Being a Welsh football fan in New York is a pretty exclusive club.
It's even more exclusive than being a NY Bluebird (current membership: six). On Saturday there are just four of us in Nevada Smiths at 11a.m. We might be small, but we've got passion, heart and all those Taffy cliches so we have a bash at the anthem:
"Eggy wogian or vreeeeeeeeee?"
The England fans are silent. I don't blame them, who wants to Save The Queen? So they've got 3 lions, but we've got a Dragon. Y Ddraig. It's a mythical creature that doesn't exist but if it did it would be harder than 3 lions, yeah?
Actually who would win a fight between a Dragon and 3 Lions? As I'm pondering this the game kicks off. "Would the Lions use their obvious advantage of numbers to overpower the Dragon?" Bellamy is having a scrap with Rooney one minute in. "Or would the Dragon pull out it's trump card of Fire breath?" Hmmm. England score. 6 mins in. My Stella is empty.
If the rest of the day was a film, this would be the bit where they do a sped up montage with screaming Indie music to imply the hedonistic abandonment. There would be pints spilling, bar tricks, shirt swapping, fags smoked, an onslaught of Nordics and me having a tantrum when the bar runs out of Salt & Vinegar Walkers. The montage would end up with me and Laura on the pavement at 6 p.m and me remembering I have to be in a cocktail dress and at The Comedy Awards in an hour.
Then as the music is fading I would arrive home pissed to a pissed off Teenger, who isn't any less pissed off when I tell her she's being a Saffy and then Facebook and Tweet as such.
I manage to turn myself around with the help of some Red bull, a stern talking to myself in the mirror and light reflecting primer. Then we are in a cab on our way to The Hammerstein Ballroom.
Cue another montage with blurry celeb faces: Alec Bladwin, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Will Farrell, the blokes from Hot Tub Time Machine.
After The Awards I inhale pizza from a place over the road and the cabs all appear to have fallen into a rabbit hole. It is cold. Really cold. I am not having fun anymore.
Sometime past midnight... it is rumoured that I fall over into a pothole outside Penn Station while hailing a cab.
No. That absolutely didn't happen. What also did not happen was that I cut my knee open through my tights and impaled a piece of gravel in my hand and that The Teenager had to pick me up and push me and my bleeding knee into a taxi.
Never. Happened.
Considering the fact these things never happened it is most strange that The Teenager is still barely speaking to me today.
*
