En-ger-laaaand,
En-ger-laaaand! Oh, isn't it all too, too exciting?
The World Cup is upon us once again and it's time to
drink too much alcohol, fly scraggy, wind battered St
George's cross flags from the sides of white vans, paint
our faces red and white and talk endlessly in pubs about
football in words of no more than 2 syllables (except,
of course, "metatarsal") or, if that seems
all bit too involved, just run out into the street and
punch a foreigner. I don't follow football that much
(as I have mentioned here before) but do enjoy big matches
with a sense occasion like the one today so settled
down at 2 o'clock with the rest of the nation for 90mins
of excitement. Well we got about 45 mins of excitement
followed by another 45mins of "oh no, somebody
has gone into the dressing room at half time and reminded
them that they're actually rubbish". I know a few
names of the England team, Beckham, obviously, Michael
Owen, erm… somebody related to Ian Wright, Theo
Woodcock who is on the team despite the fact he has
never actually played football before or hasn't left
school yet or one of the two… erm, don't tell
me, errrr… Ian Rush? No, that's not right…
Oh yes, the one that looks like an advert for electronic
tagging, Rooney, Wayne Rooney. Oh my god and that new
one, the one who is about 9ft tall; where in the name
of Basil Fawlty did they find him? He looks like a daddy
longlegs in football socks, I've never seen anyone look
so hilarious running around a football pitch since..
well, since I last tried it. So England won (though
not very convincingly) and the agony is prolonged a
bit longer until the inevitable happens and we have
to sit watching people like gary Linekar bang on about
"what went wrong". Nothing goes wrong; as
a football team England are not the best, that's all
there is to it… Fast forward to the end of the
tournament as Sir David of Beckingham lifts the cup
(why do they call it a cup? How would you drink out
of that?) and a red and white face painted Derren screams
and punches the air knowing "we" could do
it all along….
