Recurrence.

Three days after Christmas, and more than 18000 had turned up for the game - the stadium wasn't full, but the patches of empty red seats were smaller and fewer than normal.

The gate had been swelled by a good four or five thousand from the north-east, and to cut a long story short, I witnessed a stirring fightback from a home side whose resources and status were inferior to their opponents, who arrived with the cachet and squad of a very recent top-division side.

It was the kind of afternoon, with the winter and dark closing over Oakwell's maw, that I live for: eleven red upstarts re-affirming that where I come from might not be the most affluent or storied town on the planet, but its football team will turn you over with a low-budget mix of perceptive ball-play and fighting like cornered animals.

I should have been elated beyond normal parameters on my exit from the ground, but I was gripped by melancholia: the result didn't matter to me, because I was fixated on my own internal fluctuations. I don't know what happened - I'd undergone my usual struggle to get out of bed in the morning, rushing for the train after a very quick wash and cursory clean of my teeth.

I'd set the alarm for quarter past nine but didn't properly surface until just before eleven, a dark filament of sleep bridging the interim. All through the northward journey, I tried and failed to immerse myself in a book, never managing to break through its difficult shell to extract the clarity and drama flowing beneath.

The rapid, geometric events of the first half passed me by, except that I mused on the futility of my obsession with the game when the visitors scored: thousands of ecstatic supporters bouncing like jack-in-the boxes in the away end, telling us our support is fucking shit, and that their team is the greatest the world has ever seen.

When Barnsley inverted matters in the second half, there was no rush of excitement when either of the two (well-worked) goals went in. I stood politely and clapped, feeling the great void of the universe echo through my bones. No over-the-top exuberance at the end, no feeling of relief - the normal schemata of football-match attendance had been drained of almost everything: all that existed was turn up, go home again, and exclude the middle.