Conversation was less emphatic at the bar, where smoked salmon appeared atop blinis and, before the match, Champagne just kept coming. Half-time and we switched to sauvignon blanc, still much less my usual wheelhouse when watching football (lager, Spanish). It was, all in all, a bonkers afternoon. Not a box, suited and booted, the epitome of that detached sort of luxury and which I only experience when taken by someone stupidly wealthy; and a world away from my regular stomping ground of Selhurst Park, home of the mighty Crystal Palace.
