Elland Road was a dangerous place to be in the early 1980s, but she still took me. Because she knew it made me happy, we sat there week after week in the South Stand.
This is a pair of tickets for Leeds v Portsmouth on 28 December, this year. One adult: one junior.
Now, thirty years on, I'm taking my daughter to Leeds United. 'Man hands misery on to man,' as Philip Larkin said.
I get really excited taking her to matches. She is keen. She likes dance more - and reading more - but she is still keen. She's been four times already. Three at home. One away. And we've won them all.
I have this dream of us getting season tickets together for a couple of years. I often meet librarians who are seriously into football and they tell me how their dads took them to matches and it was a wonderful part of their life and was part of the reason they were so close to their dads. I want that.
I think going to Leeds was part of why I was so close to my mum. She can't have felt comfortable surrounded by 1980s football and its brooding violence and unfettered racism. I realise now what an amazing thing it was that she did that.
I wish she was here for me to say thanks to, but sadly she'd dead.
I also wish she was here to come when my daughter and I go later this month. That's why I got tickets in the South Stand this time, in seats near where she used to take me.
http://www.tompalmer.co.uk/
http://www.footballdetective.blogspot.com/
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