I got on the tube at Shepherd's Bush to hear two men very earnestly discussing which football players they would put in the team on Saturday if they were the England manager. What I found remarkable about this was the utter seriousness with which they were taking this subject.
Not only that the subject was worthy of such scholarly consideration (and it wasn't even that important a game, it's only a friendly), but also that their own thoughts on this were also so crucial that there wasn't even a scintilla of awareness from them that they might be treating their idle chat with a bit too much import.
I'm not really criticising these two men per se. It wasn't that they were doing anything markedly different than a million other sport obsessed men up and down the country, but just looking at it from outside (and speaking as a man who doesn't particularly care and is aware that I have no wisdom to impart on this subject - Rooney is good apparently) it just made me laugh. Internally I should add, because they were quite hard looking men who wouldn't have taken kindly to being mocked in public. I don't think they would have been appeased by me saying, "I am laughing at social convention" either or have accepted my claims that "although I am not interested in sport I am equally prone to pontificate on other world issues of which I have no real idea and am never likely to be asked my opinion on by anyone who really matters" as an excuse. In any case there is something about discussing sport that seems to require men in particular to appear ultra serious and super knowledgeable. I suppose because like a lot of things that people take seriously (religion and their own lives for example) any acknowledgement that they were foolish or trivial would immediately cause them to deflate.
I hope at the end of the journey the men were considerate enough to email Sven Goran Eriksson and tell him what conclusions they had come to. It would be a shame to think that all their careful consideration just went to waste. Maybe they should start a weblog where they can confound people with their interesting observations.
Do you see? We are all idiots. And mainly me.
