All wrapped up in football.

I must apologise in advance for the lurid colour, but there is a reason.

I hate football. Almost every time I turn on the TV, which isn't often, it's generally football or, more recently, Poker. Did you ever think that you'd see the day when you could watch people playing cards on live TV?

Anyway, back to the football. One of my few regular blog reads, The Fatalist, was having a whinge about somebody slagging him off on another blog / message board. This was or is a football centered topic. I posted a reply in which I mentioned the Green Final.

The Green Final was the late Saturday afternoon sports rag for Leeds. It generally comprised just a couple of broad sheet pages.

Being the youngest of a whole troop of older, football mad brothers [and a father], it always fell to me to go out and get the Green Final. Although there were more than a few newsagents in Crossgates, only one, Marsden's, stocked this dam thing and me being sent to get it coincided with them, brothers and Dad, coming home from Elland Road, tea being ready and the start of Dr Who.

Marsden's was a fairish trek away. I could never figure out why I had to go and get this damn thing when 1. I was never going to read it. 2. One of my brothers could have stayed on the bus an extra stop and gone and gotten it. But, every week, [I had to go get it if Leeds were playing home or away] get it I did. It was sort of a tradition.

Tradition in our house meant that we had fish & chips on Friday. Going for the fish & chips was my job too. For some reason, which I don't recall, I was sent to get fish & chips on a Monday.

We always went to Wood's chippy. Dutifully I traipsed to Woods and it was closed. Using my own initiative, I went to Coe's. Now Coe's fish and chips were not a favourite of Mam's. "They use frozen fish" the fact that all fish has been frozen at some point passed Mam by, but, Coe's it had to be.

Home I trudged lugging "Six times, wi' scraps".

"What the bloody hell is this?" growled Mam

"Fish & chips"

"Why the hell did you get them gift wrapped?" as she stared at the parcels with a mild incredulity.

This puzzled me. It turned out that what she meant was that they were wrapped in the Green Final. I'd never even noticed. They were wrapped [in newspaper] and that was all that mattered. The colour of the wrapping never even being noticed by me.

It never occurred to me, although I did know it, that the Green Final had the worst reputation for having the ink come off on your hands and also that the colour came out of the paper when it got damp / wet. Every Saturday had seen me sitting down to tea with hands like Connemara marble, mottled green and black.

Although the fish and chips were never put directly onto the newspaper, a sheet of grease-proof paper separated them, some of the colour had tinted a few of the chips. These chips became mine. I won't recount the bollocking I got for getting the fish & chips from Coe's.

This is why I've always been safe in the knowledge that whatever football touches, it taints. Basically, the taint amounts to nothing but some people take it far too seriously.