After being beaten by the Germans yet again, I stood chewing the cud with a police officer in fully riot gear in a slip road near Charing Cross station.

Clearly nervous and ‘wired’, he confirmed he was worried as, along with the loss, the rapidly massing crowd had been drinking heavily and it would be a long time before the wounds of the loss would heal.

As the first half brick flew over my head, all hell broke loose. I had never been involved in a riot before, and it was not like the movies.

Separated from my friends, I found myself standing alone in the middle of Trafalgar Square, avoiding missiles, police officers and intoxicated fellow England fans. I had a camera on me and began to take some pictures.

As I crouched to photograph a burning car, I was kicked in the side of the head to the ground by a fellow England fan who then ran off.

Bruised from landing on the Nikon, I managed to get to the tube to escape and see my then girlfriend in Arnos Grove. I knocked on the door and her landlord, a strange, bearded little man asked me: “What’s up?”

I replied: “We lost.”

His next two words led me into the last time I bawled my eyes out: “Lost what?”

I cried like a baby. Not because of the defeat, as losing to German efficiency is inevitable, but because there was a human that who had managed to miss the blanket news coverage of the biggest game in 30 years, along with Three Lions blasting from every car stereo across the land.

How could he be so naive as to miss the bunting, flags and general feel good factor which is generally the countdown to the disappointment as an England supporter?

I felt embarrassed, but the tears wouldn’t stop and I cried myself to sleep with a new girlfriend who must have thought I was a little fragile. Still, I guess some people like that kind of emotional fragility, as she married me.

I often feel too life-hardened as this year marked 20 years since I last properly bawled my eyes out.

Yes, I have cried a little, on the birth of my kids, the death of relatives and whilst lying in a room for a week in tropical heat in the Maldives with the head a size of a watermelon.

Yet these were expected events and I could turn the tear-tap to low pressure with little effort.

I put the crying question out to the Facebook fraternity and was shocked by the response of the men.

Most claimed to have properly bawled within the last month. One cried as he said goodbye to the house he was moving from, another who filled the car with diesel instead of unleaded.

The death of a dog, when we voted to leave the EU and the plight of the children of Aleppo were also cited as reasons for the waterworks to commence as was a sad bit on Bargain Hunt. I have since befriended that person as I fear for his sanity and my safety.

I guess I am after a reason to really let go.

I don’t want a birth or death as, although deliriously happy or desperately sad at those life events, I can plan the feeling and control the emotion.

The reason has to be a comment or turn of phrase that will strike me when I least expect it.

Whatever the heart wrenching turn of phrase is, I will take it on the chin and find the correct application for that box of Kleenex mansize beyond using it to wipe food remnants off the dining room table after the kids have had what looks like a chimp’s tea party.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher who lives in London Colney