Wednesday evening. It’s time to go to the pub! My girlfriend is unsure. Why? She’s heavily pregnant. She finds the pub tiresome—she finds it dispiriting, to sit marooned with a Guinness 0.0 while everyone chats rubbish and tosses her only the most boring questions like, “How are you feeling?”

Fair enough, I say, fair critique—but we must. It’s the semifinals. It’s England versus our good pals Argentina. We must! But England are going to lose, she says. They are not going to lose, I say. They are going to win. Even if they do win, she says, they’ll just lose in the final. They’re not going to lose in the final, I say, they’re going to win. It’s coming home.

The only thing that’s coming home, she says, is us, after the pub, with you in a horrible mood because you’ve indulged in some light nationalism followed, once England has lost, by some long rants about this stupid, fascist, shithole island and its completely irredeemable football team.…