You're never alone, with football. Almost anywhere in the world, if you find two or three people gathered together in some sort of public place, eating or drinking, the chances are there will be a telly in the corner of their life, showing football. I find it so comforting. Planet Earth, what a little homely place you have become these days.
I was in the Algarve last week, on a five-day break from whatever I should be doing, oh yeah, John Prescott's life story. God, just five days away and I'd forgotten. Must be the sun, or too many sardines.
I went into Antonio's bar on Porto de Mós beach, which I first visited 40 years ago when it was a wooden shack with sand on the floor. Now it's ever so swish. In the lavs you can press a switch and the seat rotates and reappears with a clean plastic cover.
They also have a state-of-the-art flatscreen telly about the size of our house. But - this was the unusual part - with the sound off. People eating in that part of the restaurant could therefore easily ignore it, while sad, pathetic specimens, like what I am, could enjoy the game while eating.
It was Spurs v Aston Villa. About five other men, all Portuguese, were watching at nearby tables, showing no emotion. When the telly is silent you, too, become silent. With no crowd noise, no commentator rabbiting on, there's no excitement, no crescendos. Blink and you miss a goal, because you don't hear it coming, or happening.
It was that amazing game when Spurs came back to draw from 1-4 down, so I was cursing every time Robbo made another stupid mistake. But in my head, to myself.
They then had a long cutaway to Ray Clemence, sitting in the stand, which I presumed was totally meaningless to the watching Portuguese. When they do that in a Spanish game, cutting away to some ugly, elderly jerk sitting with his sidekicks whom the English commentator can't identify, you assume that it's the club's president, or a politician.
I knew the meaning of Clemence. As England's goalie coach, he was witnessing the England goalie having another shit game, but the ordinary Portuguese viewer, stuffing his face, wouldn't know the significance, unless he had the benefit of a commentary. Hmm, I thought, footer does benefit from sound.
Next evening, I went into Lagos and found a sports bar in a square that had screens everywhere and loads of young Brits with tattoos and very pissed-off doll-like girlfriends. The noise was so loud that I moved my stool further and further back till eventually I was hanging out of a window.
It was Chelsea v Valencia, from Sky, and the expert commentator was Ray Wilkins. Because the volume was so high, it drew attention to his every word, every piece of wisdom. "He's a tall striker, my word he is big . . . good grief . . . what a pass, most certainly, that was a pass, my word . . . an exceptional young man, well done young man, most certainly well done guys, most certainly . . ."
The height of the sound pointed up the depth of his banality. The only release was trying to remember who else used to say "most certainly" all the time. Alf Ramsey, of course, but in his case it made him sound like a trade union official. Wilkins sounded totally vacuous.
In the end, I was screaming for mercy, from him and the deafening sound. If forced to choose, I think silent telly is probably preferable.
