Between four and seven I spoke semi-English. I only half understood people around me, and could only one-third communicate. I spent a lot of time in my head. I would compose football games in my mind, commentating on them. I invented teams. I described the players’ lives and moods in detail in the commentary. The players got older and had problems. They moved teams and were reinvigorated. I made up leagues. I kept dozens of pads with all my teams and the scores from games written down in them. I made up national teams. I spent my pocket money on cups from the local sports shop to present to the imaginary teams.

I was a player too in this imagined world, a midfielder like Ray Wilkins, and after many knock-backs I made it into the England side. But I used myself sparingly, often as a substitute; I preferred commentating on the others.

Once at school the headmaster came round and I blurted out that I was off to Montevideo to play in a tournament. He congratulated me. My teacher, Mrs Stern, called my parents and asked if I needed time off school for my trip to Uruguay. They told her there was no trip. The next day she asked me to stay behind after class. This had never happened and I knew it was important. ‘So it turns out everything you told us about going to Uruguay, about you being involved in football, was a fib,’ Mrs Stern said. From her tone I could tell I had done something wrong but the problem was I didn’t know what the word ‘fib’ meant. Back home I looked it up. It didn’t seem right. I hadn’t though of my imaginary world as a lie, just a parallel reality, and the one reality had spilled into the other.