Coupe du monde

So the world cup has begun and so has my four yearly transformation into a couch potato. I've been really careful about my eating (I'm trying to avoid saying I've been on a diet) for the last few months, losing a stone in the process but today Mel and I had a KFC bucket for lunch so I could limber up properly for today's matches.

I've watched all the games so far and am about to take in Argentina V Nigeria before the England game this evening. It doesn't feel like the tournament has really fired into life though yet and probably won't until our game versus the USA later. The Vuvuzela's are in evidence as predicted and they are indeed annoying though ever so slightly less annoying than the constant complaining about them which if anything is drowning them out.

I was told by someone that if your TV has a Sound EQ setting in the menus you can filter out everything at 300hz (or khz or something) and the sound of a billion mating hornets stops or at least fades to a low drone. I'm rather hoping I will acclimatise to it or maybe hoping that the England Brass Band will drown it out later which is something I thought I would never say.

I'm off to Ireland on Monday for customer meetings and will probably catch some games on Monday and Tuesday evenings though presumably they are watching the game through gritted teeth still seething about the arm of Thierry Henry. We will be in France from the quarter finals onward so we will see the other side of the coin. I wonder whether the French are in any way ashamed to be at the World Cup as a result of a cheat. I seriously doubt it.
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On a final world cup note, I see the neo-nazist Daily Mail has descended to new depths with publication of a new letter from one it's more ignorant readers (which is quite an achievement in it's own right). It reads as follows.

Wouldn't it be great if TV coverage of the World Cup was limited to England's games, those of hosts South Africa and of the tournaments 'big guns'.

Then we would be spared the ordeal of having to sit through a match between Bongo Bongoland and the Former Soviet Republic of Bulimia and other meaningless events.

Mike Phelps
Yeovil, Somerset


As the overused saying goes, you could not make it up.