I have been hoping to find some really good World Cup blogging this time round and had been rather disappointed.  That was until I found James Hamilton (I think I’ve heard of him, hang about, he left a comment here recently, well at least someone called James Hamilton did, and it was about football, so I think it’s the same one)‘s More Than Mind Games.

He sweeps up a lot of the hype and chucks in the bin, leaving us (essentially) with the following: England are playing better than ever before; that includes Beckham; the difference is Eriksson.

Quite.

Update.  I’m still reading and have found this little gem:

Passion is the resort of those who know that their skill isn’t up to the job

Quite.  Again

Huh? - "An orthopaedic consultant has found that [Noel] Edmonds is suffering from repetitive strain injury in his right elbow from lifting the telephone too often on his new television game show, Deal or No Deal."

Andy Wood was joking about supporting England and being run out of his (Scottish) town.  Seems for some over the border it’s not quite so funny:

A boy aged seven and a 41-year-old disabled man were attacked in separate racist assaults in Scotland for wearing England shirts.

Interesting, as in inaccurate, use of the word “racist”.  Last time I looked Scots were pretty much the same colour as Englishmen.  If these assaults were what they are claimed to have been then, surely, they are nationalist assaults?

It’ll be interesting to see what Niall (pronounced Neil, I believe) Ferguson will be saying in his Channel Four series which starts tonight.  According to the ads for the show his theory is that the wars (hot and cold) of the 20th Century represented one, continuous, century-long struggle which the East won.  Which makes me wonder what he means by “East” - East Europe, Middle East, China or (surely not) India? 

It’ll be interesting for me because I, too, believe that the wars of the 20th Century represented a continuous struggle.  But for me that struggle was an attempt to answer the question: how should industrial societies be governed?  The answer, incidentally, being more or less the one we started off with: democracy.

"The only catch is that you need to first install hundreds of feet of railway track to wind around the garden." But if it's the only way to get round the hosepipe ban...

Wearing make up at night does not make you look older, says Squander Two. Wonder what Jackie will have to say about this...

England have a 5% chance of winning the World Cup, according to Danny Finkelstein. Something to bear in mind when we go out in the quarter-finals.

Another World Cup. And once again I will be cheering on the lads.  Eventually.  It usually takes a little while for my anger at the boorish antics of my fellow England fans to subside sufficiently to allow me to support the team.  In the case of a game against Germany, the chances are that that little while will last the full 90 minutes.

Even so, boorish fans and boorish tabloids notwithstanding, I will scream and shout, cheer and cry and generally attach my emotions to the efforts of the men wearing the three lions.

But this is the last time.

I mean, it’s nonsense isn’t it?  Getting excited about football.  I mean really.  What on earth have the exertions of eleven men wearing red or white got to do with me?  Nothing that I can see.  And even if I could find a positive answer to that question, what would be the point?  Right now, we’ve got the players, the manager, the weather and the venue.  But, it’s all downhill from here.  Never again will the omens be so good.  Even the FA, by appointing an Englishman to be future manager, have tacitly accepted that the game is up.

So, it’s going to be one last hurrah from Beckham and one last hurrah from me.  And that’s it.  Never again.