My girlfriend kindly agreed to stay in to watch the football when we might easily have spent the evening doing something that both of us, or in this case either of us, might have enjoyed. But I was glad she was there because she made the experience a lot more entertaining than the multi-millionaires on the pitch did. She doesn't watch football or like football which made her sacrifice all the more impressive and in reporting her comments I am in no way trying to say, "Women, hey, what are they like?" because there is no reason why she should know about something she is not interested in. It was, if anything, her valiant attempts to understand and join in with something that she didn't like that made them all the more amusing. She revealed herself to be an even more amazing woman than I had previously realised. And I thought she was amazing already, but every comment managed to satirise the situation, accidentally, but perfectly. So of course she didn't know which of the teams was England, and referred to the sides as the Greens and the Whites, and why not ( but great to see Algeria wholehertedy adopting my camouflage idea. So 40 minutes I'm she was able to look on the bright side by commenting that "At least we're near the goal now" after a little earlier applauding England for coming close to scoring when one of our chumps had flicked the ball precariously towards our own keeper. Her optimism juxtaposed quire neatly with the actuality of what was happening and I wished her commentary was going out on the telly because every single thing she said was pointedy funny, but not deliberately so and I didn't have the time to write it all down. But here are a couple of examples - "Can the England player hear the commentary?" In a concerned voice. But brilliantly pertinent because I couldn't help wondering how much the high expectations of the fans and the judgemental nature of the media was affecting the players. And "I feel bad saying they're useless because they are better than I am." which was both sweet and thoughtful was well as being probably untrue. My only thought was that the team were all playing like they'd all found out they were fucking each other's wives..... Oh! Because only that would explain the awful lack of cohesion. I felt a bit sorry for Algeria who probably deserved the win. But we ended this awful display with a strong possibility that we could still make it through and hopefully we will manage to play the good teams more effectively than we've played the bad ones. So long as we can beat Slovenia.
Ah well.
I managed to get to bed for an early night for once, but just as I was drifting off at about 11.15 the doorbell rang and my neighbours were at the door worrying that they could hear a distressed cat meowing in the front part of my house. They were concerned that it might have fallen down into the gap in front of my basement and I had to get dressed and clamber down there to see if they were right. As it happened it was just sitting on my ground floor window ledge and there was nothing wrong with it. It had probably been scared by the drums of the Algerian supporters who had been celebrating on the Uxbridge Road. I eventually managed to coax the cute kitten back to the path, but the drama had woken me up and I wouldn't get to sleep for another couple of hours. I have had a strange magnetic effect on cats this week and my girlfriend was annoyed that I had let my neighbours care for this confused and cute kitten because she would quite like a cat of her own.
I ended up having a more exciting time in the hour after I went to bed than in the three hours before. Which isn't how it should be.
