My husband’s eyes shone when he walked in from work last night.

And I knew why, because half an hour beforehand, he had trumpeted to the world and his mates on Facebook that he had triumphed.

He wrote, in his usual calm, ponderous style: “Celebrated going back to Friday Footie after a month off by scoring two fox-in-the-box goals – and so nearly a hat-trick goddamit!”

As he came in I heard every detail of the euphoric return, the fox and indeed, the box.

I didn’t know foxes even liked boxes.

It was not his high-flying occupation which had made him feel this way, nor his happy home life: it was a personal achievement within the small arena of his works football team.

When he was young, and played football, he was ok: but as a forty-something everything seems to have come together and he scores goals as frequently as others eat packets of crisps. He has made it to man-of-the match.

The joy this has produced has warmed the cockles of those hearts that love him. He is creating in a new forum now, and a physical one. He has team mates, and a ref, and fixtures, and a home ground. He is, I think, exhilarated.

But when one is exhilarated, one can get carried away.

There are two versions of a story about a flower-girl who is appropriated in order to train her how to be a lady.

The most famous is the film, My Fair Lady, where the inimitable Hep transforms the role so beautifully.

And the backbone of the film is the first version, Pygmalion, written by the wise and sardonic George Bernard Shaw.

Both versions contain such exhilaration it fair takes one’s breath away.

In Shaw’s play, Eliza Doolittle is transformed by access to a bath, some pretty dresses and Dr Henry Higgins’s tutelage in ‘phonetics’ , an exact kind of elocution.

You will recall it is all part of a wager, and Henry takes these things extremely seriously.

The final goal is a top-notch London ball, but Henry tries his protege out by taking her to his mother’s sedate at-home.

Eliza is a triumph. Her appearance is dazzling, her accent impeccable. She is flushed with success. She becomes exhilarated.

And as she does, her true self finds a way of breaking out. Henry Higgins has never thought about the need for correct grammar: and appropriate language. Higgins’s mother insists he swears like a trooper.

With such a role model Eliza must surely fall foul of the most polite of society.

She loses all caution and begins to speak the way she always has: very plainly indeed. She tells the assembled, avid listeners that her aunt suffered from influenza, and it done the old woman in.

Shaw develops the comedy with perfect timing, giving Eliza that ageless closing line when she is invited to walk across the park. With her impeccable accent she declares:  “Walk? Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.”

The film bests even Shaw, if such a thing is possible. It takes Eliza to Ascot: and she gets utterly transported by the race, and its speed, and its excitement. And finally she bellows that very plain-spoken exhortation to Dover, her chosen horse, to move his rear end with all speed.

The excitement of the moment can make one forget oneself entirely.

Football is not my thing. I follow it vaguely to support my husband and my son. I do stand on sidelines, and I wince when Manchester United lose, because that can vanquish an entire weekend for our family.

But when I first met Phil, in the first flush of romance, I would follow him most places, including the football field.

He had a wonderful, gothic, byronian friend.

With long red hair, blazing eyes, and a bookshelf full of philosophers and great thinkers, this man was one of the most extraordinary characters I have ever met, before or since, with the exception of the man I married.

He was the last of the London gentlemen, with an income and a beautiful little house in a leafy London backwater.

The first time I saw him he was plastered to the outside of the huge victorian picture window, using shock tactics to surprise his guests.

He was, and is still, a clever, dramatic and sensitive thinker who renders me dumb until I have had a few glasses of wine.

He was Phil’s best man, and his speech was the nicest gift any best man could give any bride.

But he was a football hooligan. Comparatively harmless, but a hooligan nonetheless.

He supported Queens Park Rangers football club. He had a season ticket, and he loved it with a passion I simply did not understand.

What I did understand was the shouting. And I was very, very good at that.

Every now and then we would trek along to a game at the ground. The first time we went, I was totally unprepared: because we came up those smelly concrete steps into that stadium and it hit us: the roar.

That sound of so many people meeting for combat. It is unmistakeable and carries euphoria in its very vibrations. I heard a few seconds of that sound, and I was on cloud nine.

I followed very little of the action, and I’m sure did not appreciate any of the fine nuances of the tactics. I didn’t really care who I cheered for. I just felt it was very important indeed to shout loud at the top of my voice as much as possible.

And do you know, there, in a stadium, with tens of thousands overlaying your voice: you can. It is truly exhilarating.

My husband’s best friend simply went from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde. He transformed utterly in the heat of a moment, and not even Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky could have held him back from bawling his sketchy and ribald review of his team’s inabilities.

For the majority of our lives we calculate, we assess, we remain in control and steer a course through the ever-changing waters of passing time.

Just now and then, time stops, the world goes away, and all we can think about is whether Dover really can move his bloomin’ arse.