Match 17 - Udinese

The following is what I remember of watching the match between Udinese and Napoli:

Actually, I tell a lie, I remember two things: there was a punch up in the stand down to my left, and someone hugged me (which, using my keen journalistic skills of deduction, suggests that I was present for Udinese scoring). Unfortunately, the need to rely on deducing this was due to my usual journalistic rigour getting abandoned pre-match in a car park near the stadium while paying tribute to Dionysus.

So, apart from those two gems, I’m afraid that all my brain can offer is an unsettling black spot.

The why, we’ll come to in a moment, but first, we need to talk about my drinking feelings of embarrassment and shame. These strike me down more and more frequently the older I get, which is entirely unwelcome. They’re not particularly Scottish traits, but I do have a couple of Irish friends and I live in catholicism-central, so rather than delve too far inwards, I’ll blame these outside influences. Although most commonly triggered by a night on the sauce, they also crop up if I spend money spuriously (so they’ve been haunting me since the first match watching Torino), or make an excuse to not see friends (tip: writing a book is an ideal ‘get out of speaking to people’ card).As I say, in recent years these unwelcome guests have been popping into my head more and more often. Not that I was some kind of abstinent, parsimonious monk beforehand. 
And nor is it the case that I’ve become a solitary, heavy-drinking lush. Rather, after a night out, instead of a hangover I get horribly embarrassed. I know that I wouldn’t have done anything while being under the influence, because I’m quite a relaxed drunk and, as I hope will have become abundantly clear by now, I don’t like confrontation. Nor I’m told, do I typically show any obvious signs of being three sheets to the wind. I just know that I was, and that’s enough to make me cringe. 

Now, I don’t think it’s to do with having a pre-historic idea of manliness and being able to drink - most men take their dad as a role model, and in this I’m no different, but my dad’s flying after three pints. And it’s not that my reaction to alcohol has changed over the years - in my youth I’d drink and not remember stuff the next day either. So, I don’t think it’s to do with the debilitating effects of age, notions of being less masculine, getting in trouble, or fearing that I might have pissed myself while standing on a stool with my pants on my head. Being a quiet drunk makes me something of a stealth drunk, but it’s just the occasional fear that people can hear my thoughts - I’m aware that I’m drunk, and would hate that other people know that I know.

Rather, and whisper it now, I think I might just be growing up. Eesh, what an idea. It’s not becoming of a gentleman to be drunk in public (lock your binging up at home!), and while I don’t have a monocle and bowler hat, to get in that state in public, particularly in front of people I don’t know, makes me feel less like a member of civilised society.

So, it came to pass that as people were filing into churches on Easter Sunday under a drizzly sky, I was hauling my carcass across Udine to get the interminably long train back home. It had been a good weekend away from home, and in terms of the book, I was well and truly on the home-straight. Unfortunately, on the walk back to the train station while I was trying to figure out what I’d done when I got back to my hotel the evening previous, I got lost and very nearly missed the first train of the day. 

But first, let’s rewind 36 hours. 

Udine is so far away from Genoa that going to watch Udinese play would take three days, two of which I’d have the pleasure of spending large portions of on trains. Serie A doesn’t play any matches on Easter Sunday, instead moving the matches forward 24 hours. So, on Good Friday I set off for my first time to the north-east corner of Italy in search of wee zebras. 

It’d have been a hell of a long journey for me to make and not find good people to interview, so in the days beforehand I did my usual signing up to forums to try and meet folk who’d help. On one of these a group of guys (I’m assuming they’re men) replied telling me to make my way to the car park of the North stand. There I should look for a dark Volkswagen Passat with a Belgian licence plate. The owner of said car would be a chap called Renzo, and that’s who they were all going to meet for a barbecue and a drink before the match.

On the day of the match, I woke up, went for breakfast and a stroll round the centre of Udine, then set off for the stadium. Feeling pretty refreshed and in a good mood, in contrast to the depressing grey clouds overhead, I found the stadium without that much difficulty. After a quick fag break so that I could check online what kind of car a Passat was (I’m not one for car models) I did a round of the car park, thinking that it’d be a doddle. Fortunately, when I arrived there weren’t that many people there, so it didn’t take me long to, unfortunately, not find the car in question. After a brief repose with a beer from a burger van, I walked back round the car park, this time taking care to look for Belgian licence plates. While doing this, I was also casting lingering glances at the groups of people who had already congregated, in the hope that they might twig that it was I that they’d spoken to online. After about five minutes of looking carefully at car licence plates, then at the people hanging about, it dawned on me that maybe I looked like a policeman. This wasn’t the impression I was going for, and still having not found the mythical Renzo, I started approaching groups and asking if they knew him or anyone from the forum that I’d been on. Given that the forum’s name was in dialect, I couldn’t pronounce it properly, so was met with blank looks, and a blank in my Renzo search. 

But lo, what was that over there? Pretty far away from all the other cars was a group of people who had hung a Guinness flag on a tree. My kind of people. As I got closer to them and the wretched feeling I’d have the following day, I could tell that none of their cars looked like the picture of a Passat that I’d found on Google. Upon asking, they didn't know any of the people who I was looking for either. They did, however, insist that I sit down and have a beer. Like I say - my kind of people. 

They were all very friendly and inclusive, and seemed pretty interested in what the hell I was doing in Udine on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Obligingly, I told them my story, at the end of which I was given another beer. We chatted some more, and then, “would I like some wine?” Being the perfect guest, I graciously accepted, and on we went. More wine and beer later, they offered me some of their barbecue, which being almost exclusively pork-based (which I don’t eat) eliminated pretty much everything that was on the menu. I was feeling fine though, so continued with chatting and drinking, and somewhere down the line fell into the familiar trap of drinking a skinful on an empty stomach. 

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