Recollection.

There were 248 Barnsley supporters at Selhurst Park for the game on October 18, 2008, and they would see their team eventually lose 3-0 to Crystal Palace.

With the persistence of time, which eats away at everything, I recall the players making half-hearted runs forward, lacking belief and confidence, and accepting that getting anything out of the game was impossible.

It was all too much for your author, who, gesticulating wildly with my free arm, joined in with the obscence calls for the manager to hand in his resignation: that's it, Simon, lad - fucking fuck off. All the words in the English language were boiled down to three: fucking fuck off.

Little islands of foul language amidst the rows upon rows of empty seats. I was one of the loudest protestors, to the extent that a man in front of me turned around and shook his head sadly.

That my left hand was otherwise occupied was the fault of the pretty, undemanding girl who held it so patiently as the rest of my body convulsed with anger. It so transpired that this would be the only time I'd see her - like a moment of inspiration, she was gone before I could even write down the bones of what she represented.

The persistence of time eats away at everything. It drains energy and reticulates images, eventually screwing them up and exiling them to the boundaries of recollection. I can remember trying to push my fingers through your hair, but not the sentiment which motivated it. I can remember you making a drink, but not the nested game-within-a-game-within-a-game whose denouement required you to do so. I can remember being called 'darling' in the back of a taxi, and I can remember the simplicity with which you appraised the world, but I can no longer pull together the strands of history which gave birth to those events.

You are the shadows of the mind, the arrow which flies even though I cannot picture the bow which liberated you. You are an evening kick-off in South London, under the lights, with one hand immobilised, and the other flailing here and there as it reacted to what unfolded around it. You are the thought which brings equality to all things - heavy away defeats neutralised, and great expectations returned to the void. You are the balance who matches the peak and the trough alike, for these two are the same when confronted by you.