As I said last year, that old Bob Marley song kept going round and round my head during the darkest days of Sandra’s illness. What I didn’t say then was how it came into my head, which also why it’s back now. I hate to admit it, but it’s all Ajax’s fault.
I’m not an Ajax fan even if I live in Amsterdam, as I long ago gave my loyalty to Feijenoord, though for most part this has been academic, as I never followed football all that much other than during European or World championships. But when Sandra got ill and kept being ill, football was one of the things I fled into, something that I could absorb myself in, something that in the long run doesn’t really matter, but which can get me worked up enough not to think too much about what could happen; perhaps most importantly, football was and is something that doesn’t remind me of Sandra, something I don’t associate with her. And so I found myself watching games I never would’ve in normal times, including Ajax playing European matches. Which meant, as in the video above, hearing Ajax supporters singing their songs, of which “Three Little Birds” is a particulate favourite of theirs and it burned itself in my mind, damn them.
Then of course it was a song that embodied a sort of slightly cynical optimism to me; now it just reminds me of better times and I can’t help but get a bit choked up hearing it. So much for finding escape in football…
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