Watching the Welsh national football team play, with a bona fide Welshman, is an experience fraught with emotion, but one I would heartily recommend. Being vocal regarding one’s culture is often frowned upon if we display any outward signs of nationalist pride, whereas but a few counties west, the Welsh are fiercely proud of their heritage, the dragon, leek and sheep, and quite rightly so.

And as we sat, and jumped, and shouted and screamed, I learnt some Welsh derogatory terms before I was ‘kutched’ half to death after the bhoys finally scored an equaliser.

It was during the downtime, as the players took yet another diving rest break, as if they had been taken out by the sniper’s sniper, Simo Hayha, that the moment of revelation came.

Through alcoholic hazes generally comes nonsense, embarrassment and a complete and utter lack of logic, but the Welshman, Dan, hit a purple patch with his new business idea: an app called ‘What's the Point?’. By the end of the game, we were all at it after he explained its premise: "We spend half our lives saying ‘what's the point?’, so why not summarise them all in one place so we can lay bare the lunacy of our very existence?"

Granted, it was a little bit deep for that time of day, but we embraced the concept and grew to love the idea. After the first few, it was becoming increasingly difficult to argue with the logic.

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

‘Gary Lineker…. what's the point?’ was the conversation starter as we heartily debated how one of England’s finest goal hangers had, after an illustrious career in which he was not bogged down with distractions such as silverware, turned into a middle-aged woke radical through the medium of Twitter.

Self-scanning checkouts? What's the point? It takes longer, is stressful, you must beg for a carrier bag, and you don’t receive a discount for doing their work for them.

And then ‘what's the point’ built in its own scale: if something was really pointless it became ‘what's the ‘freaking’ point (automated customer service phone lines, the Government) up to the extreme end of the scale where freaking became an expletive (appendix, water resistant clothing and electric cars).

It began to take over my life: what's the point of those hooks on the back seat of the car to hang clothes up on? What's the point of waiting at a traffic light crossing with no one there? What's the point of banning plastic straws in McDonald's yet serving cold drinks in plastic beakers?

What's the point in the checkout staff refusing to touch my card ‘because of Covid’ despite having just fingered 80 quid's worth of shopping I had already soiled?

And so, on it went, becoming somewhat of an obsession: Chrome books only work when there's internet? What's the point? Ergonomic keyboards need lots of practice to get used to, hence they aren’t ergonomic… what's the point? and, well, you catch the drift.

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

But then, when I least expected it, deep into conversation injury time, my wife made a rare foray into the summerhouse football zone. Instantly becoming a WTP expert she asked what's the point of toilet lids if us menfolk never put them down? Or why we have a dishwasher as I never load it?

Now warming to the topic area, she ended with the what's the point cherry on the cake as she looked me square in the eyes as she asked ‘what's the point of you?’ She may well have a valid argument, but we will just have to wait and see as her car is due a mini service on Sunday, which I casually mentioned to her before she blew it and said ‘What's the point of oil in a car?’

I ignored her and turned away before recommencing my screams at the TV as I questioned the utter pointlessness of VAR.

Brett Ellis is a teacher