I turned in disgust to walk down the steps and out of the football ground: two minutes left and we were certainly going to lose.
Hearing the celebrations of the home supporters was more than I could bear - in fact it made me feel sick - and I had no wish to hang around to listen to them shoving it down my throat.
Then a roar went up. Penalty! To us! I rushed back up the gangway and teetered unsteadily on the end of the top step, moving my head from right to left as I tried to separate the crowd of people I was trying to stare through from the bit of the pitch I could see. In this variegated, shifting scene I observed our player run up to strike the ball, a gloved hand extending towards the goalpost to my left, and the home crowd going crazy again. Fuck! Saved it!
That really is it, then. I stumped away miserably to find my coach, and once on board I got talking to a man and his grandson (they'd also left early and we were the only ones on the coach) about the night's events:
Me: Might have been a different story if he'd stuck that penalty away, yeah?
Them: Penalty? What penalty? [We'd also missed one the previous game, and at first it was assumed I was referring to that.]
Me: I was just about to leave when it happened. I didn't see what it was given for - but we missed it anyway.
Them: You mean the one on Saturday?
Me: No. Just now - about two minutes ago.
Them: [laugh] You're not serious, right? We didn't get a penalty tonight.
Me: We did. [pause] I did see it and I'm not joking.
By this point, I had begun to doubt what I was moments before convinced I had seen. I spiralled forward decades into my future as a sick, confused old man, reporting all manner of visions and phenomena as being valid for discussion.
A sense of panic and uncertainty became me - I even confessed that I would feel more stupid than I have ever felt in my life if it was the case that no penalty had been given. I knew full well that one had been: I saw it and walked away swearing angrily when it had been missed; yet my grandmother knows full well that she's won £26,000 for the umpteenth week in a row, and that there is a queue of children who need supplying with drinks so for God's sake don't leave them outside, thirsty.
The evidence of our very eyes crumbles to dust when pressured by the incredulity of others - the more vehemently the refutation, the more we doubt. If a thousand people had shouted me down about there never having been a penalty, I'd have travelled home in confusion - no less certain of what I'd witnessed, but unsure as to how it could be possible.
No man is an island - we demand at all times corroboration for the events which make up our lives. Without corroboration, there is no event at all.
