Beautiful game? Perhaps. Pity about the fans.

I dread travelling home late Wednesday nights. I keep forgetting how much I dislike it, and then I'll arrive at Upton Park after a West Ham game and get a 15-minute-long refresher course in my idea of hell.

Like tonight:

• Idiot Child smoking on the train and cackling to his mates, "Oy, 'oos smokin'?" while venting clouds of exhaust
• I ask Idiot Child to stop smoking, only to get a chorus of "Shuddup"s and "Fuck off"s from not only his mates but most of the 'adult' football fans in the carriage
• Having to listen to inane babblings of idiot Essex slag bragging at being escorted off a train miles shy of her destination for being caught smoking and then having no ticket, so having to walk all the way in her new shoes. Can't afford to pay her fare, but has new shoes. Exemplary.
• Idiot Child standing - still smoking - in the doorway of my train at my station while I'm trying to disembark, and refusing to move until I push him aside as the doors start closing, and then yelling abuse at me for my presumption.
• Having a half-full can of beer thrown at me from a window by Idiot Child's crony as the train departs (he missed)
• Being treated to the sight of an 'adult' male hauling it out and letting the urine fly directly under a main road streetlamp just outside my station for all the world to see and applaud (which his friend did)

I'm not blaming football, you have to understand. I think it's a pack animal response - make the mob big enough, and a couple of choice specimens will take advantage of the audience to make up for whatever inadequacies they're dealing with. Still. I dread travelling home late Wednesday nights. And it's not because of the theatre crowds heading home.