KEVIN MCCALLUM: Magical, magnificent and manic

You’ll Never Walk Alone is perhaps one of the easier songs to sing. There are no tricky high notes, awkward words or phrasing. You just walk on through the wind and through the rain and with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.

Except when you choose to watch Liverpool alone. Which is what I did on Sunday and do most days. Supporting Liverpool is not a spectator sport for me. Liverpool vs Spurs. One point needed to win the 20th league title and a team managed by a lifelong Liverpool fan in the way of that point.

But, first, YNWA. And the man with the ponytail sitting in front of me at Jolly Roger in Parkhurst sang it hard, hearty and horribly. Tone-deaf, tuneless and totally in sync with the moment of magic. It was magical, magnificent, mad and, wonderfully, Manchester-free.

What weirdness. What wonder. What the f**k? Spurs score after 12 minutes. And then it all went white noise, deafening and loud, easy and hard, bizarre and, yet, expected.

It was so different five years ago during lockdown, a celebration that was, again, expected and bizarre and took far too long to happen. It was a white-noise affair, full of empty-stadium echoes, social distancing and loud deafness.

I used up two bottles of Klein Constantia’s MCC because my wife missed the first popping of the cork and I had to re-pop. I was in bed early that night but then got up early to take the bins out the next day and may have had a bottle on my way out to the street. I didn’t walk alone or straight. But what a day. What a night. What a morning.

But then, the last few years got wonky. Life, its messiness and confusion, gets in the way sometimes. It makes you fearful yet brave, and you need to take a step back from the edge and look out over the cliff and wonder what the waves are bringing to the shore.

Flotsam and bedlam and wash-up-ed-am and freedom and joy and regrets and memories and love and hate and more memories and more hate and yet more love than hate, the short cuts and long cuts, things you should have done, things you didn’t, sighs, highs, lows, fears, tears, smiles, laughter, hugs, forgiveness, words left unsaid, words you wish you had never said, credits, debts, scratches, tugs of ears, kisses, fondles, the wrong girls and the right girls, anger, sorrow, sobriety, numbness, awareness, jokes, sleights, truths, half-truths, friends, enemies...

And then there is Liverpool.

I have been writing this story, this missive and this love story in drips and drabs. It has been over-wrought and over-written, deleted, edited and, well, now, embraced with a “f**k it, man, let it go”.

Liverpool has been my constant. My north star, religion, messiah, my very reason for waking up in the morning and my last thought at night.

I am 57 now. For 52 of those years I have loved Liverpool unconditionally because I know Liverpool loved me unconditionally. Well, it had to. I fell for them by chance. My dad arrived home from his job at Ulsterbus in Newtownards in Northern Ireland one day with two sports bags. One Liverpool, one Man United. I chose the right red bag. My late brother, Brian, chose the wrong one. It took years before he saw the light and came over to the Force from the dark side.

I left the Jolly Roger for home after the first half on Sunday. It felt like it was done, safety was 45 minutes away. It is a gentle walk home to where I now live, a lifetime, two provinces and two titles away. I stopped for an ice cream. I sighed and then watched the coronation in my own, silent, confused and happy way. I needed the peace, the space away from the noise and the fury, the time to think and embrace a time I once took for granted and will, I suspect, see again in my lifetime.

Never walking alone, never singing in tune, being out of touch and yet in time with a team that is magical, manic, magnificent, Manchester-Free and, well, Me. This is the best of times after the most ordinary of times.

YNWA. It’s an easy song to sing. Walk on. Walk on.