Date and time... June twenty-ninth 2021 sixteen forty-four.
"Tea Mum? Or?"
"Bottle of Riesling in the fridge please."
I found the bottle and corkscrew, joined the two together and pulled the lever over, 'pwomp' it went. I grabbed one of the big glasses with the red, black and gold stem and filled it way past the 175ml mark.
Next I pulled the pint glass from the back of the cupboard where it's lived for the last twenty-five years, and filled it from the 'Fosters' can and lifted it to my mouth to take the top off before it overflowed and ran down the side then kissed the white square with the red cross and read out loud "Euro ninety-six, my lucky glass."
After putting the wine back in the fridge I carried both glasses to the lounge where Mum was shouting insults at the pre-match waffle.
"Fancy a bet then Mum."
"Why not?"
We each wrote our winnings on a 'post-it', folded it over so the sticky bit formed it into an envelope and I wrote England on mine, Mum wrote Deutschland on hers and, as always, we each slipped ours into each edge of the wedding photograph mirror on the wall.
We both criticised the presenters on the pre-match warm up in the last few minutes until the game was about to start.
Dear reader. You may have already realised we are a dual nationality family, in truth we were tri national before the divorce as Mum is German and Dad is Welsh, they met in a pub after a match between Germany and Wales in the ninety-two Euros. They married two years later and moved to Milton Keynes for work, I was born the following year and have always classed myself as being English, they divorced eleven years ago.
We get on really well, have a number of mutual friends so socialise together quite regularly and generally have a lot of fun, I have a brother born six years after me and a sister a year later, they are both at University and somehow after finishing my own university studies and getting a job at Bletchley Park just a few miles down the road there has never been any sort of thoughts about me moving out. To be honest I don't think we as a family can afford for me to move out just yet.
So the bet? It started many years ago, I remember Mum and Dad doing it and the winnings were always little things like a kiss or a chore, since the divorce I have continued the ritual and I won the first with a special dinner; chile con carne with black pudding, fried egg, smoked haddock and chips which represented some of my favourite foods as a thirteen or fourteen year old. The meal was duly served the following day and ever since we've tended to come up with sillier things.
So the bet? It's simple England versus Germany or Me versus Mum. If Germany wins, she wins whatever is on her betting slip and in the unlikely event England wins, huh! some hopes there, then I win what I have written on my slip. Yeah simple!
The match? Euro 2020/21 round of sixteen and England have not beaten Germany in a big match for many years; I thought I stood no chance whatsoever of winning the bet so went big in the certain knowledge it would never be seen. Part of the ritual is burning the loser's paper without it being read. Even in the event of a draw both are destroyed.
The match? We sat there with wine and beer, actually quite an amount of both. We shouted abuse at the referee, we shouted encouragement at the players, we shouted abuse at the players, heck we shouted at all and sundry on the television, we cried, we laughed but bugger all happened to the score.
At half time there was no score but we had to admit there'd been some good moves and some good saves but the chance to go to the toilet without missing anything was welcome. The first bottle of wine was drained and finished during half time, I finished the fourth can of beer during half time and by the time the match restarted I had my fifth can and Mum started her second bottle.
For half an hour we cursed and swore unheard by the butt of our verbal diarrhoea and then the ball and the net became intimately connected, my first reaction of standing up and charging round the room like a demented mule trying to rid himself of his bulky load felt good until I remembered the little slip of orange paper in the mirror. I sat and prayed as the repeated replays dissected the action on the pitch in clinical detail until the confirmation of one nil to England.
