I truly dithered about this one but already I find myself looking forward to a new season at Upton Park. I guess it is like dating. You break up with your bird (not that I have, as far as I know) after 8 months of pain and anguish. You were not having fun for a lot of the time and frankly sometimes she was just taking the piss with the sheer misery she inflicted on you. And she was pretty expensive too. Having a season ticket at West Ham can be like being forced to spend most Saturday afternoons heading round a shopping centre being forced to buy new clothes for the bird or worse still for you and then afterwards having to go to some overpriced vegetarian, alcohol free restaurant. The sheer misery of it all is interrupted only briefly when you find a new Ramones T-shirt to buy to add to the collection. But it is a rare moment of joy.
I stress that my partner inflicts none of this on me but I know that some birds regard that sort of thing as fun. And watching West Ham, knowing that you have forked out £650 for a season ticket can be like that. Jeepers. Losing at home to Wigan in the Carling Mickey Mouse Cup. That was torture. The game at Reading on 29th December will long stay in my mind as a masterclass in making a ninth rate team look like Brazil. But: You are my West Ham, my only West Ham you make me happy when skies are grey you’ll never know how much I love you until you take my West Ham away.
And so after you split up with one bird and enjoy a short break of freedom, of being allowed to wear clothes with holes in them and of being able to wash up dishes before you eat rather than afterwards, what do you do? You hook up with another one who will inflict the same pain on you. You know it will be that way, it always is. But you can dream can’t you. Whatever… you cannot resist.
As such the old season finished less than four weeks ago but already I find myself wondering when the fixture list is out? Will Andy Carroll sign up for five years (on a hundred grand a week)? Who else will Fat Sam bring in as he claims he aims to deliver a better than tenth finish? I can of course dream of the next season ahead. Surely the next girlfriend will make you happy? Maybe this is the year when we finish in the top seven, win a cup and secure home wins against Chelski and Spurs?
And so like a fool I have done it. RMPC has renewed its season tickets. Lucian Miers and the Goddess have been alerted. My daughter will be greatly relieved and all she needs to know is that Andy Carroll is staying and all her Christmases will have arrived at once as she worships old horseface. My tardiness means we move three rows back so a slightly worse view but we are now in the midst of the Trevor Brooking lower…not the sort of place to be seen sporting a Defoe Spurs top.
I should at this point state that my partner never inflicts shopping misery on me and would not be spotted dead in a vegetarian restaurant. Above all, having never been interested in sport and hailing from the Grim North she is now an adopted cockney and finds herself checking how West Ham do every week, is more than happy to come to games and says that her favourite player is Joe Cole. I think she even understands the magic of the John Lyall moment in the FA Cup Semi Final against Middlesborough which I was at and even now sends a shiver down my spine. Yup, I think she gets it. I was there.
And so having dithered I could do nothing else. Having broken the curse of causing West ham to lose every time I attended with two non-defeats on the trot I think my renewal will not cause relegation.
If only for a daughter whose loyalty to West Ham is unmatched (and for the home game against Paulo’s Sunderland) – we will be back.