I’ve ridden my last rollercoaster

I was in Canada last week, travelling across British Columbia on a luxury train called the Rocky Mountaineer. It was great. The downside was I had to travel to North America and back in five days, meaning that as soon as my body clock had adjusted to the time difference I was back in England. So I was feeling a bit discombobulated when I set off on a road trip to Stoke-on-Trent with my three sons on Saturday morning.

Our first reason for making the journey was to see QPR’s penultimate match of the 2022-23 season against Stoke City, a must-win game for us. We’ve performed so badly since October that only four points separated us from the relegation zone, meaning we needed three from this game or the next to guarantee our survival. More than 2,000 QPR fans made their way up the M1, hoping to have something to celebrate in this miserable season, and for once they weren’t disappointed. Albert Adomah, a 35-year-old midfielder known as ‘Uncle Albert’, scored the only goal, winning the match and cementing our place in the Championship. The visiting fans started singing ‘The Rs are staying up’ the moment the ball found the net and continued until long after the final whistle.

I was glad of the half-hour wait for each ride because it took that long for my organs to settle back into place

As I often tell my children, the beauty of supporting a struggling second-tier club is that victories come along so infrequently they mean much more than they would to an Arsenal or Chelsea fan. I can’t think of many other football supporters who would be so ecstatically happy just because their team had avoided the drop, but for us it was like winning the FA Cup. I liken it to being a not particularly attractive man.