A story for my children and those that fear loneliness.
Recently I attended a networking event that reminded me why I don’t like these affairs. In an effort to shell out at least two of the business cards I’d remembered to bring, I struck up a conversation with a fellow attendee. I did my best to look interested in his career status but, to be honest, I was faking it.
Steering the conversation away from security – the principal topic – I asked him what he does outside this sometimes serious domain. Travel is his thing – a mutual endeavour – and Japan is his place. Having yet to visit the land of the rising sun, I probed some more. Judo is his real passion, and Japan is apparently the place to practise this ancient art. His eyes positively radiated as he regaled his story – at complete odds with the duller shine when he’d talked about his job.
This spontaneous interaction was as unplanned as it was short, since a call to listen to the sponsor of the free drinks and canapés cut short our exchange, and he was subsequently lassoed by someone selling barrier controls. After distributing my last non dog eared business card to a charming lady from Kilkenny, I headed home, still in essentially the same scruffy garb I’d worn at Oldham Athletic the night before. My plan had been to return via Reading, change, then head into London, but a fallen tree on the line to Wolverhampton rerouted me directly to the capital.
As I negotiated my path around the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, I came across a sculpture of two seemingly depressed souls that appeared to epitomise my feeling of gloom following our humiliation in Manchester the evening before. Supporting Notts County isn’t for the faint hearted.
Then my synapses suddenly sparked. My earlier conversation had ignited a very personal proposition: everyone who knows me as more than a passing acquaintance is fully cognisant of the fact that I traverse England and Wales to support an unglamorous fourth tier football team and never flinch a fixture (save when I holiday abroad, and even then it’s timed to miss as few matches as possible). That’s the what I do – the easy, surface-level observation that invites others the opportunity to ridicule the enterprise. Maybe some would rank judo as a more adventurous endeavour, but nonetheless this what – the veneer – obscured a delicious line of enquiry that I had somehow neglected to excavate: why?
By the time this particular penny dropped I was on the bus home; returning to the posh bar in South London wasn’t an option. The frustration fermented when I realised that my why was obscured to those who knew the what but had never grasped the reason behind it – and two of these actors were my adult children. So, to them – and anyone else who has ever wondered “why” – here is my tumultuous tale. Spoiler alert: at its heart, my why doesn’t connect with football.
Eleven years ago, my wife Theresa died in the most harrowing of circumstances. A beautiful lady in her forties, she was diagnosed with a chordoma – a benign cancer, but due to its location, potentially lethal. Three intrusive brain surgeries later she had defeated death and, incredibly, maintained all motor functions, hearing, and speech. Her recuperation was cruelly curtailed when she suffered consecutive strokes that left her in an unresponsive coma. Eighteen months later she died without ever regaining consciousness.
Amongst many other debilitating demons, the one I feared most was loneliness. I became paralysed by the fixation that I’d fail to find again what I had shared with her – a life companion who knew the real me; externally, a brash bounder, but on the inside insecure and programmed to be in a partnership.
Then, one day, I blurted out this disclosure to my good friend Bekki. Rather than echo the well meaning reassurances other friends had offered – essentially that I wouldn’t be on my own for long – she posed a question: when are you on your own and it doesn’t frighten you? That was simple. Following Notts County is a nomadic pursuit. Sure, on arrival I eventually share the experience with thousands of others, but the journey to and from inevitably engages with isolation.
She was right. Loneliness could be defeated, and every journey from then onwards – from my base in Berkshire to Carlisle, Torquay, Barrow in Furness, Newport, Dover, and all points in between – has become my two fingered salute to the thing I feared the most. And even in a football crowd I can be alone if I wish to – it’s not mandatory to talk to anyone else.
But the story of my why is still incomplete. I feel compelled to reveal why I regularly wear sunglasses – even in December – particularly on home soil at Meadow Lane: legacy and the loss of my dad and best friend. He first took me to watch Notts when I was a kid and shared the pain of being a Magpie until he died, leaving me to carry the baton for future generations. Even though I failed this calling with my son, the sight of my grandson Arthur – aged just four – walking out as mascot, reduced me to a gibbering wreck. So did our 2023 playoff final Wembley win that propelled us back into the Football League. And then there’s the pang of immediate loss which plays out every time the team enters the pitch to the crescendo of noise. As hard as I look, I can’t ever find him. The sunglasses camouflage the grief I’ve learnt to live with but can never forget.
So, following Notts County is a metaphor for slaying the dragon and a reminder of the need to keep at it in order to keep those demons at bay. And yes, maybe somewhere along the way there’ll be a promotion or two – but in truth, that’s never been the primary pull.
Perhaps Bill Shankly did get it right when he made the astute observation:
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.
This is my why – and now the only question left is: what’s yours.
© Ian Kirke 2026
@ iankirke.bsky.social
Title photograph reproduced by kind permission of Dan Westwell