Sat on the old man's seat at the end of the bar. I'm 31. Liverpool's Europa Cup match is on the plasma-screen telly. I've been hooked on the anodyne effect of watching football matches for a long time. I recognise most of the team managers and pundits as the players I used to cheer as a boy. Seeing them now is a sickener, a heinous raid on the sanctity of my youth, every time. Why couldn't they just stay back in 1989 or whatever year they were my heroes? Pat Nevin's bulbous head appears on the screen at half-time. Old, bloodless, balding. No longer the nippy little Everton winger I remember, bright with the bloom of youth, at the top of his game, the floppy-haired, mulletted Pat Nevin that smiled out at me as an embodiment of promise from page 14 of my Panini sticker book. No, definitely not that any more.
Suddenly I have to have another drink. It feels like a necessary response to seeing Nevin's shrunken old face. It seems like the absolutely the most life-affirming thing I can do at this precious, worthless moment in time. It isn't, of course. That's just the kind of thing the old man at the end of the bar would think.
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