A magazine in a foreign land got this idea of inviting several authors, in different countries, to write their World Cup diaries. It didn't matter if your country wasn't playing in the cup, they said: it didn't matter whether or not you followed every match. They just wanted an everyday account of how the whole thing actually affected you. There were a lot of unenthusiastic rumblings from the people they asked. The diary might be fairly short was, I think, the main reaction - like, very short indeed.
No, no, they pleaded. Don't look at it like that. Just share your special World Cup recipes. Readers would love to know what you are serving during the various matches. Would they reflect the nationality of the teams playing?
I don't know what the others said to this request but I was a bit non-plussed. I said it didn't really form part of my life . . . thinking up Brazilian, Dutch or Scottish fillings to serve in warmed pitta shells, to 20 people whose eyes would never leave the screen but whose hands would reach out gratefully for food.
I thought I'd made it pretty clear that a diary of the World Cup was not, for me, the way to go. But we were not talking to quitters here. Quite, quite, they soothed: well, perhaps not parties but maybe other things. Like stress. Perhaps I could just record the ways of coping with the anxiety and nervous tension that football inevitably created? You know, little personal things - mantras, breathing exercises, positive affirmation. I said that I didn't want to be too bland but I honestly didn't think that football stress was going to be a huge factor in the next few weeks.
It might be different if we were playing, I said hastily, so that they wouldn't think I was brain-dead or anything. Like, if Ireland was in the running there would be huge stress about getting into the Sorrento Lounge in time to book a good seat. I might have had to go at dawn.
I thought this man would now realise that there was nothing, nothing for him here. But no. Did I have any views about whether the star-signs that the players were born under might affect their play? I do, indeed, have views about astrology but none of them at all positive or helpful.
He soldiered on. Was there any decor angle, perhaps? Surely I'd be doing up the house in celebration, with some kind of theme? No? Oh, well.
I tried to tell him that I honestly liked watching soccer and would probably see several of the matches if the timing was right. In fact, I had already marked out a few. Just because you don't go along with the hype and pretend to have a mindless devotion to teams you know nothing about, doesn't mean that you're against footie.
This man was making my hackles rise: I shouldn't have to defend my attitudes like this. Why was I apologising over nothing and trying to persuade him that I much preferred it as a television spectacle to rugby because it was more open? Watching good, skilful football was like watching good ice skating, I told him proudly.
This got me nowhere. The man whose job it was to assemble this piece said he assumed that everyone enjoyed sport. He was paying me a compliment by assuming that women would equally enjoy the spectacle. He would not be so politically incorrect as to invite only males to contribute.
We both muttered and mumbled a bit about his admirable fairness in this matter. But I still had to say that I couldn't write a diary saying every day the same thing - such as that it was a great show when it was well played and it was dull when it wasn't. "But you must want someone to win," he cried, desperate now.
Possibly Holland, in a vague sort of way, but only because I have a lot of good friends in Amsterdam and I could imagine their pleasure. Did I have any Dutch blood, he wondered? Could I take on an alter ego, a new personality, and write about the whole thing from the point of view of someone who lived in the Netherlands?
He was warming to it now: there were, after all, many similarities between the Irish and the Dutch. Two small countries riven by religious strife. Victims of the sea, he said, hopefully.
I was deeply sorry I had mentioned Holland at all. I told him that my greatest failing was saying what I hoped would be helpful things to other people and which almost invariably worked out badly for everyone.
He sighed a deep sigh. He had been asked to set up this feature; he had thought it would be easy. People were just not being co operative, he said sadly.
He had assumed that writers were people who lived life to the full, that they would be interested in the world around them. He spoke in sorrow rather than anger.
He was disappointed to know we all lived in ivory towers, totally divorced from real life. None of us, except someone in Scotland who seemed to be drunk every time they were contacted, was willing to write a diary about the World Cup food, design, adrenalin, and anxiety that would be setting the world alight.
Well, all our newspapers and broadcasting stations had plenty of people out there covering it, I explained defensively. That wasn't enough, apparently. We were cheapskate begrudgers, that was all. He wished he hadn't tried to commission writers, because in the end they were the worst people to approach. He would try some other group entirely - less selfish, less navel-gazing people.
We parted bad friends as, I gather, he had parted similarly with several others who felt that enough might possibly have been written on the subject and that, self-centred and all as we are, at least we are aware that our World Cup diaries might not light up the sky.