I’ve been told I’m a curse in many domains of life and by many people. Actually, just one person, but my dad has an incredible range of personalities for someone who’s never been on stage. I keep a journal of each time he’s said it to me. My therapist is always very interested in this, but more in how a 2 year old could write so legibly and eloquently than out of professional curiosity. So, when Spurs beat Norway’s Bodø/Glimt in the semi-final of the Europa League, I etched a new heading in my journal:
Wednesday 21st May 2025, 8pm
Let’s dissect that timestamp:
Wednesday: Hump day. The most empowering, yet controversial day of the week
21st: When birth certificates start lying
May: be
2025: A multiple of five
8pm: Kick off of the Tottenham Hotspur v Man United Europa League final in Bilbao
As soon Spurs qualified for the final, I picked up my phone to message my dad and discuss arrangements for going to Spain. But there was already a message waiting for me.
Dad: No
Me: You sent that before the game finished! X
Dad: Didn’t. I’m 2 mins ahead of you. Try actually paying for TNT next time
Me: Why can’t I come? X
Dad: You’re cursed
Me: That’s just superstition x
Dad: I have evidence
Me: Let’s hear it then x
I immediately regretted asking.
Dad: Since you were born, my handicap hasn’t come down, my hair’s turned grey, the planet’s become a sauna, and my marriage with your mother has never been the same. In what way you ask? Well, let me tell you what way.
Me: Stop!!!
I was livid when I realised I’d lost my 3 year X streak. He’d lured me out of my low block and counterattacked me. To think, my xX was 11.9 going into this conversation.
Dad: And Tottenham stopped winning trophies.
Me: We won the league cup in 1999 x
I was back playing 0’s and X’s.
Dad: You were 5. The curse wasn’t at full strength. And Voldemort was yet to return to human form.
Me: What? X
Dad: Carry on
Me: 2008 league cup x
Dad: You weren’t there
Me: So that’s what’s given you this idea! X
Dad: And Madrid
Madrid
The big one. The 2019 Champions League Final we lost against Liverpool in Madrid. It wasn’t only the result, there was bad blood between me and the old boy. He left scarred, emotionally and physically. As late as ten minutes before the game, he was in an ambulance with blood dripping down his shin. Standing a jab away from the ambulance, I received a barrage of abuse Ange Postecoglou hasn’t come close to experiencing this season. Dad claimed I pushed him, I claim I didn’t because I didn’t. I found a shortcut over some gravel to beat the queue to the turnstiles. I pointed where to go and he toppled over from the gust of wind my finger created. If VAR had been working properly in 2019, Sissoko’s gain would have been Dad’s loss as the decision would have been overturned and he’d have been shown a yellow for simulation, ruling him out of the Super Cup. The only thing I will admit, is that it didn’t help we’d both been drinking for 8 hours in the stifling humidity of a fan park (fan parks are both the worst and the best. No matter where they are in the world, they’re both disgustingly hot and enchantingly feral. I’m certain they’re the main contributor to the global warming I’m blamed for).
The morning after the game, at my behest, our host translated the medical report belonging to a recently retired executive of her company. Unfortunately, she decided to leave “agresivo” in her native tongue.
But the key takeaway, I was in Madrid in 2019 and we lost.
Me: I don’t drink anymore. So I’ll be able to say with certainty I didn’t touch you x
Dad: SO YOU’RE NOT CERTAIN???
Me: Look, you can’t stop me coming. It’s my season ticket x
Dad: I’m the only one who knows your login details
Outsourcing
In my final accountancy exam there was a question about the pros and cons of outsourcing. I slated the finely educated, but naive, CEO for moving all but the, frankly lazy, sales team to India, and then being left without HR, Legal, Finance and Catering after a sequence of natural disasters that eerily mimicked The Day After Tomorrow. Soon, even the sales team were gone, having starved to death without their meals-on-wings.
Having happily outsourced all my Spurs admin to my Dad, I then felt like Gary Neville without a leg to stand on after his horror spell as Valencia manager. But I did the right thing and fell on my sword rather than return to punditry/studying and criticising more managers/CEOs.
Me: What am I supposed to do with my ticket? X
Dad: Same thing we did with the dog we didn’t have space for after the Accident of 94.
With that, I briefly slipped into the third person and the Black Sheep of the Northern Line took a direct tube to Battersea to donate his stray ticket. Entering Battersea Dogs & Cats Home with my Spurs cap on, and third person fedora off, the staff took more pity on me than the one-legged cat being shunted round and round in the revolving door. I was ushered through to the basket cases and set my ticket down in a basket with nuclear waste signs on either side and in between two agresivo pit bulls who immediately backed up against their far walls, scared for the first time in their lives. I trudged out, hopped over the one-legged cat and hoped my dad was right. When I was ten jabs away, I looked back and was reassured to see the daughter, of a father and daughter duo with this season’s Spurs shirt (one home, one away), pick up the cat like Thor’s hammer, then ask the receptionist if there were any radioactive strays that fancied a term-time trip to the Basque region with the two and a quarter of them.
I put my thirdora back on and the Black Sheep of the Northern Line made his way home. Not a direct line this time, there were two Edgeware trains in a row so he got on the first and changed at Camden for the High Barnet branch. Fedora off, I pumped up the pillows on my sofa and vegetated for the next two weeks. I just hoped my dad was right and I really was a cursed and constant blight on the world.
Let’s put the frog away and dissect another timestamp.
Wednesday 21st May 2025, 9.45pm+7
Wednesday: Still empowering, still controversial
21st: 4 higher and one st less than the number of years since Spurs won a trophy
May: The fourth be with you
2025: 41 years after Spurs won a European trophy
9.45pm+7: The time* the curse was lifted! The old boy was right! It didn’t seem real. Not him being right, he’s always right. But seeing those soiled white shirts, white shorts and white socks glinting and gleaming off silver. And a manager, who looks and often acts like Bowser, grinning like a one-legged Cheshire Cat.
*Technically 9.45pm+7+2 for me
Although Dad wasn’t completely right… The curse didn’t just lift, it rebounded. For as the celebrations began, my mum posted in the family WhatsApp with a video. I saw the caption first.
Mum: I have just had three Karens from church message me asking why my husband is swearing on TV!!! This is the second Accident you’re responsible for, you bull in a china shop! Well, I hope you like running away from them and drinking sangria, because if you ever come back you’re going to be washing, hoovering and running away from me until Tottenham win another trophy! Xx
I played the video. It’s a clip from the game on TNT, the channel he so proudly funds. In injury time, there’s a clean as you like close up of him in the crowd and you can unmistakably lip read a curse word even Voldemort would think twice about saying. Goes to show the game is never over, even if my journal is.