A tale of three pubs on the day of the big match

By 4pm somebody has already set off a flare on King Street enveloping the gathered drinkers in red smoke.

Almost everyone is wearing an England football shirt – white, red, grey, blue – and some have fashioned flags of St George into capes.

They’re drinking lager or cider from plastic glasses, bought at The Llandoger Trow or The Old Duke, or cans from the convenience store round the corner.

Those drinks get lifted in the air every couple of minutes as one group or another kicks off a round of singing.

It’s like flirting, the initiation of a song: a burly lad will make eye contact with another lad across the square and bellow “Heeeeeeey Juuuuude!” The other lad and his mates will join in, then a third group, then a fourth…

It’s generous to call it singing. It’s passionate one-note yelling, really.

One thing is clear, though: it’s coming home.

The Kings Head is empty and silent apart from the sound of an indie playlist from Spotify.

The bearded barman has the softly spoken manner of a scholar or perhaps a spiritual hermit. “I’m not interested in sport at all,” he mutters.

Outside on Victoria Street, gangs of football fans pass, yelling tunelessly, wobbling around on eScooters, flag-capes flying.

A grey-haired man comes in and asks, anxiously: “Do you have a screen?”

The barman shakes his head.

“Oh, good,” says the customer, then finds a dark corner in which to drink his pint while reading a magazine.

A spirit of contrariness has overtaken The Barley Mow.

There is a big screen set up for the match but one barman is wearing a red and yellow Barça shirt and there is flamenco music playing over the speakers.

A bunch of England lads stumble in (vintage shirts, flags) and order “whatever normal lager you’ve got”.

One of them tries to get some singing going and the volume of the flamenco music seems to increase.