I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.

I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.

I have always been accused of taking the things I love - football, of course, but also books and records - much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me.

I can see that now. I can see everything once it’s already happened — I’m very good at the past. It’s the present I can’t understand.

It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.

[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?

I'm still not a very good white wine, but I'm drinkable - you could put me in a punch, anyway.