Published: 24 May, 2012

I MAY have mentioned in the past, that you cannot beat your first time. 

But, of course, we all know that your first time could be a bit disappointing, embarrassing, messy even.

There’s so much riding on it, you don’t want it to be a slip-up in the mud, you don’t want it to be too easy, or come too early, or before you’re really ready. You don’t want it to be raining or with someone you’ve known for years.

No, for your first time, what you want, is for it to be perfect.

You want it to be after a day spent with old friends in the sun, drinking a little too much beer.  

It should happen in an exotic place where none of you have been before and you want the strangers to be friendly but not quite part of your secret desire.

You don’t want it to be a sure thing, you want to be wondering if this is really it, right up to the moment when you realise it is.  

It should be late at night when you have almost given up hope.

Then when you realise this really is it, your first time, you want to scream, hug strangers, scream again, laugh and then cry.  

I’ve never really understood tears of joy. For me, people should only cry if something really sad has happened or, if it is that final scene in Babe when the farmer says, “That’ll do pig, that’ll do.”

But, after my perfect first time, I now know why people shed tears of joy.

They’re after a balmy evening in Munich, beating the home side on penalties to win the Champions League, after thinking it wasn’t going to happen at least three times in the final 40 minutes.

They cry tears for that moment of absolutely perfect, undiluted, joy, when you and 20,000 outnumbered friends realise that this is it; this is all of your first times. And no one can ever take it away from you.

Because for one whole year we shall be Chelsea FC – Champions of Europe.

BRUCE MACRAE, NW3