The Horn Blower

I like to try to find a quiet place to watch football.  I wasn't really designed for unrestrained celebration, and I never feel (and have never felt) quite caught up enough in the moment to shriek or dance or wail or swear whenever there is a goal.  Mostly I just smile (irrespective of the scorer), or laugh a little if someone does something particularly amusing.

That's why I prefer to watch the main matches in Perkeo.  There are some other people there, but not usually too many.  So it's possible to watch in company, but without needing to think too much about displaying conspicuously less enthusiasm than everyone else.

When Germany played England it was particularly perfect.  One could do almost anything (or nothing at all) without being noticed, because there were already two unbeatable distractions: the football itself, and the elderly lady with the horn.

She is the only one who stood up for the national anthems, because she was the only one to show the appropriate respect.  I wasn't quite sure who she was rooting for, since the flag in her hair was German, her accent was American, and she applauded with apparent royalist vigour after 'God Save The Queen'.

At the start of the match, she mostly just sat with her wine and horn positioned on the table in front of her, in a teasing semblance of normality that everyone knew would be broken at some point, but no one was sure when.

It was really only when Germany scored that her loyalties became clear.  I'd never heard an elderly lady toot the German anthem out of a horn before.  I didn't know it could go on so long.  Nor, I think, did the older man who received it directly in his face.  At least, his look of nervous, fearful embarassment suggested it was new for him.