HEART
by Olly Wicken
Ian was small for seven. His second-hand tracksuit hung off him like it was embarrassed to be seen on such a tiny frame. If people mentioned it, he said he was having a bit of trouble growing into it.
He didn’t go to school very often. He spent most of the time at home. When he watched his favourite programme on the black and white television in the dining room, it bothered him how rapidly Mr Benn’s feet went backwards and forwards. Ian had to move slowly and carefully. Around the house, he pretended to be a pale-throated three-toed sloth. On the rare occasions his mother agreed to take him to the shops in the precinct, he imagined himself as a dandelion clock trying to avoid a breeze.
Ian had to be careful because his heart was delicate. His mother explained this to him in the same tone she used for instructions like ‘don’t put marbles in your mouth because you’ll choke’ or ‘don’t give the dog cheese because it will be sick’. He wasn’t to move quickly. He wasn’t to get excited. He should sit still and read. But not adventure stories.
He did what he was told. He worried that laughter would put too much strain on his heart so he avoided The Beano and The Dandy. He definitely never watched The New Pink Panther Show on Saturday teatimes.
When he played football by himself in the garden, he acted out slow motion action replays. When he scored, he didn’t shout ‘goal!’, he just gently raised a hand — like a pedestrian to a stopped motorist at a zebra crossing. He liked to pretend he was West Bromwich Albion’s Asa Hartford whose big transfer to Leeds United in November 1971 didn’t happen because the player had the same heart condition that Ian had. Ian wasn’t sure why Asa Hartford was allowed to run around very fast for ninety minutes, but, anyway, he was pleased for him.
Ian had come to love football. Not passionately, because that would have worried his mother. He loved it with the quiet devotion of the nuns he saw each week at the church where his mother prayed for him. He wanted to support a big team — Liverpool, maybe, or Leeds — but she wouldn’t allow it. Big teams meant big moments, and big moments meant danger.
One morning he asked: ‘What about Watford?’ It was January 1972. He was putting jam on his toast and had got butter on the drooping sleeves of his tracksuit. Watford were the local team.
His mother looked into it. Watford were bottom of the table. They hadn’t won for 8 games. They’d only scored one goal in that time. ‘Watford are safe to follow,’ she announced.
Ian didn’t know much about Watford, but he trusted his mother. And so he became a Watford fan — cautiously, as if he was taking in a stray cat.
*
It turned out he was at no risk. The team lost their next five games as well. They only scored one goal.
He wasn’t allowed to go along to watch, but he imagined that the fans at Vicarage Road would be sighing instead of roaring. Watford’s was a particular brand of disappointment and it suited Ian perfectly. The team were so far adrift in the relegation zone that no one’s hearts would be fluttering dangerously at the prospect of the team mounting a great escape.
The next season, Watford were in the division below. Ian felt less comfortable because the team kept winning their home games. He was especially worried when the club was in the upper half of the table and broke their transfer record to sign a striker from Crystal Palace. But everything calmed down because Ross Jenkins was useless. Watford ended their season avoiding relegation only on goal average. This was reassuring.
As the seasons went past, Ian became weaker and rarely got out of bed. He became more breath than boy. His mother fussed over him with a tenderness that was half love, half fear. It made Ian feel like a fragile treasure.
It was comforting that Watford were getting weaker too. He liked how their defeats arrived like soft drizzle rather than thunderstorms. He liked how, when they weren’t getting relegated, their league table position was somewhere between unambitious and apologetic.
*
By the summer of 1977, Ian had managed to reach the age of 12, which he knew was a typical life span for a pale-throated three-toed sloth. Then something happened that he didn’t like at all. A new manager arrived at Watford — Graham Taylor — and the team started winning.
At first it was just one match. Then another. Then a third. Soon they were top of the league table, and the local newspaper was using words like ‘transformation’. Ian felt uneasy. He didn’t want Watford transformed. Winning and scoring lots of goals might encourage his heart to misbehave.
One Saturday evening, as he lay in bed, his mother said: ‘In future, I’m taking the radio away from your bedside on Saturday afternoons. I’ll tell you Watford’s result afterwards.’
Ian was disappointed, but he didn’t blame Watford. He just wished they’d go back to being considerate. He asked his mother: ‘Can I still stay up to watch Match of the Day? That’s safe for me because Watford aren’t good enough to be on it.’
His mother looked down at him and bit her lip and smoothed his hair, as if he was leaving to go somewhere.
*
Come the end of January, Watford were clear at the top of the table. They’d won their last six games. They’d scored ten goals in the last two alone. Ian didn’t feel it had got to his heart, though. Nothing seemed to be able to get to his heart now. He was in bed the whole time.
His mother asked: ‘Do you want to try and get up for Match of the Day?’
She looked sad, so Ian said jokingly: ‘I’d better not. Watford are good enough to be on it.’ Really, though, he just didn’t have the strength.
His mother sat down beside him and held his hand. She said: ‘They’re doing well now. I wish you could have gone to watch them, at least once.’
Ian wished so too. But his mother looked tearful, so he said as a joke: ‘I never had the heart to support them properly.’
His mother let out something between a laugh and a sob and smoothed his hair again.
*
Forty-eight years later, Ian takes his usual seat in the Sir Elton John Stand at Vicarage Road. He’s no older, but he’s watched more than 2,000 Watford matches now — most of them with a friend of the same age. A boy called Derek Garston.
Ian sits down next to Derek and they watch the team take the field for the first home game of the 2026/27 season — against Southampton. Derek looks downcast. He reminds Ian of a toy left out in the garden, waiting to be played with.
Derek says with a sigh: ‘So, what do you reckon, Ian? Relegation this year? Feels like it’s coming. It might be like 1971/72. Statistically, that was our worst season-ever.’
Ian still remembers his first season fondly, even though things are very different for him nowadays. On the day he arrived in Hornet Heaven, he found he felt strong. His chest didn’t hurt when he breathed. When he took part in kick-arounds on Occupation Road, he didn’t restrict himself to slow motion. He quickly became a gleeful child. At matches, when Watford went two goals up, he chanted that he wanted three. He delighted in thinking of Keith Mercer as a demolition ball, and slow opposition defenders as pale-throated three-toed sloths.
As the teams line up, he says to Derek: ‘You can’t tell me 1971/72 was bad. It was my first season. I loved that season.’
As soon as he says it, he realises it must sound strange. There have been plenty of much more loveable seasons. In his early years in Hornet Heaven, he watched Watford soar up the divisions under Graham Taylor. They beat big teams, which meant big moments. He definitely had the heart for it. He would find himself jumping around with Derek, screaming and bouncing and punching the air until he was breathless — before doing it again. Ever since, he’s had the heart for five promotion seasons, two FA Cup Finals, the Deeney goal, the lot.
He turns to Derek. He wonders if he should back-track. Derek is screwing up his nose — the way he does when he can’t believe Ian has given a wrong answer to a history question at a Hornet Heaven quiz night.
Derek says: ‘You loved losing week in, week out? You better not say that to other people round here.’
Ian has discovered that a lot of football fans demand success and expect other fans to do the same. ‘You follow a team to see them win,’ they say. (The tone reminds Ian of his mother’s.) But that’s not how he started out as a Watford fan. And it’s stuck with him.
‘I’m not going to lie,’ he says to Derek. He feels defiant, like the picture frame on his childhood bedroom wall that insisted on hanging wonky, no matter how hard you tried to straighten it. ‘I loved 1971/72. In my own way.’
Derek shrugs and watches the match kick-off.
Ian watches too and feels the thrill of a new season starting. He really doesn’t mind that Watford’s league positions have gone back to somewhere between unambitious and apologetic, and that it’s almost as if the club has taken to its bed and might not get up — even for Match of the Day.
He knows that, whatever happens this season, however it turns out, he’ll enjoy it. He can be happy whether Luca Kierrumgaard carries on being early-years Ross Jenkins, or transforms into later-years Ross Jenkins. He can be happy whether he finds himself shouting ‘goal!’ or just raising a polite hand in acknowledgment.
His heart is strong enough for all eventualities.
THE END
‘Heart’ was written by Olly Wicken.
You can find out more about the Hornet Heaven series of stories here.
HORNET HEAVEN 