Quite why I felt the need, on the hottest day of any May in UK records to dig a series of large holes around my garden for plants parked temporarily on the patio is anyone’s guess.  Right at the end of the garden, in a spot that has challenged the valiant attempts of any plants to thrive under the darkness of the overhanging conifers and the resulting dry ground, I dug a particularly massive hole for a particularly massive shrub, and lo! a Barcelona FC mini-football emerged, still almost fully inflated, and bounced down the lawn.  It was a bit dusty but otherwise largely dirt-free.

This was the most surprising find in the garden so far and, after a bit of Internet leg-work, the most recent of the interesting finds.  Fourteen of the other interesting ones are listed on the Everyday Objects in my Garden page here, but this was the only one to make me feel genuinely nostalgic.

Nou Camp in the 1970s, before it became one of Barcelona’s built-up areas

Many of my teenage years were spent living in Barcelona.  After school (a splendid pink villa with palm trees in the garden) I spent many early evenings at the ice rink that shared a compound with the Barcelona FC football stadium, Camp Nou, also known locally as Blaugrana, referring to the blue (blau) and burgundy red (grana) colours of the football team.  We kids were all fans of Barça, and because we were coming and going so frequently, we were on shy and starry-eyed waving terms with the football team as the players ran the streets in the vicinity of the stadium as part of their fitness training.  Unthinkable from a security point of view these days.  Barcelona, a port on the far west of the Mediterranean, sits under a line of hills, with the suburbs rise gently on the lower slopes, with wonderful walks along the footpaths of the hillsides above.  When a home goal was scored, the hills became an echo chamber, and the entire south end of the town is filled with the colossal sound of cheers and joy that blasted upwards and outwards like an explosion.  Unforgettable.  I have the official beanie hat, the official hoodie and the official waterproof.  And now, thanks to someone losing it in my garden, I have an entirely unexpected mini-football.

Barcelona FC in 1899. Source: FC Barcelona

The striped ball has a circumference of 38cm (a diameter of c.12cm).  It is still bright with its original blue on all sides, but the dark red has faded to light red on one side and yellow on the other, indicating that one side was exposed to light for much longer.  The fame of the football team meant that its local moniker, Barça, became indelibly associated with its success story, and this is printed on both sides of the ball, together with the club’s launch year, 1899, along with the club’s shield and a set of player signatures printed as part of the design.  Initially I could only make out one of the signatures, which was thanks to him having printed as well as signing his name:  “J.Alba 18.”  Jordi Alba was a famous landmark of the club, a left-back who played for Barça between 2012 and 2023, and whose shirt number was 18.  The others that I could eventually make out were goalie Ter-Stegen, and players Pedri, Kessie, and Lewandowski, and the only season in which all these players were together was in the 2022-2023 season.

It seems, therefore, that my ball is only about three years old, which is no great surprise, and means that one of my neighbours must have lobbed it there and couldn’t be bothered to come and ask for it back.  A shame really, as it would have been nice to know why Barcelona rather than one of the local or national UK teams.

I didn’t want to spend a long time on it, having already wasted a good 15 minutes on the Barcelona FC site trying to match the player names with the correct squad, and a quick Google search failed to produce a ball exactly like this, even using the ball’s barcode which produced one without the signatures, but they must sell in their 1000s and are low-value items, like everything else emerging from my garden.  A nice find, and it was particularly appropriate to dig it up on a sunny spring day that was competing with Mediterranean temperatures.