With more then two weeks to go until the start of the World Cup, the English flags are already multiplying: flying from poles outside public houses; attached to cars; glued to windows.
The time is almost upon us, in other words, to celebrate our arbitrary nationality, and to suspend our collective disbelief, because this is certainly England's time (as is every other tournament since time immemorial.)
The time is almost upon us to heal the tribal rifts which we spend much of our time discussing or thinking about. One nation, bound together by the red cross of St. George, and heading for certain victory in the African winter.
So far, so good - except I want no part of it, at least not as far as England are concerned. The country I was born in, and in which I have lived all my life, has no hold over me. If nationality is indeed arbitrary, then I elect to choose differently. If a man can complain that he's trapped inside a female body, I can complain that I too belong somewhere equally distant.
What does it mean to immerse oneself in the fortunes of a country's football team? If we conclude that supporters are not sheep-like enough to follow blindly, it means that they do so in genuine expectation that a golden age is imminent - an event, like winning the World Cup, of which they can say: I lived through it, and I believed. World Cups are about the arrogant assumption of one nation's superiority over another - distant glory with their name on it, and nobody else's.
I see it for the nonsense that it is. Any success is transient and fleeting, and someone else will most likely come along in four years' time and wipe you off the map, anyway. I see it for the nonsense that it is, but I buy into the same craving for brief recognition with my club side. Standing in a half-empty stadium on a dark Tuesday night, arms aloft as the rain falls, celebrating a scrappy 1-0 win as though it was.... well, the World Cup itself, no less.
Ah, the roots of this arrogance are inevitably selfish - acclaim for that which I believe in, and, equally importantly, effacing the ambitions of everyone else. What is this resonant of? As with everything else in the last three months, I of course think of the ubiquitous Bluefish.
A love deeper, stronger and more committed than any other? One which eats distance and doubt for breakfast? An unrealistic love, a difficult love - the destiny of each of us was the other, and nobody could shake that belief. England World Cup campaigns, and Bluefish and I - rooted in delusion, and ending in disaster, once since the 1960s, and the other since February.
