1.13 - God Save the King

13.

I'm ashamed to say that my reaction to the Queen's death was selfish, petty, and unbecoming of a loyal subject of the crown.

Basically, my thoughts went like this:

The Queen is dead. All the football will be cancelled. I won't be able to get any XP. I won't be able to find a club for Ziggy. I'll be stuck in a call centre for the rest of my life.

Crazy, of course, irrational, but the grey-haired man was watching my face, watching me get more and more upset.

AND HE RESPECTED ME FOR IT.

Because he thought, like the other 70 million Brits, that I was having a real, honest-to-goodness emotion about the passing of this woman who had been in our lives for 96 years! 70 as our monarch. Our head of state. Our commander-in-chief. Our North, our South, our East and West. Our working week and our Sunday rest.

He started speaking in a dreamy voice. I'm not sure he was actually talking to me. "Think about everything that's changed in your life. Planes and phones. Fashion and music. She's been there, through it all. Constant. Constant as the northern star. It's always been her face on the currency. Her voice at Christmas. When we won the World Cup in '66, she gave us the trophy. 1966. Imagine that. 20 years before I had a microwave. Bobby Moore wiped his hand on the velvet before he shook hers. Men had class then."

The guy was about to burst into tears, and I wanted to hug him. But then I remembered we were both English and if we hugged in public we'd lose our passports. I tried to speak but my voice came out rough and I had to clear my throat. Which wasn't planned, but again, it ended up making me seem like a real person instead of one who merely had a frog in his throat. "And here I am trying to pimp my player out. I'm really sorry. I didn't know." I let the silence stretch out. "I'll be off. Will you be all right?"

"What's that?" He was looking up at the floodlights again, like they were shooting stars he could wish upon. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be off, too. My phone's going a mile a minute." He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the lock screen, then let it fall back. He briefly snapped out of his grief state. "Tell you what, give me your number. I'll talk to Neil about your player."

Sociopath though I am, this repulsed me. I hadn't actually pursued my plan once I'd heard the news. I'd just had a few stray thoughts. "No, no," I said. "I couldn't."

"Come on," he said. "Spit it out."

I told him my number while he fumbled with his phone. It kept vibrating while he was entering the numbers. No chance he typed it correctly, but I didn't care. We shook hands and I... well, the best word for it is I fled.

***

The announcements started to come thick and fast:

Friday's big match in the Welsh league, Flint Town United against Aberystwyth Town was postponed.

For the weekend, Spurs vs Man City was postponed, along with every other game in England. Ditto the Scottish league and non-league football. Even kid's games were called off. I mean, 9-year-old kids weren't allowed to play.

Football was in mourning.

***

So it was weird then, to see every other sport, from minor ones like cricket and golf to big deals like dog frisbee and extreme ironing, go ahead. Those sports seemed to want to keep calm and carry on in the best British tradition, to gather their fans into one space so that they could honour the Queen, collectively. Football, though, the working man's game, wasn't trusted. The brutish, boorish fans would make a right mess, wouldn't they?

Long story short, no, they wouldn't. They would have behaved impeccably. But we'll never know, because they weren't given the chance.

It's possible I was more annoyed than the average person because of my personal stake in the situation. I understood that the Football Association was in a no-win situation and if the Premier League games had gone ahead the Daily Mail (Britain's best-selling newspaper, which had been rabidly pro-Nazi in the 1930s) would have gone to town. They never missed an opportunity to punch down. So fine, cancel the Premier League. Cancel the top 4 divisions, if you feel you have to. But why the eff couldn't Beth play on Friday night?

Beth: FRI GAME IS CANX SMH

Me: Wow bonkers. wt actual f

Some women in a sports hall, cooperating, competing, bonding as a team, keeping fit. Was that disrespectful? Was it disrespectful to play football but not cricket?

Beth: You can’t buy condoms from the machine in Spoon’s because the queen died

Beth: The supermarket turned off the beeps at the checkout because the queen died

Beth: Crossfit done a special gym routine with a minute silence after every rep

Beth: THIS COUNTRY IS LOSING IT'S MIND

Me: *its

Beth: NOT NOW MAX

Me: You need a comma in there

I thought Beth would text me back and invite me round to burn off her surplus energy. But my grammar policing must have annoyed her a bit too much. She didn't write back.

So I ended up utterly wasting Friday and spending Saturday pottering around my house thinking about the growing void in my life. It became pretty clear that the following weekend's games would be postponed as well, because of the Queen's funeral. In principle, that sounded right to me - if you were going to postpone one round of games that was the one to choose. The mistake was postponing this weekend’s.

And it wasn’t just losing two weeks of games... there was going to be another long break while the national teams played some meaningless friendlies. So a break followed by a break. Ugh.

I was starting to have bleak thoughts and when I wanted a distraction and tried to watch something light on TV or check the sports news, it was futile - it was wall-to-wall Queen. I mean, staggering levels of coverage. Beyond saturation. Beyond North Korea. 200 channels all showing the same thing; every section of the BBC's website with the same coverage. It was almost comical, except the BBC cancelled comedy shows for a week 'as a tribute'.

It was all starting to drive me bonkers, and when I read that the Met Office wouldn't be doing weather forecasts during the period of mourning I very nearly dropkicked my fridge. I had to get out of this insane echo chamber. I considered humiliating myself by turning up at Beth's place. I thought about driving to the care home to borrow Solly. I instinctively knew that both ideas were terrible, and was saved on Saturday at 3pm, the time English matches traditionally kicked off, when an envelope appeared in the bottom-right corner of my vision.

It was the message announcing the monthly perk.

Respectful Special Offer

New perk available to buy during the reign of Charles III: God Save the King

Cost: 3,000 XP (Debt financing available)

Effects: Nominate a 'King' and channel one of his notable attributes into a player of your choosing. One use per season.

Kings: John Charles (STR; HD). Carlos Valderrama (FL; CRE). Michel Platini (PAS; SET). Denis Law (OFF; FIN).

Once again the curse was giving me more questions than answers. Every answer led to 18 questions! It was maddening.

But man, I was glad of the distraction. Glad to dive into these rabbit holes. Glad to enjoy the challenge of deciphering this perk.

I tried to be methodical. The first thing to note was that this perk would be available to buy for a while. But not forever. King Charles, or Prince Charles as I would probably always think of him, was 73 years old. He was probably good for another 20 years, right? But he could get sick, and English kings sometimes abdicated (normally to marry Americans). Basically, if I definitely wanted this perk I shouldn't hang around for too long - its availability was uncertain.

The next thing was the cost. It was a lot, and if the deadline had been the end of September I wouldn't have even thought twice about going for it. I couldn't have gotten so much XP even if I'd quit my job to watch footy full-time - there just weren't any matches being played in England.

But there was this 'debt financing' thing. If my suspicions were correct, the curse was going to allow me to buy this perk and then work off the XP cost afterwards. Thinking that made me almost buy it immediately. And that's why I don't have a credit card - because the whole financial and retail system is designed to make me buy things I can't afford.

And besides, I had a better plan.

I would save up, buy October's special offer, if there was one, and THEN buy this one, going into debt. This plan felt good. It felt right. I wouldn't be able to buy the November perk (I'd still be paying off my debt then), but I'd be fine with that. With any luck I'd be able to afford the Christmas one, so I'd go into 2023 with 5 perks in the can: Super Scout, Fantasy Football, God Save the King, plus ones from October and December. Probably a Halloween one and a Jesus one. Awesome plan. Five stars.

Next I took a long, hard look at the wording of the effect. I actually wrote it on a piece of paper so my mind couldn't trick me. I mean, couldn't trick itself. I mean, what? I took a break, having a cup of tea and a hobnob, but not enjoying either out of respect for the Queen.