“These past few months have not been easy,” my horoscope tells me. “Perhaps you came up against an unwanted turn in your career, money anxieties, a change in where you live, or in a love relationship.”
My head sinks to the desk and rests on the pillowiness of my arms, absorbing the fact that not only do all four currently apply to me but I’m so desperate I’m reading horoscopes. The unwanted turn in my career? The recent collapse of my seven-year-old business, I presume.
Money anxieties? Tame for the fact that the business disintegrates owing tens of thousands of pounds. Fortuitously, my business-partner-cum-boyfriend and I had acted on early advice to set up the business as a limited company, leaving comparatively little personal liability. Still, a loan here, a personal borrowing there and I’m still a good few thousand pounds in debt.
What else? Oh yes. “There will be a change in a love relationship.” Breaking up with my boyfriend and said business partner of nigh on ten years. No one advised me what precautions to take in that instance – perhaps I could have set it up as a limited relationship to negate that damage?
Next? There may be “a change in where you live”. I’d moved out of our shared co-owned flat and back in with my parents. Not ideal, nevertheless their concern is appreciated, their hugs invaluable and their hesitant advice, touching.
I’m broken, disorientated, houseless, manless, businessless and jobless but there’s only one direction I can head from this shambles and that’s up. There’s only one thing for it. That’s right, make a list.
Crushed
When I’m at my lowest ebb I sit down and write a list of 100 things I want to do. Not necessarily that year, just at some point.
Along with some traditional ideas such as travelling around Australia in a campervan and skiing in Canada, the list includes some loopy, difficult to achieve ideas. Setting off a controlled avalanche is one, although I suspect I’m thinking Roadrunner-like plunger rather than the more likely pressing ‘return’ on a keyboard these days.
Another oddity? Being able to crack an egg using one hand. I tick this off the list but I’m not sure cracking the egg and letting the innards dribble through my fingers into a bowl is quite what I meant.
It’s inevitable that sport features heavily, it’s the constant thread that runs throughout my life. One sport item on my list is to attend a major football tournament. Handily, Euro 2004 in Portugal is coming up in a few months so I set my sights on that.
My ex had bought me out of the flat we owned, I’d paid personal debts and so I had money, time and no ties. And no excuses.
I was at my least confident so I just took it one step at a time. First, get tickets.
Ticket to ride
On the day the tickets become available via an England Fans phone line (you think getting tickets via the internet is bad) I’m on a temp job.
I ask to take my lunch break at 9am so that I can start calling the ticket line as soon as it opens. Back from my ‘lunch break’ at 10am it takes me until 3pm of constant redialling to get through – I’m not entirely sure the company got their money’s worth out of me that day.
When I finally hear a voice I’m so excited I breezily ask for two tickets to England versus France and two tickets for England versus Croatia, both matches to be played in Lisbon.
I’m asked for two England fan membership numbers to buy the tickets. I only have my number and I don’t want to miss out just because I have no one to go with so I buy one ticket for each match. I’m in.
Two weeks before the first England match I start to look at accommodation and flights. Having lived in Albufeira during a university placement I feel comfortable staying in the coastal tourist town in the Algarve, so this is where I book my fortnight’s hotel room.
The matches are being played in Lisbon, a three-hour coach ride away, but I decide I’ll happily spend days on the beach before watching two games of football every evening when I don’t have match tickets.
Match made in heaven
England’s first game is against France in the group stage. I head to Lisbon on the coach, soak up the atmosphere in the Square next to the Estádio da Luz, then make my way to my seat two hours before kick off.
This is a big moment for me. I recognise it has taken a lot of courage when I was feeling so low to realise this particular dream. My dad told me afterwards that I looked so pale when he dropped me off at the train station on my way to the airport. But the thing about this whole thing is this: I was more fearful of missing the opportunity than fearful of taking it. What’s that Mark Twain phrase? ‘Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did.’ I spent much of that low time sourcing motivational quotes.
On entering the stadium I deliberately look at the floor until I find my seat, I put my bag down, take a deep breath and turn around.
The stadium is stunning. Lush green manicured-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life grass and the growing anticipation of a cracking match in a few hours time made my emotions bubble to the surface. I’m happy for the first time in a long while.
I call my dad and he can hear it in my voice. The real me still exists in the shell of me. I had the best conversation I’ve ever had with my dad that day.
In good company
After I hang up, I sit quietly, absorbing the growing excitement, watching more and more fans pile into the stadium. Then, I freeze.
My neighbour has arrived and appears to be 20-stones worth of beer and pies wrapped in skin. A bristled head sits atop a melee of tattoos and his flabby torso spills into my seat, encroaching on my personal space, which is fine, not a problem mate.
I’m a solitary 5ft 2ins female football fan so the sight of the exact stereotype of an English hooligan is unwelcome. Nevertheless, you don’t guarantee a Des Lynam-alike neighbour so I grin nervously at him as we await kick-off.
Throughout the game, a thriller in which England end up on the wrong end of a 2-1 result, beer is swilled and a relentless barrage of football chants emanate from my neighbour’s fleshy lips. By the end of the match I am sharing his beer, hugging his bear-like frame and duetting with him to the stadium’s tunes. My prejudice, it seems, was unwarranted.
Estádio da Luz, Benfica’s gorgeous 65,000-seater stadium. 
David Beckham, Michael Owen et al warming up. 
1-0 to England – woohoo! A first-half lead courtesy of Frank Lampard. 
France equalise via a Zinedine Zidane free kick, then a penalty in injury time from the Frenchman leaves England with a 2-1 loss in the first match of the tournament.
After negotiating a tricky group also including Switzerland and Croatia, England are set to play hosts Portugal in the quarter finals. I am due to fly home the day before the match, however, as I don’t have a ticket.
That night it’s my birthday, so I head to a bar and watch Germany get knocked out of the tournament in the group stages by the Czech Republic. I meet a couple of Norwegian girls wearing Portugal and Italy football shirts (Norway have surprisingly not made it to the finals). They ask if I’m going to the game in a couple of days. Sadly not, I tell them, I don’t have a ticket. “Do you want one?” is their response. “Hell yeah,” is mine.
So they go outside the bar to call someone in Lisbon and next thing I know they’re knocking on the window to attract my attention. “It’s £250. Do you want it?”
I pause for a split second before breaking into a big grin. “Yeah she wants it,” they confirm to the anonymous ticket-genie. The next day I miss my flight and instead ready myself for the crunch match the following day.
Ticket genie
I’m given instructions to meet ‘Bob’ outside a hotel in Lisbon the next day, four hours before the match kicks off. I join the Norwegian girls on the bus to Lisbon and then venture off to find ‘Bob’.
Venture being the appropriate word as I weave my way around the back streets that make up Portugal’s capital city. Eventually finding the nominated hotel I await nervously for my golden ticket. A suave looking guy in a business suit appears from the bowels of the hotel, looks at me and gives me an envelope with the name ‘Desmond’ on it.
“Have you counted the money?” he asks me.
“Well, yes,” I say, confused.
This, combined with the whole ‘Desmond’ thing makes me think I’ve got the wrong person, but with a ticket to the match in hand I’m not going to quibble over niceties.
With no guarantee this is a kosher ticket I nervously queue very early on to get into the ground. Amazingly, it works and in I go and the first person I see is former England manager Terry Venables.
“Terry, Terry I’m here on my own. Can I get a picture with you?”
“You’re here on your own? Come here you nutter,” says El Tel affectionately as he gives me a warm hug.
Terry Venables is the first person I see as I head to the Euro 2004 quarter final between England and hosts Portugal. 
Besties David Beckham and Gary Neville warm-up with the team. 
Great atmosphere between fans.
Game time
I take my seat in the stadium among a melee of England and Portugal fans, usually a no, no at football matches but which, for this tournament, makes for a special atmosphere.
To my right sits a Norwegian fan who has never missed an England international and to my left, a couple of Burberry-wearing England fans continuously chant intermittently with the Portuguese supporters. “Por-too-gaal,” “En-ger-land,” “Por-too-gall,” “En-ger-land,” reverberates around the stadium stuffed with excitable football fans.
As usual, England go out dramatically after Wayne Rooney limps off early in the second half with a broken foot, England have a perfectly good goal disallowed (yawn) and then, for the fourth time in four penalty shoot-outs, we go out with el capitan David Beckham missing the vital first penalty. The Portuguese fans around me sympathise.
“It was a good game.”
“You were unlucky.”
I grin mournfully until after about the 21st offer of commiseration I get a bit tetchy and make my way out of the ground.
A David Beckham free kick – one of those ‘lucky to see it live’ sights in sport. 
Wayne Rooney limping off – one of those gut-wrenching, ‘I was there’ moments in sport. 
The tension ratchets up after a 2-2 score after extra-time leads to penalties. 
Frigging penalties. 
England lose, obviously (but can’t help but love this pic I surreptitiously took of my neighbours!)
I arrange to meet with my Norwegian pals so that we can make our way to the station together to catch the late-night bus back to the coast.
Rather joyfully the Portuguese authorities decide to close the tube station that will take us back to the city and our bus. No other transport is heading to the city and taxis are about as scarce as an England fan smiling.
Us three girls decide to walk to the next tube station and on the way flag down a car to ask two lads and their grandfather the whereabouts of the nearest tube stop. Miles away apparently so they offer to give us a lift into the city.
So this is how I find myself stuffed in the back of the smallest car in the world with two Norwegian girls on my right, a smiling Portuguese grandfather on my left (“Hey boys can you take a photo of me and the girls in the back… but don’t show the wife!”) and two ecstatic football fans driving slowly through the pulsating streets of Lisbon.
People are dancing on cars like scenes from the TV show Fame, passengers leap out of cars, dance a jig and dive back through the car window, legs akimbo.
Flags are lunatically waving in the balmy night and an English girl, trapped in a celebration of her team’s demise, is smiling quietly to herself, knowing that despite the night’s result, she’s on the way to getting her mojo back.
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This story, without the photos, is one of thirteen featured in Jo’s book A Little Book of Sport Stories. Available on Amazon the humorous, poignant and feel-good tales are based on Jo’s extraordinary sport life. They include going behind the scenes with her the night she performs in the London 2012 opening ceremony, the time she had a go at sport-related stand-up comedy and her experience as a gymnastics stuntwoman in a feature film. Click the ad below to head to Amazon.
