I was having my hair cut the other day, when a rather embarrassing thing happened. While I was in the hairdressers, someone broke into my car and - I swear to God - stole my football shorts.
Normally, just getting a haircut is embarrassment enough for any one day. And not only because afterwards you think your head looks like a large kiwi fruit (friends have assured me this is not imagination); no, it's more to do with all those questions hairdressers ask, questions that just make you want to squirm.
It's probably a common thing among those who had their adult consciousnesses shaped during the 1970s, but I know I never, ever want to be held responsible for any fashion-choice relating to my hair. So when hairdressers ask questions such as "do you want much off?," or "straight back or parted?," or "can I take your jacket?", I always just shrug and answer in a way meant to communicate the general idea: "I really don't care what you do, but in future years when people look at photographs of me as I am now, I better not look stupid." The other thing I hate about going to the hairdressers is the way they tie that smock thing so tight around your neck. This is a personal foible, caused by the fact that I was garrotted in at least one of my earlier lives, and had the misfortune of being a French aristocrat during (a short part of) the 1790s in another.
Naturally, these experiences have left me very sensitive about the whole neck region, so when I'm having a haircut I always have to tug the smock thing away from my windpipe, especially during those grizzly moments when the hairdressers are holding the cut-throat razor.
But the worst thing about getting a haircut is that awful bit where you're invited to admire the back of your own head. I don't know about you, but I know I never want to see the back of my head, not even to check the hairdresser hasn't shaved the word "Kitkat" on it. In fact, the only thing that makes this part of the ritual bearable is that I always have my glasses off at the time, and I can say "hmm, very nice" with a straight face because I can't see a damn thing.
Well, criminals will always attack when you're vulnerable. And while I was suffering this four-times-a-year ordeal the other day, a thief was breaking into my car and making off with one of my most intimate garments. He didn't just steal the shorts, I should add - he stole the whole kit bag as well. But the point is that I had left the shorts outside the kit bag in the car - the traditional method of airing them between matches. So stealing them had to be a deliberate decision.
What this says about the criminal mind, I don't know. But frankly, I'm less worried about the state of the criminal mind than I am about the state of my shorts. These were my "lucky" shorts (so called because, while wearing them, I've scored in consecutive decades); and, as any serious sportsperson will tell you, you never risk breaking the spell of a lucky pair of shorts by washing them.
Hence my embarrassment. But what can you do when criminals stoop to this level? OK, the shorts did carry a popular brand-name - associated with Ronaldo - but they were very obviously second-hand. And unless he thought they might actually be Ronaldo's shorts, what can the thief have been thinking?
The thought that my shorts are now being handed around among the criminal fraternity is bad enough. But the possibility that they might be recovered in a Garda swoop and featured on next week's Crimeline is keeping me awake at night. Thank God I didn't get them monogrammed.
It's not fair - you grow up being warned by your mother always to have clean underwear on in case you get run over by a car and have to go to hospital. But since you only ever wear your shorts on an indoor soccer pitch, where the chances of being hit by a car are slight - well, you think you can relax a little.
In fact, this was the second time in two months my car has been broken into, and I know the proper reaction to the experience is to feel angry about the rampant crime on our streets, call for increased powers for the gardai and to agree with every taxi driver who says we should string them all up (the criminals, that is, not the gardai).
But somehow, I can't find to in my heart to condemn such a clearly desperate person as this thief was. And if he's reading this, I just want to say one thing: I'm willing to pay a ransom.
Meanwhile, there are always consolations in the greater misfortune of others. One consolation is that I'll never be the world's greatest footballer and have my poor performance in a World Cup final analysed to death in the international press.
Scouring the sports columns this week (hoping for some sort of communication from the guy who has my shorts), I see that Ronaldo has now admitted to having taken a small, blue "sedative" pill before the match. If this is true, what happened to him against France is at last obvious.
Viagra - friends tell me - is a small, blue pill. I can just see some doctor (French, obviously) approaching the desperate Brazilian before the game and offering his "remedy" with the promise: "I 'ave somezing which will improve your performance, Monsieur." When the effects kicked in an hour later, Ronaldo was already on the pitch and it was too late to do anything about it.
If my theory is true, it would certainly explain why he couldn't run on the night. And it would also mean he must have felt even more embarrassed than I am about losing my shorts. But at least Ronaldo has the consolation of being a multi-millionaire. That and never having to deal with awkward questions from his hairdresser.