They didn’t come in clogs but did drink millions of litres of beer, causing their male proponents to liberally piss against the walls, creating a right royal stench and more than enough work to keep the municipal cleaning department busy for the foreseeable future. I had my first appointment with the nouveau shrink on the day they played their last group fixture and rescheduled with alacrity. (All I know about meinen - potentiellen - neuen Psychotherapeuten is his name, that he’s a German/French bilingual of German nationality, speaks high German – but: “please speak to me in Swiss German if you wish,” he says - and softly spoken. I hope he’s not a pushover and his handshake is firm. He’s only six years older than me which will be interesting, although I’m fairly sure I’ve outgrown my need for a father figure.)

Just think: 200,000 they said (according to which news medium you consulted – why not 515,000, 476,987 or 599,989? - and I’m sure many were repeat offenders). 200,000 Dutch supporters in a city of just over 150,000 inhabitants. (A fantabulous figure – does Holland have that many inhabitants?) And it was the greatest, hippest, happiest, most colourful and peaceful party seen in Switzerland evah; second in volume only to Zürich’s annual street parade, which is so achingly trendy the police patrol on inline skates, bare-chested with shield-clad nipples. (The police make more arrests on 1^st of May demonstrations here, and just think: 200,000 England supporters and a substantial minority would have left the place burned and sacked as efficiently as any second-string tribe of pillaging Visigoths).

Then they went to Basel, bathed in the Rhine and carried on partying. And their luck turned: the brave Oranjes crashed out against Russia (coached by a Dutch); irredeemably, gloriously. (They wore black armbands. In the days before the match, tragedy struck; the wife of their defender Khalid Boulahrouz, seven or eight months pregnant, delivered a stillborn girl in Lausanne.) Their portly blond prince stared defeat in the face with good grace and a stiff upper lip while their pretty blond princess sat forlorn in the stands in her crumpled orange linen dress, forcing a smile. The multitudes sang a last song and downed another beer before boarding trains and catching planes. They will be sorely missed; especially the guy posing beneath the 17^th century Bernese arcade in a leopard-trimmed, orange velvet dressing gown and heels. Shame I can't find the photo.