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17 - Working on the day of the Final Graeme Aldous: working in a Lambretta shop on the day of the Final

The 1966 World Cup Final is the ONLY professional football match I've watched all the way through, either live, or broadcast. In the mid-60s I used to spend Saturday afternoons in my friend Don's Lambretta shop in Lee Green, South East London, making tea, doing simple maintenance jobs, chatting with customers, and generally getting under my friend's feet. I had no interest in any football matches when there were Lambrettas to talk about, but on this particular afternoon Don had brought in a portable TV set and put it on the counter. No-one seemed to want to chat, there was a limit on how many cups of tea we could drink, and Don was too pre-occupied to find me any jobs. So I gravitated towards the set and started to watch - there weren't even any customers to natter to.

Well, except one... and he'd only come in for Lambretta bits because he'd forgotten about the football - once he saw the TV, he stayed the rest of the afternoon until we thought it was all over. And then it was!

I vowed then that I'd seen the one-and-only PERFECT football match - there could never be a finish like that again. To watch any other game of two halves would only be an anti-climax. 50 years on, I STILL haven't watched more than the goals on the news.

Graeme Aldous

Memory added on August 25, 2016

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