful enough for me to feel it in my liver. There was something in the stupid hope of this, of men like him who seemed to funnel their tenderest feelings into the doings of millionaires on grass that touched me and for a moment I felt I almost knew what it was that he loved, and I almost loved it too, if only for his sake.

A small addendum: for twenty years I was forbidden from listening to or singing You’ll Never Walk Alone if he was in earshot, and I always thought this was a damned shame. Imagine loving or hating anything that much; as it turned out, I couldn’t.