Sheffield is buckling with English heat, English noise, English paranoia. An elderly man gazes through a telescopic lens towards a church spire, observing a peregrine falcon as it feeds its young while, down in the yard, four topless day-drinkers roll around play fighting. Little sticky notes on the inside of a ground floor window have been decorated with neat cursive slogans: “diversity is not our strength”, “no one is coming to save you”. Three buildings down, a busker plays a melancholy rendition of “Yesterday” on the electric guitar. All that is solid melts into fruit and berry blend vapour.
England's World Cup is about to begin. If only our football could be perfect and we could be perfect with it.
John Hemmingham is from Sheffield. Is John Hemmingham perfect? His love of football is pure, and, in that way, perfection is present in his life. As the leader of the England Band — an FA-sanctioned troupe who galvanise supporters during international fixtures — he’s been to every national game since the 1990s. In doing so, Hemmingham has witnessed perfect moments like Michael Owen’s dissection of Argentina and David Beckham’s redemptive free kick against Greece. Hemmingham subsequently met Beckham, who told him the England Band’s drumming was all he could hear when he was mapping his run-up.
Hemmingham, 63, embodies English football in his singular dedication to it. He once almost lost his house when he found himself 20 grand deep after his sponsor for the 2002 World Cup pulled out. The England Band are mainly funded out of money the band pools together — it’s a “loose arrangement”, according to Hemmingham. Occasionally, a corporation will throw cash at them in exchange for appearances in advertising campaigns. In 2002 it was a major drinks company. Luckily, after they withdrew, Hemmingham’s mortgage was saved by The Sun newspaper, who booked the trip provided the band appeared in exclusive articles and photoshoots.
Hemmingham has no children, and, though he doesn’t gamble, drink or do drugs, his wife of almost 20 years had to be made starkly aware that she was marrying him and the football. Furthermore, there’s something decidedly English about Hemmingham, a straight-ahead kind of man, ambling around the world in a state of perpetual culture shock, sitting in a Beijing restaurant during the 2008 Olympics and slowly removing a pair of chicken feet from his soup, before sipping the broth out of tentative, discreet politeness.
If Hemmingham isn’t perfect, then he also certainly isn’t one of “England’s most divisive fans”, as The Athletic reported in 2019. Neither is he “the cultural equivalent of some gammon England fan lobbing up last night’s burger, lager and vodka supper on the war memorial at Volgograd”, as Sean O'Grady once wrote in The Independent. Twenty seconds alone with the man will reveal that he is, at worst, a little dull if you’re not into our national sport. Conversely, his best is tied up with the unique pathos of English football, and isn’t easy to pin down. Nevertheless, it’s worth it.
Hemmingham wants to meet at a pub with views over the Bradfield Moors. He’s spent all day driving around selling Dojo brand card readers, for his company, Hemmingham Direct. Hemmingham’s self-employment is essential to his England Band duties, which takes up a lot of time and money.
Today, he wants to settle with a glass of apple juice and a gastropub lasagne. The view over the green countryside is beautiful. Across the hill a Norman church stands sentry over the bones of his grandparents. This is the kind of place that Housman would’ve had in his mind when he mourned the lost bucolic age, or that M.R. James might have picked to counterbalance the buried horror of his ghost stories. “Don’t forget you’ve got it better down south,” Hemmingham jokes in his slightly hoarse south Yorkshire accent.
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