HAVE you booked your summer holidays and selected a destination for the annual dollop of sun and vino collapso?

If you have chosen Italy or Spain, you must be having serious reservations about your welfare after the violence at last week's football matches in Rome and Seville.

That is not to infer that police in either city view indiscriminate beatings of "Brits" as part of their duties, but it might help if holidaymakers wore large badges about their person, stating, in Italian or Spanish: "Please don't hit me. I'm a tourist, not a football fan."

The alternatives, body armour and a crash helmet, will prove uncomfortable in temperatures of 90 degrees but, hey, who wants to upset the local gendarmerie, then spend one's vacation in hospital, or jail, simply by asking for directions to the nearest toilets? Mind you, it is possible to get a fractured skull much nearer home, by looking the wrong way at someone in a late night taxi queue. And that's without knowing what the right way might be.

However, I digress. Back to the European football matches and the baton charges which provided X-rated viewing on television newsreels.

Supporters of Manchester United in Rome, and Tottenham Hotspur in Seville, claimed they were victims of police heavy-handedness. The Italian and Spanish police were having none of that, saying English fans started the bother and they waded in to finish it.

Official inquiries may bring us nearer the truth, though I suspect the reputation for braggadocio and drink-fuelled brutality, which preceded English football fans in the 1970s and early 80s, means police forces in Europe are poised to react aggressively to the slightest hint of trouble whenever Premiership teams are involved.

Supporters must be aware of that, so it is hard to understand why they devote so much time and money on trips to the continent to cheer on their teams. Loyalty is one thing; blind stupidity another, especially when there could be a police baton waiting, with your name on it.

Looking at television footage of those travelling fans led me to wonder could they be self-employed professionals, or tradesmen, who plan their work schedules around their club's fixtures, or employees with understanding bosses for whom a day's jolly, well, several in fact, to Rome, Seville, wherever, is perfectly understandable, and permissible, if one happens to wear a Man U replica shirt, 24/7.

I have never accepted, nor understood, why supporting a particular football team means one has to automatically dislike, hate even, people who support another.

In my early teens, I followed BWFC to every away match in the old First Division and not once, on any ground including Anfield, did I see any violence or hear anything but good-natured banter. That was in the early years after World War Two when we all had had our fill of malevolence. There is so much these days that it has become the norm, with football, in particular, still tainted by it.

So maybe you should start thinking about those "I'm a tourist" badges, and the body armour. Or better yet, switch to holiday spots in the UK. Blackpool is good.