Allow me to introduce myself.

I am a spherical object, approximately twenty-five centimetres in diameter, and most frequently made of leather or of a tough plastic such as P.V.C.; I am often black and white - even if strictly speaking I should really be black and blue I get kicked about so much - but I am sometimes other colours.

Yes. I'm a football. Not just any old football mind you; I am a theoretical football; the genus, not the species; the mould from which all other footballs spring, have sprung, and will continue to spring until the end of time (or the demise of football); I am the idea of a football, born a long string of years ago when early man - having recently distanced his head from his feet - went on to discover the mindless pleasure of dribbling a bloated rhinoceros bladder around the tribal fire.

Please. Many great concepts owe their origins to the pre-historic.

Happily however, successive millennium witnessed my social ascension, as fledgling man, awakened by the spit of rain on skin drawn tight over tough weary muscles, discovered himself distinct from the trees and the hills and the people around him, and emerging from his former nebulous existence invented the concept of competition.

Shaped by antagonistic forces, a past-time of once aimless tomfoolery rapidly developed into a sophisticated game with a clearly defined set of rules. Rarely has an inanimate object enjoyed the attention of so many people at the same time. Few women in the history of the world - however beautiful or intriguing - have received on such a regular basis the honour of having twenty-two men compete so passionately to possess her. I soon found myself being driven from one end of the pitch to the other in an exhausting display of physical exertion and mental rapacity, and rammed savagely into the net by man's deep desire to defeat.

Around the turn of the seventeenth century I achieved official recognition with my entrance into the shorter Oxford dictionary: I now exist in forty-eight different languages, have been entered into seven thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight different reference works, and served time in countless works of fiction.

Works of reference and fiction aside, I also inhabit - in common with all other concepts - the minds of men, and those of a select number of lazy animals - such as cats and dogs - who have given up the hunt in favour of regular floor service. Thus - as you have probably already guessed - my appearance is largely dependent upon the nature of my host: when a rich man invokes the image of a football I generally pop up brand new and smelling sweetly of expensive leather; when a poor man summons me I appear as a battered plastic affair and may require re-pumping every couple of hours due to a silent leak somewhere that masking tape has failed to heal; when a sentimental man makes believe I will always be his first football, only the donor varies from a father, to a grandfather, or sometimes to an uncle; when a greedy man demands my presence I symbolise a valuable investment, if only claims that someone famous once drove his boot into my soft leather belly can be satisfactorily authenticated.

Moreover it is not just my appearance that changes with each new neural address: the activities to which I am put to use may also vary: one mind for instance might play with me every day on the way to and from school; another less obedient specimen might continue during classes until a dramatic exit is forced upon me by the smack of a ruler on a shattered desktop; a more corporate mind might dribble me around the corners of his highly-paid think tank all day long in order to avoid thoughts which - once connected - threaten to bring him dangerously close to making a decision; a true footballer's mind will put me through a rigorous workout at least twice a day, before and after the real match. One thing is sure, compared to my offspring the object footballs, I spend a far higher percentage of my time scoring goals or flying into the open arms of a heroic goalie than I do stashed away in some dusty cupboard.

However all is not fame and glory. On the contrary: failure on the field in the real world is frequently mirrored by an emotional hijacking in the world of thought. Breaking free from the nether regions of the subconscious, guilt and despair invade the brain, bullying concepts, memories, and ideas alike into acting out their self-defeating scenarios. Time and time again I am kicked high in the air on a predetermined flight course, skimming over the top of the goal, and bouncing off into a disappointed crowd. Or worse - in a bid for catharsis - I am condemned to relive relentlessly that penalty shot that bounced off the post and lost the match. At the end of such Sisyphean re-enactments I roll home drained, depressed, and exhausted.

But there is worse still.

Sometimes I am not used for my proper purpose at all...

I will explain.

Whilst some people run a nice tidy office in their upper storey, grouping together all sports equipment for example in one filing cabinet, with all the balls in one drawer and all stick-like instruments in the next, others are lamentably disorganised: I have spent numerous nights in lodgings which can be most aptly likened to mental YMCAs, where all objects of roughly the same size and nature are flung together indiscriminately in one huge dormitory. Such a sloppy approach to the organisation of what is probably the most vital information processing system in the history of the universe not surprisingly fosters disastrous consequences... particularly when man falls asleep...

When the owner of the tidy office nods off and a dream signal comes zipping across the synapses to knock on the filing cabinet drawer and demand a ball, the worst mix-up that might possibly occur would be the supply of the wrong kind of ball. I might therefore end up participating in a game of hockey or volley ball, or alternatively missing out on a good match of football to a golf ball: nothing too dramatic.

However, when dormitory brain hits the sack, chaos breaks loose, anything can happen. I remember a certain Senor Sanchez from Spain, a keen football player in his spare time - and not a bad one at that - who during the restless nights leading up to the big match scored a number of admirable goals only to discover that he was disqualified for playing - not with a football - but with a good friend of mine with whom I have often shared a drawer, the concept cabbage. Meanwhile somewhere in the lowlands of Scotland I was being sliced and boiled with nutmeg.

Then there was a charming Miss Picard from France who neglected her mental housekeeping in a similar manner. Blessed in sleep with the long-cherished opportunity of goading her colleague (and rival for promotion) up the wooden steps towards the guillotine, she paid the price of her slovenly ways when the blade sliced down and it was not a heavy mass of blood, bone, and tissue that thudded down the steps to be kicked around by a jeering crowd, but me, the theoretical football.

Strangest of all was little Laura when she was still young and hermetically sealed, who after a perplexing day at school where all her friends had been talking about - amongst other things - boy's balls, had the most curious dreams which I couldn't describe if I tried.

In short you cannot have failed to notice the life of a concept is not easy and I feel safe to reveal the true purpose of this tale. Due to the misuse and abuse of concepts by the human mind a group of colleagues and myself have come together to form the L.C.U.C. (League for the Correct Use of Concepts). Primarily we are demanding a total re-organisation of the workplace and clearer job definitions and in order to capture the attention of the relevant decision-makers we are organising subliminal advertising campaigns such as this story to highlight our plight.

If you wish to support our campaign please write to the following address:

Audit Department
The Institute of Brain Structure and Organisation
London SW2 8QH

It has of course not escaped our attention that stories such as this one would no longer be possible in a world where concepts were used strictly for their defined purposes so special dispensations may be made under exceptional circumstances. For further information on such dispensations please contact the editor.