Deborah Orr: The football widow for our times is the sole fan in a house full of men

My husband will be in the kitchen, and I'll be sitting in front of the TV pretending that I'm him

Saturday, 10 June 2006

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Much has been written this week about the plight of the football widow. Much, you might say, has been written about every single facet of the wretched tournament. But actually I have searched in vain for a few words of advice, or of sympathy, about women suffering my own plight. My husband doesn't care about football at all. It is like being married to a weird man-like clone with an essential man-bit that's inexplicably missing.

I understand that a lot of women might not see how this is a problem. But believe me, it just feels wrong. The female equivalent of waffling on about football is complaining about how boring the men are when they waffle on about football. Until mid-July, I'm going to be excluded. My husband will be in the kitchen instead of me, giggling away about the foolishness of the lads, while I'm left - as usual - trying to give out the frankly laughable impression that we're a normal, functioning family, by sitting in front of the TV and pretending that I'm him.

It's particularly unfair because I long for my husband - who prefers constant intellectual stimulation - to slump in front of the telly, have "a few mates round for a laugh", or wander off for a "boys' night out". But he never does any of these things. His idea of a relaxing soap opera is watching his Heimat boxed DVD set. Saying "The World Cup's in Germany too, you know!" doesn't interest him at all. Why should it? It's happening now and not in early part of the previous century, with people moving about as fast as they can, instead of at the speed of tectonic - or Teutonic - plates.

I worry so much, too, about my sons. Who will teach them about the intricate idiocies of being men, when their father is so clearly uninterested in being one? Yes, that's right. It is left to me. Yesterday morning, I had to say at breakfast, in a cheery voice: "The World Cup starts tonight!" Then I had to field myself the pitifully few halting questions about who was playing whichmy boys - God love them - came up with just to please me.

I want my sons to like football. I want them to be able to speak in man-code, so that they can go anywhere in the world and meet people they can drone on to interminably about nothing of consequence in a chummy sort of way. I want them to play five-a-side in the lunch break, and bugger off to the common on a Sunday so that I can get on with the garden. I don't know why I want it quite so much, but I do.

I'm not equal to the task, though. I quite like football, and I always assumed that this mild intelligent interest would be an advantage when running a mixed-gender family. Instead, it has turned out to be vastly inadequate. Somehow, I must take this opportunity to fill my sons with enthusiasm for football. How? By pretending, I suppose, that it is great fun, and really riveting. So there we have it. Other women will be complaining over the next five weeks that they've been left to do everything, while their partners watch the football. They should spare a thought for me. I'll have to do everything, and somehow fit in all the football as well.

* Mind you, I must admit that I am quite excited by this World Cup, because for the first time I fully understand myself to be a supporter of England. In the first years after I moved to London - an economic migrant pushed out of the Scotland I loved because of punitive economic policies from a distant Thatcherite Westminster, etc - I can honestly say that my antagonism to England only sharpened.

Initially, the idea of England winning the World Cup was enough to make me want to throw up with anger and frustration. In fact, the idea of England winning the Toronto Log-Hurling second heat was enough to make me want to throw up with anger and frustration.

Gradually, over nearly a quarter-century, I find that all that chippy, parochial, envious and destructive bullshit has entirely exited my body. I will be very nice if England win. Apart from anything else, it will really help with my campaign to get my sons to like football.

Charity begins at home

I'm gradually crawling towards the realisation that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt might be pretty strange people. I do understand that when the world's paparazzi are going to make your life a misery until your baby pics are out there, it's important to give the media something.

And I do understand as well that one might quite easily make the mistake of thinking it sensible to make money out of this need, if one is going to give it to charity. But it's surely plain even to this odd couple that selling pictures of their daughter to Hello! magazine, for any reason, simply endorses what the couple say they hate - the idea that personal lives are fair game, as long as a profit can be had from them.

The couple's older children have already been subjected to a level of exposure that is surely an unacceptable intrusion on their young lives. There is a law in this country - quite rightly - that prevents the reproduction of images of children without the permission of their parents. It is a good law, in place for good reasons. It's about time this pair sat down together and thought about what those reasons may be. Until then, their claim to be entirely focused on their family means only that they have something in common with all of the world's most ruthless peddlers of gossip and nosiness.

A dose of reality is what policy-makers need

One of the great mysteries of modern times is this: if drugs are such a widespread scourge that new legislation against them has to be drawn up all the time, then why is it that nobody who makes drugs policy ever appears to have talked to a single soul who has ever taken any drugs?

Take this latest stuff - so to speak - that endeavours to outline the precise amount of a drug a person should be carrying before they are charged with "possession with intent to supply". It is laughably ill-informed.

Two grams of cocaine? It is like punishing people for the dreadful combination of taking recreational drugs and knowing other people. Does the Government have no idea of how popular a partygoer becomes when it emerges that they have cocaine? I know someone who, when offered a line, took the gram off to the loo and snorted the whole lot. He'd never put out a line himself before, he explained, and had never really noticed what size they were.

Five tablets of ecstasy? Does the Government not understand that you haven't been able to buy an ecstasy tablet of decent strength since 1991 (1995 in Scotland, which is always a bit behind)? Any user will tell you that you really have to take quite a number if you hope to dance all night. Funnily enough, about five.

Juries do not want young people who have been caught with drugs to be treated like dealers. In every jury there will be someone who does in fact know a young person who has taken drugs and be able to persuade enough of his fellows that with this amount of product, guilt cannot be ascertained "beyond reasonable doubt". More time and money wasted in the courts, because the Government prefers to make laws that impress the ignorant and fearful, rather than laws that are workable and fair.