As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive.

I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.

Where's the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn't seem like superficial to me. These aren't flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.

I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and, frankly, I think my guts have shit for brains.

Then I lost it. Kinda lost it all, you know. Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before.

These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and ... and it was too late.

And after tea, we play Junior Scabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody.

What if a sense of humour is like hair - something a lot of man lose as they get older?