Having been rescued, he didn’t want to be the drowning man who pulled his saviours under.

But illness meant dependency. It was society’s last chance to push the benefits of membership. For every person who feared dying alone, there were others like Panenka who resisted the intimacy of it, the body’s loss of privacy and the final exhibition of the personality.

Years of life untraced and unshared.

He had thought his days of hurting those he loved were behind him, but when had he ever been able to promise that?

I can only hope it’s one of those things that goes away after a while. But it’s hard not to think that it’s something I have done or said – or not done or not said.

‘Football is their excuse for drinking. Every big game is an excuse for drinking, as is every celebration and disappointment.

You can’t disappoint people without getting their hopes up first.

who liked to sit at the bar and read instead of joining the others. It was his style to overhear rather than listen, to

interject rather than participate.