Well England have produced the most boring game of the world cup so far. It started quite well, with a sort of free kick come own goal type thing, but the reality is, England weren’t that good.

On the Beeb Mark Lawrencen has taken a real dislike to Sven (it turns out they all have), I suspect it’s a deep down feeling of betrayal now he’s leaving. Not that I disagree with most of what he said, taking of a striker, and moving your best player of the first half (Joe Cole) into the middle did make for an incredibly dull second half.

On the plus side, we won and then Sweden drew with Trinidad and Tobago, which means if we do any better than Sweden, we are through to the next round, before we even play the last game.

Being British I’m always going to want an underdog to do well, although on Thursday, When England play them I may not, I just like the idea that a team full of division two (old money) players, managed to hold on against a team of top European league players.

England 1, Paraguay 0, Sweden 0, Trinidad and Tobago 0;

I’ve only seen the first half of Argentina v Ivory Coast, but it was a really good half.

We’ll that wasn’t as good as the opening game.

Mainly because Poland where dull, Ecuador where better, but not great, but Poland just turned up and not much else.

Now bearing in mind Poland is one of those countries I’ve never been: I’ve always seen Poland as a dull place, I have what I suspect is the stereotypical idea, of snow almost all year, and porrige being the most exciting meal you can eat.

The Ecuadorian goal keeper had some nifty face paint, and was very small

The stadium was quite cool too, it’s got a big four sided TV screen thing hanging over the center circle, just like the Americans have in basket ball. Every time they showed you a shot of someone on the bench they appeared to be watching the football on the screen not the pitch.

Poland 0, Ecuador 2
BBC Report, World Cup Report

I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m having fun with the World Cup so far.

“He’s the best Costa Rican goal keeper in the air”
What now? How many Costa Rican Goalkeepers are in the air?

“It’s a very tiring game to play without the ball”
It’s a boring game to play without the ball.

Footie, footie, footie.

I was going to post about the world cup somewhere else, so it didn’t clutter up the main blog, but then I relished, if I didn’t there would be nothing here for the next few weeks.

The world cup has started, yippie. To be honest it’s a bit like the trailers on LivingTV at the moment. They hype their programs up so much, that you can’t wait for what ever trash it is to start just so the trailers will go away.

Being a worker, I missed almost all of the opening ceremony, although I did see some jerrm-mans slapping there thighs while dressed in leather pants, I quickly turned over and the BBC had the footie on. I don’t think the beeb even bothered with the whole opening ceremony, Radio 4 had some bloke on who does opening ceremonies for a living, and he said it was boring.

What with some semblance of a life, I have very little chance of seeing all the games this world cup, but that isn’t going to stop me from trying, I’ve hooked my Pooter upto the cable box and it’s all scheduled to record all the matches to disk, where they will probably sit for around 6-12 months before I delete them to make way for more pictures of Daisy.

I have however just watched the opening game between the jermans¹ and the Costa ricians², and unfortunately the jermans won. A few things to notice from the first game however:

1. Jurgen Klinsman doesn’t look right in a suit, I think he was wearing his pants to high, and the perfectly folded selves didn’t help.
2. Many of the jermans look like they have just stepped of the set of a Aron Spelling teen drama: Michael Ballack, the rough clules type.
3. The media have been telling me for days but gosh that ball doesn’t half move about in the air.

For the record it was Jermany 4 - Costa Rica 2; Germany where quite poor considering this was only Costa Rica, and there most threatening player is Paul Wanchope and his dodgy knee. If you want a more detailed match report than you shouldn’t really be here. Try the beeb’s report or the world cup web site’s report.

must go now, Poland v Ecuador awaits…

but before a leave, a challenge: you might have seen it all but can you better the Alastair Campbell World cup blog for cashing in on the cup?

¹ As is customary during the world cup, I will be putting on my best scouse accent (which isn’t that good) when ever we mention Germany
² and for counties we have a disturbingly small amount of knowledge on, we shall be patronizing, and pronouce there country like George Bush.

Dinnnggggg Donnnngg

One things for sure about my new job; it’s making me hear things.

Currently I’m working in the Municipal Buildings on Dale street, the one with the big clock tower. well that clock bongs every 15 minutes, which is fine, and most of the time you don’t notice it. It’s only when your sitting at home and you think you can hear the bells.

Today to aid me in my bell delusions, the bells didn’t ring every 15 minutes, oh no, instead they rang every 30 minutes for 15 minutes at a time. apparently they do this sometimes on special occasions, we couldn’t work out what the special occasion was today, but they rang anyway.

The new jobs going really well, no I mention it. I’ve finally gotten my teeth into some code, and I’m motoring along quite nicely, despite the incredibly slow PC I’ve been lumbered with, but hopefully that’s going to change soon.

They are threatening to move us out of the ding dong building to a horrid 60’s building just down the road. having visited once, I think the bells are a better bet, but it all seems to be going ahead at the moment.

There is a slight possibility that all the office moving may lead to working from home, which would be cool. Everybody we’ve told doesn’t seem to think we could pull it off, but I think they underestimate our desire and the number of rooms in our house. I’m not counting on it though, I’m under no delusion that I’m still working in the public sector, and things quite often just don’t happen they way you would want them to.

Ok, it’s bedtime, but not before some shameless self promotion, not three months since I re-wrote my about me pages. I’ve gone and changed jobs, which meant it was all out of date, So I’ve written a new one.

Not learning lessons is my speciality, so this one is all about me now, and will date just as quickly, but you should go look, if only to find out what is my favorite chocolate bar