OD

I think I've watched more football in the last 10 days than I ever have in the last 40+ years... I'm even watching the England match in the middle of the afternoon now, on my own (Si is racing homewards from a meeting, desperate to catch the last half).
I never, NEVER sit and watch TV in the afternoon, especially an afternoon such as today, 20 something degrees in the shade - if you can find/manufacture some shade that is! Whenever Si watches sport of some kind in an afternoon I can help but think to myself what a waste of an afternoon that is, to me the afternoon is for the doing of stuff, not for lazing around on the sofa in front of the TV, reading a book, now that's a different matter, your brain is actively engaged when reading, but watching TV is such a passive passtime (I do like that, 'passive passtime')

But this world cup thingummy has ignited my national pride even more than just living as an expat in Germany has, last Friday I raced back from the hairdressers to watch the lunchtime game that wasn't even England but Germany - the main reason I wanted to watch was because one of my favourite Radio 1 DJ's was doing an alternative commentary, kind of along the lines of the things I say when I'm watching a match with Simon - laughing at people's names/hairstyles/shorts, shouting at the ref/goalie etc. - nothing cerebral and nothing even very clever - it did make the match for me though and to make matters even more entertaining Germany lost, and they'd all been so looking forward to drinking themselves to a standstill that afternoon.

And things only got better on the Saturday when I went to my local little supermarket and got served by the lady who'd commented about England's poor performance the week previously (drawing 1:1 with the US, whilst Germany thrashed the Aussies 4:0) it gave me such great joy to greet her with a smile and say "so, Germany?" she tried her best to come back with a comment about the England match (yes, it was boring) but as I pointed out to her, we drew, we didn't LOSE...

It's rather worrying this watching of football though, I'm starting to absorb the rules, and shout at the TV, it's starting to matter to me, which isn't a good thing, it will only end in tears so this evening instead of watching either the Germany game (would quite like them to win, although it would be more amusing if they went out and England continued weiter) or the Aussie game (they're sooooooooooooo on the first plane homewards tomorrow) this evening I'm going to yoga with a French friend and an English friend - we'll probably be the only people there (apart from the instructor that is).