You won't believe this . . . but I wrote about football

I always like to try and ring the changes on this blog; after all, there are only so many rants that you can write about camper vans in l'haute vallée de l'Aude.

(Actually, I could damn camper vans and barking, crapping French dogs to hell on a daily basis, without stopping to draw breath, but you, loyal reader, would get bored.)

It is nonetheless rather taking my life into my hands to write about soccer, as there are almost no other subjects about which I know less, apart possibly from brain surgery. Fancy a quick trepanning before dinner, cherie?

I have a very clear memory of experiencing a reverse epiphany (an unepiphany, a disepiphany?) about soccer at the age of five.

There I was, all togged up in my brand new primary school soccer strip: green shirt and socks with white trim, plus black shorts. This was one of the very few occasions on which our headmaster managed to raise sufficient steam to trek us down to the proper pitch on Brereton Rec.

I could see his point. There were only 29 kids in the school, half of whom were girls, and thus not allowed to play footy in those unenlightened days. So I suppose we could only raise about a team and a half to spread over that gigantic pitch, even with the skool dog doubling as inside right and sweeper, and Sir playing too.

Within five minutes of kick-off, I knew with the utmost clarity that I would never ever be any good at soccer. I suppose it was all down hill from there really, though I did manage to collect a full set of Esso coins commemorating the FA Cup Centenary in 1972.

These had a display board with a hole for the special large brass coin denoting the eventual 100th winner (Leeds Utd). The hole was cunningly made just too small to insert the coin into the board without wrecking it so I suspect that mint condition sets are rare.

Esso coins apart, I have been resolutely bored by soccer for more than 40 years. Except for Eric Cantona. The man who put the oxy into that notable oxymoron: intelligent footballer. He also happens to be French, which of course is useful for French blogging purposes.

Early Cantona sightings were not promising: The sound of massed crétins chanting Ooh! Aah! Cantona! But I have to say that yer man, uniquely for a soccer player, won me over. Here was a genuinely interesting and intelligent character, not to mention the huge force of personality, formidable talent and periodic propensity for duffing people.

I loved all the stuff about the feesh, trawlers, seagulls etc. All much too deep and meaningful for The Sun. So I couldn't resist getting a copy of Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, in which Cantona plays himself; managing to remain as charismatic, philosophical and downright elusive on screen as off it.

Girlfriend Claire and I really enjoyed Looking for Eric; she being another Cantona fan with an ignorance of soccer almost as complete and profound as my own. Mind you, it still comes as a shock to realise that I actually own a DVD with quite a lot of football in it . . .