IF like me you don't know the net from the goalposts when it comes to the ever-so-hallowed game that is football then you may have an inkling about what it's like to be a widow to the sport.

On New Years Day I woke up fuzzy of mouth with a damn sore head and where was my boyfriend with tea and sympathy? He was down at Old Trafford FC, or the "theatre of dreams" as he rather poetically refers to it when feeling moved.

It's not even like he plays the damn sport. He simply watches it because that is "enough" he says.

Once when I was coming back from six months living in the Middle East my THEN boyfriend chose to watch the Manchester derby rather than pick me up from the airport. Do you see why he might be an ex?

Fine if my fella indulges in this footie-laddy-beer-swilling-pie-eating-pastime but when others are drawn in that is where the "fun" begins. Did I say fun? I meant I want to kill myself.

Oh the joys of having the boys round, taking over the lounge to watch the latest premiership battle. Or having to endure standing up in the pub to do so because it's only being shown on some obscure channel that no one has ever even heard of.

Then when there is no game to be watched believe me the boys aren't thwarted, the determined little blighters. Out comes the Sony Play Station and on goes the "Pro Evo." Whoever invented this video game must be hung, drawn and quartered.

Can you imagine if there was a game called "Pro Shopping" and one amassed more points or lives the better the bargain they picked up or by manoeuvring themselves successfully past Lipstick Tower and over Hair Straightener Bridge without getting stampeded outside Primark?

Would any boy stick that if I brought the girls over and we played this for hours on end? Welcome to my world. And it's my fault because in a fit of generosity I bought Pro Evo for my boyfriend as a stocking filler. Bin filler more like.

I don't even watch the World Cup...gasp! Observed and enjoyed by millions the globe over why can't I stomach it? I have tried to enjoy the "beautiful" game believe me but I fail every time. It just goes against the grain for me to enjoy it. I was predestined and pre-programmed to dislike it from the moment the first pigs bladder was aimed at goals placed at opposite ends of the village back in the days of yore or whenever it was invented.

If England are playing a vital match in the final stages of a major competition I'll go shopping because that's when you'd assume the shops would be empty to some extent. Wrong - they're jampacked full of all the other unfortunate widows.

Football has the power to turn the most attentive boyfriend into a neglectful, chanting, bellowing, drunken wreck but even so I know I shall have to live with it but how I wish it was about as fantasy as all those newspaper leagues...