Orb chasing and skirt slobbering

Some people are on the pitch, they’re reading a blog...

It's a curious thing, that once every 4 years, I find that it's completely appropriate to become a gurgling neanderthal, shedding millions of years of natural selection in the process. It leaves me scouring round the flat, scuttling after pigeons that land on the windowsill, hoping to lure them inside so I can bash them to death with an IKEA bedside lamp and grill the meat over the toaster. I got LOVE and HATE tattooed onto my eyelids. I started clapping with my elbows. I enjoyed yelling jingoistic slogans in the direction of the magic picture box in the corner of the pub and imploring some of the fittest men in the world to 'work harder' while I recline in my seat and suck warm beer through a straw like an alcoholic stroke victim.

The World Cup has a reputation for turning hoards of right thinking, modern people into flag draped, riot inciting, monotoned, shameless anti-socials or sunshine fearing, TV worshiping, offside rule explaining, entertainment vacuums. This time around though, the emperor is starting to look somewhat exposed around the edges. This World Cup is a little bit rubbish, despite infinite adverts rubbing their crotch and jocularly backslapping us into remembering how much we all really like football. No really... NO REALLY - YOU DO (eat at McDonald's) YOU DO. FOOTBALL. EURRRGH. FOOTBALL!

I’ve taken a short break to write this, after 7 days cultivating the impression of my buttocks into the couch and treating myself to herculean doses of the most soporific matches in history. I'm begining to think it's me vs. the World Cup. If this was a boxing match, they’d have called it off, mainly on account of being bludgeoned to death by rank tedium and the fearful sight of Alan Shearer seemingly aging on screen before my eyes.

As a dedicated football fan, I really look forward to enjoying my favorite sport with people who have a bi-decade, passing interest in it. I love watching everyone coming together and enjoying the games. The World Cup allows people who normally have stupid pointless things, like friends and lives, to stand in the pub with the rest of us, shouting at In-ger-land for doing a rubbish “ball kick thing” or celebrating a goal by shouting “BINGO”. Of course, there will always be a few hardened wretches, glumly forced into grumbling acceptance that TV is suspended for a month and complaining about the Eastenders start times.

This time around I have a sort of sympathy for the naysayers. My ears are hounded by the relentless muffled white noise of the Vuvuzelas (or ZuluAliens as someone at work calls them – you can tell he’s the father of young children) which make the match sound like it’s being beamed to us direct from the inside of Mosses' arse during a biblical plague of wasps. It's a din more irritating than having your temple prised open with a crowbar and teams of glass ants being pushed inside your brain cavity. At least the unique sound of the screeching little Pingu’s tootling away has caught the public imagination, while somewhere in the middle distance several overpaid athletes hoof their orb to and fro, with a lack of enthusiasm that suggests they're just killing time between Thai massages and adultery.

The action to date has been a humourless, grey display of defensive inscrutability, just begging for characters and big game players to get the flyaway pound shop ball under control and reverse the current trend of pinging it over the bar like Johnny Wilkinson and standing, hands on hips, looking heavenward with a ‘why me’ expression all over their sour puss.

Lucky then that there are a couple of wacky tales underpinning the drudgery and wing-backs. The astonishing sight of the overweight, onion headed North Korean goal hanger blubbing during the national anthem was something to savour, until you remembered that his tears were probably the endgame of a knowing acceptance that failure to cruise to glorious victory would mean suddenly going ‘missing’ and being replaced by another gaggle of interchangeable patriots in the next game as a result of the edict from the 'Dear Leader'.

There's the ludicrous story of a bevvy of Dutch beauties being thrown out of Holland's first game for wearing matching micro dresses that showed sponsorship logos from an evil non-FIFA endorsed brand. Only an organisation as myopic and slapstick as FIFA would fail to realise that banning the dresses and kicking them out of the ground would only draw attention to the brand that oh so badly offended them. Sure. There's literally no way pictures of dutch hotties wearing tiny orange dresses would ever get on TV or in the papers. Behold; Sepp Blatter, the thinking man's idiot.

The hilarity seemed to not only double, but square, when it turned out that monotone ITV summariser Robbie Earle was responsible for the ladies getting into the ground in the first place, leading to him losing his job, his dignity and becoming the unwitting subject of 'Well I would have done the same..' conversations up and down the country between gangs of slobbering teens and overweight, bear knuckled gruntholes.

The opening ceremony promised myriad delights, with a huge concert held in a cavernous corporate rock venue in a South African township called Myideaohell. It was quite a sight to see Shakipsdon'tlie, The Black EyePods and other paid up members of popville trying to whip up some atmosphere. The organisers helped by dumping a load of beach balls on the bedazzled onlookers and first rate strategic flag distribution. The camera's occasional, ill-judged, close ups of the crowd showed them looking like they’ve been bussed in from the Eurovision Song contest to wear sparkly costumes and tick the appropriate boxes of enthusiasm and retain starry eyed rapture, making whole thing resemble a Loony Tunes re-imagining of the Nuremberg rally.

But, for those of us who know, this is everything we've been waiting for. Only a certain type can appreciate the warm, sunny feeling of waking up each day knowing that there's going to be 3 full matches. Not only that, but they're on the telly. Then, the world seems to open it's full glory to us; no matter that it's BBQ weather outside, no matter that the kids want to be taken for a bike ride, or you need to eat, or that you've failed to move for 12 hours and the DVT is threatening to move towards your spine if you untie the bit of string holding it in your calf. For just a short time, every four years, the world comes together. And watches a goalless draw between countries you've never been to. Ah. Sweet mysteries of life.

BabywhenyoucallmeyoucancallmeAl... xx