Trail of the Lion King

After staying in Ronda, Jen and I moved on to Seville. I’m familiar with the layout after visiting last year and we stayed on the old town side of the river. It’s a busy time of the year in Seville as it leads up to the Feria. The festivities don’t seem to slack off from the Easter celebrations and, if any excuse were needed, bring people out onto the streets for strolling, eating and drinking.

One of the things that Soph’s beagle Henry does is remember where he once found food on the pavement. He’ll always try to return to that spot confident that if there were food there once, then there’s likely to be food there again. I was a bit like that in Seville. Last year I saw a poster for a record fair and ended up going and buying a load of Spanish vinyl. This year, I couldn’t walk past a lamp post without checking for a record fair poster. At least I didn’t cock my leg.

I also thought about the dog when I saw a whole skinned rabbit in the supermarket. It still had its ears on. One of the treats that we give Henry are dried rabbit ears. I’d never wondered what they tasted like until I realised that I had the chance to find out. Sadly, we were in a hotel room, rather than an apartment, so if I’d wanted to sample a rabbit ear it would have had to have been raw. I can wait.

My first game in Seville was at the Complejo Deportivo Demitrio Pichel which was an hour and forty minute’s walk to the outskirts of the city. I could have driven but having secured a spot in the underground hotel car park, I was loathe to risk losing it. The weather wasn’t too good though and I had to nip into a convenience store to buy an umbrella.

The route took me away from touristy Seville and into areas that won’t ever feature on the city bus tours. I made good time and arrived at the ground with twenty minutes to go to kick off. It was still raining and the uncovered plastic bench seats along the side of the pitch had puddles in then. I had a couple of paper napkins, but a woman who arrived after me resorted to reviewing the receipts in her purse and using the ones she could risk disposing of to dry her seat.

The game was in the fifth-tier Tercera division with Inter Sevilla taking on Ceuta’s B team. The home side were rock bottom of the table and already relegated whilst the visitors, who are based in a Spanish territory at the tip of Morocco, were safely in mid-table. They are a B team, so perhaps promotion isn’t necessarily overly important to them.

Ceuta looked the more professional outfit, particularly in respect of their kit, which was just as you would have expected it to be. Inter’s green shirts were less consistent, with some of them having names and numbers, whilst others had numbers only. There wasn’t even any uniformity between the fonts used for the names, suggesting that players had taken their kit home and got their Mams to customise them.

The highpoint of the first half was the rain easing up after twenty minutes, although a train going past on an adjacent line ran it close. Many people turned away from the lack of action to keep an eye on the high scoring game behind us between six year olds.

Ceuta took the lead from the penalty spot soon after the restart and then added a second on the hour with a cracking half-volley from an acute angle.

Inter got back into it soon afterwards with a goal that went in off the underside of the bar. That always makes a finish look spectacular. It was all in vain though as two away goals in the last ten minutes sealed the win for the visitors. They got on their bus back to Africa and with my umbrella furled I retraced my steps into the city centre.