There are simple joys you miss while living abroad, including getting the BBC on your television at the press of a button. On the eve of the men’s European Championship though, I found myself in London for a few days of work, staying at a friends’ house and with the TV remote in hand.
There on the iPlayer was the greatest warm-up to tournament football imaginable: hours of goal highlights from Euros gone by on the Classic Euros channel. Decades of footballing brilliance, heartbreak and controversy there at my fingertips. I settled in with a packet of McVities digestives (another much-missed luxury item I miss while in Spain), and pressed play.
It was a couple of hours of retro bliss. The graphics were gaudy and one-dimensional, the theme tunes nostalgic, the TV studio sets relics of broadcasting ages gone by. And it was all playing on a loop.
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