Cup final day.
You may have noticed. You couldn't not, round here. Someone has spray-painted "Falkirk for the Cup" in giant letters on the side of the Orchard Hotel. There is blue and white bunting everywhere and every other shop has a "Good Luck Falkirk" poster in the window. The real hardcore retail outlets also have #COYB stencilled on the shopfront.
To be honest I don't think the town has gone to town quite as much as it did in 1997 [1] when it sometimes felt like we were living under a blue and white bunnet. But there's more this time than in 2009 when they lost to Rangers in the final.
I like the civic pride on display. And even though Falkirk FC are not my Scottish team (that would be Stirling Albion, or Stirling Albion Nil as some wags have been saying this season), I hope they win. I've got neighbours going to the game. My daughters are Bairns, born in the town [2]. J too, though she grew up a couple of miles west of here.
Not that they care. "Do you want to go to the cup final?" I did ask Daughter Number Two the other day. "What final?" she replied. I'm not sure how I've managed to raise girls who have no interest in football. I keep telling them it's the only sport that matters. Somehow they have parlayed that into the idea that no sport matters.
Then again, what kind of example have I set? What was the last game I went to in Scotland [3]? I used to go regularly to cheer on "Super Johnny Brogan" at Annfield at the end of the 1980s and I did the odd spot of match reporting for this esteemed organ's sports section at the end of the 1990s. But if I'm honest that's all a long time ago now. Fact is I've become one of those armchair fans settling down in front of Match of the Day every Saturday and Sunday night.
I could argue that given that the team I support are some 400 miles south of here at White Hart Lane it's not easy to get to see them. But the truth is since I was a kid in Northern Ireland football has been something I've watched on the telly and listened to on the radio.
If anything I prefer the latter. Not when Spurs are playing, admittedly (I can't watch or listen in case they get beaten). But I can happily find myself listening to Preston against Swindon or Middlesbrough v Norwich, just for the familiar noise of it. It doesn't matter that I don't care who wins. I just find it comforting.
I know that if I turn on Five Live on a Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday or Thursday I'll probably be able to hear some football. It's like the sea and the weather, a constant.
And so summer finds me adrift, untethered. Life has lost an organising principle until August rolls around again. I even find myself missing Alan Green's voice.
But that's next week's melancholy problem. Today there's football on. It's how it should be. Falkirk for the Cup. Why not?
[1] I still don't believe Neil Oliver was offside by the way, Killie fans.
[2] Not sure the bred bit applies though.
[3] Outside of Scotland it would have been a Northern Ireland World Cup qualifier. They didn't, obviously.
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