Chicken Pox And Euro '96

Euro 2016 kicks off tomorrow with France taking on Romania in Paris, but twenty years ago the European Football Championships were held in England, and I ended up watching more of the games on the television than I had originally planned. That year, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were singing about "Thirty years of hurt" and the nation was hoping that England could add to the 1966 World Cup triumph, but I was preparing to go on holiday the weekend that the tournament started.

Val and I had married in 1995, and at the time she was working for P & O Cruises. As you might expect, heavily discounted prices for cruises were one of the perks of the job, so the first holiday we had together was a Mediterranean cruise on board SS Canberra. We paid the princely sum of £12 per night, each. The total cost of our cruise was significantly lower than most passengers were paying per night. "Whatever you do, don't tell anyone what we are paying," Val implored me on that first trip, the reason being that other passengers tended to be competitive on price and would quite often brag about the discount they got when booking their holiday. Obviously none would have got a deal anywhere near staff rates!

SS Canberra. Picture: cruisehistory.com

Having enjoyed my first cruise (a dose of sea-sickness while crossing the Bay of Biscay apart), and what with prices being so competitive, it was inevitable that we would book another cruise for our 1996 holiday. The only drawback (as far as I was concerned) was that it coincided with the first two weeks of Euro '96. Nowadays I would probably be a lot less bothered, but back then I admit that I was torn between the prospect of an inexpensive, but luxurious, holiday and sitting in front of the TV watching wall-to-wall football.

The holiday itinerary involved driving to Southampton on the day after England kicked off the tournament with a game at Wembley against Switzerland, so at least I would be able to watch that one. By the time we got back to Southampton I expected England to be out of the competition, and how many games I would see while we were away was anyone's guess: mine would have been not many.

But on the Thursday before we were due to depart, I was feeling distinctly peaky; washed out, no energy. I put it down to the weather (it was pretty warm for June), and I went into work on the Friday as usual. By lunchtime I felt terrible. I could barely move and was sent home. By some miracle, I got an appointment at the doctors and went there on the way home. "It's a virus," the doctor told me. Which one, he couldn't tell, nor could he give me any useful prognosis. I went home, feeling like the proverbial "death warmed up," and prayed that come Sunday I would feel a bit better.

Saturday morning dawned and I felt pretty much the same, except now I was covered in blisters. So many blisters that they appeared to be erupting before my very eyes. Now it dawned on me...chicken pox! Looking back, it is a wonder that I didn't realise that was what it was earlier, after all my daughter had just had chicken pox (about two blisters and little in the way of other symptoms), and one of my work colleagues was off sick with it too. That put the tin hat on the holiday, which fortunately cost us nothing to cancel (although we had paid for the car parking upfront and couldn't get that back), and Val cancelled her leave and left me at home to fend for myself.

"Smile," said Val when she took this picture.I didn't think I had much to smile about.

But first, things took a slight turn for the worse. On Sunday morning I awoke feeling a bit wheezy, a bit short of breath, and that worried me. Chicken pox (proper name varicella), is generally quite mild when contracted as a child (witness both of my daughters, whose cases barely registered beyond a few blisters), but can be serious in adults. In fact I knew that a friend of my father caught chicken pox when he was in his 30's or 40's, developed complications when it affected his lungs, and he subsequently died. As you might imagine, this troubled me somewhat, but a course of antibiotics cleared up the problem. In the event that you ever contract chicken pox and develop any sort of breathing problem, please contact your doctor, pronto!

But the antibiotics could do nothing about the blisters. And the most troublesome of them were the ones on the soles of my feet. When Val returned to work, leaving me marooned on the sofa and spending afternoons watching football on the telly, the occasional trip to the kitchen to make a cup of tea was accompanied by much wincing and cursing. Sales of calamine lotion in my area soared as I applied the cool pink liquid to pretty much every part of my body; it would have been easier to bathe in it to be honest.

After a few days I ventured into the garden, hoping that the sun would be good for the blisters - by now I was at least feeling a little more human, even if my nightly ritual still involved anointing myself with calamine lotion before sleeping in the lounge (Val, having had chicken pox as a child, feared the possibility of shingles and banished me from the bedroom).

England 4 Netherlands 1. Picture: Daily Mail

Having to stay at home rather than go on the cruise - and how fortunate was it that the chicken pox made itself known before the holiday, rather than when we were actually aboard ship, in which case I would have ended up in isolation in the ship's hospital - did mean I was able to witness England's progress in the Euros. The stunning 4-1 win over the Netherlands, the nail-biting penalty shoot-out win against Spain, and the almost inevitable defeat by the same method in the semi-final against Germany.

Predictably, England were eliminated by Germany...on penalties. Picture: BBC

By that time I was feeling well enough to venture out (I was no longer infectious), but in an attempt not to attract attention since I was still rather spotty, I wore a hat and dark glasses as Val and I walked to one of our local pubs, where I kept a low profile and sat in the beer garden.

The Harrow, Hornchurch, where I tried to remain inconspicuous in the beer garden. Picture: beerintheevening.com

It would be nice to think that England can at least match their performance from 1996 in this year's European Championships, but even if they don't, at least I shouldn't get chicken pox this time round - or anything else, I hope!