Failing as a father can be accidental, but then to fail as a prospective father-in-law begins to suggest negligence.
Not suitable for the more sensitive readers of my Sunderland site, perhaps confusing for non-English readers of this one, I present myself as that failure. Marvin doesn't just support the wrong football team; he supports the really wrong one.
I naturally prefer to blame him entirely. If your girlfriend's Sunderland-supporting dad drives all the way to the airport to pick you up (admittedly a journey taking just 20 minutes), and then produces - or his wife produces - a slap-up meal washed down with copious supplies of excellent local wine, you do NOT repay him by turning out to be a Newcastle fan.
And you most certainly do not appear at the table having dressed as if preparing for a visit to the home end at St James' Park.
These little tribal issues will be lost on non-football fans, and will escape all but a few of France's most diehard followers of, say, PSG or Marseille. In England, even among people who are not necessarily hard of thinking, they matter.
Very well, I had every reason to know that Nathalie's beau considered himself a Magpie just as I recognise that she launched my descent into failure by growing up to be a follower of Liverpool.
Unlike those Man Utd "fans" who have never been out of South-east Asia or Essex, Marvin knows where Newcastle is, and has even been there. I suppose I just hoped he would see, if not sense, some notion of duty. Wouldn't Roy Keane's reliance on a trio of Trinidadian players - Marvin is half-Trinidadian after all - swing it for me?
But no. There he was, sitting opposite my place at the table in that absurd bar-coded top, helping himself to my food, my drink and, before you know it, my daughter's hand in marriage. It is just as well he seems a decent, bright and ambitious sort of lad.
There may yet be a need to turn to friends in the North East who have experienced similar trauma. And I have already tasted a smidgeon of revenge. Two smidgeons, in fact.
When Nathalie turned to me for practical help in getting them tickets for a game last season, I chose wisely. The match I recommended as the one they'd find no trouble getting into was Newcastle vs Man City. Newcastle, even on Marvin's account, played abysmally, richly earning their 1-0 defeat.
And last night, on the Le Lavandou mini-golf course, Sunderland breezed, sturdy and true, to an effortless victory, even if Marvin did at one point think that a score of 80, against my 48, somehow made him the winner.
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