Hi everyone, I've been essentially awol for six months. Why, you probably wonder now I'm positing again, though the thought may not've entered your mind before today.
Well I've been a little bit stuck, dear reader. Between a rock and a really bad writer's block. I've been opening Blogger, writing two or three words, fingers poised over the keyboard waiting for the lightning to strike, for the penny to drop and for the metaphorical ink to flow from my fingers. But it didn't happen. My dashboard remained littered with half written posts about skincare and why people cannot get my name right - it's not hard, it's Hope.
But that ends now! You see reader, something odd has been happening. Something that I, a lifelong Norwich City supporter could never have seen coming.
I'm rooting for Leicester City.
I've always rolled my eyes at local LES-TAH CITEH pride. I'm a Leicester girl, always have been, but the Foxes have never done it for me. As a city, we have so much more to offer than what I've grown up knowing as a sub-par football team! And I'm speaking as a Canary fan! Kasabian! Gok Wan! Cheese and pork pie! I've always grown up thinking the Foxes were as lost a cause as Filbert Street. So explain to me, someone, please, why I sat there, a Bank Holiday Monday, intensely watching, heart in mouth, as Spurs lost to Chelsea. THE Chelsea that held a candle in my cold little heart whilst headed by my one true football hero and number 1 crush, Jose Mourinho.
Just like Leicester's climb up the league, I can't exactly pinpoint when this glory supporting started. Because that's what this is, I am not ashamed to admit, it's pure, unadulterated, unabridged, explicit glory supporting. Maybe it was when I first bothered learning who Jamie Vardy was. It could've been the time I quietly chuckled to myself when the King Power stadium lit up with the pained cries of thousands of Geordies. But it seems most likely to me, the lightbulb moment was a conversation with a brother. The brother who supports Leicester City. The one who has mocked mine and my mother's NCFC pride for years.
"Well we totally put Man City in their place that time!" I said, in the midst of bickering with said brother about my football knowledge. He nodded, silently and raised his eyebrow, slightly but deliberately.
"We?"
That told me all I needed to know. He wasn't wrong and I was a glory supporter. I wish I could say it was a slip of the tongue and for my Canary siblings, I hope you forgive this, but it wasn't. I was indulging myself in true bandwagon jumping, hell, get me a packet of Walkers and a King Power kit, I'm sorry I'm late to the party Leicester but here I bloody am! I came into Leicester this morning on the bus, streets littered with blue confetti, streamers and pictures of Claudio Ranieri - a man with excellent taste in eyewear and a proper grandad vibe about him. I saw two blokes sat in a Gregg's, heads in hands, clearly weighing up the pros and cons of pulling a sickie today. It was a weird sort of patriotism I felt wash over me as I looked at the two men with their bacon cobs in one hand, phone with their boss' numbers loaded in the other. "DO IT!" I wanted to shout. "Fake scurvy, rickets, Ulloametrosis, just take the day off, eat your cobs sirs, go home and lie in bed all day!"
It dawned on me at that point, half wanting to hug the two men in a Gregg's on Belgrave Gate and half wanting to know if going to the King Power last night was worth it, why I've jumped on, clinging on with white knuckles, to this Les-tah bandwagon. It's that same swell of pride when you stroll past Tom from Kasabian on New Walk or when someone acknowledges where Leicester is, not just "near Nottingham". You grow up thinking your hometown is crap (sorry, mum). That it's out to get you, and the grey and rotting buildings are chipping away at your wide-eyed enthusiasm to live out in the big wide world. Like you're in a Bruce Springsteen song, that if you don't get out soon, you'll be sucked into a vacuous pit of turmoil and Arriva buses. Then every now and again, something changes that. Sparks a little light, Creates a pulse of electricity that hums through the streets, crackles in the air, makes that hideous building by the train station maybe not so bad after all. That's what the Premier League win means for me and my hometown pride. That it's not all bad, and maybe it's about time I'm adding the Foxes to my list of Lesta's finest exports. Oh, and of course, though I've known yellow the whole time, I look pretty good in blue.
