guapacha.com

Yes, we’re back from our week in the old country, had a pretty good time though mostly family matters rather than sight-seeing etc. Finally got to see the nephew, quite a cute young lad (as babies go), I think he’s going to be a real handful when he gets older though! Other than hanging out with my sister and family, we also spent time in Exeter with some of my mum’s family, drinking way too much wine and eating some fine BBQ.

There is no doubt that England does pig way better than the US. England has good bacon (as opposed to the crap over here), gammon steaks, and pork rashers. All are delicious and sadly unavailable here.

With the dollar being largely worthless, things were real expensive. I couldn’t stop doubling every price and then recoiling in shock at what I was getting. Food especially got me going every time, we’d be getting double the portion at half the price in the US.

The number of speed cameras seems to have dramatically increased and they are very effective at slowing people down – virtually everyone does the speed limit when warned there might be a camera near by. And a new thing – ‘average speed zones’ where, allegedly, they have two cameras spread over a few miles which will measure your average speed through the zone and send you a ticket if that measurement is too high. I almost don’t believe it, though.

Saw a lot of MINIs but no MINI Clubmans. I saw quite a few in Champagne which I quite liked.

Political correctness is running amok in the UK, it almost seems like it has gone beyond what it is here. I had a couple of examples in mind as I started typing this but now they’ve gone. Grrr… well, take my word for it.

Saw some live football on the TV which was good. Not so good was watching my arch-rivals Portsmouth win the FA Cup. My brother-in-law was at the game and very pleased for the result but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

Weather was really warm and sunny for the first few days, sat out in the garden and got burnt at the sea front for one day down in Dawlish. Even though it was probably only around 75/78 it somehow felt worse than the 90+ that I am used to home here. Maybe some comment about “dry heat” is appropriate?

Going to upload some pictures to my Flickr page this weekend so watch for those if you are interested.

Yes, the patron Saint to rule them all is celebrated today and, er, nobody gives a damn. At least very few Englishmen do these days though there has been talk of forcing a celebration on the country, try and get some patriotism going.

The astute amongst you will notice that the picture in this post is not that of St. George but, rather, Paul Weller, of The Jam and The Style Council fame. Whilst many revere Paul McCartney as the hero English song-writer, I’d rather listen to anything written by Mr. Weller, who I think is tragically overlooked by those looking to celebrate the English singer-songwriter.

Being a disco child I wasn’t a huge fan of The Jam until the early 80’s when Paul was already heading towards the more soulful tunes that characterised the Style Council. Beat Surrender is one of my favourite songs ever, and now that I’m older I find I enjoy the early The Jam songs much more. And Introducing the Style Council is some vinyl (or MP3 collection if you must) that everyone should own and enjoy.

Couldn’t even beat Croatia to save their lives, it’s almost enough to make me want to cheer for the Scots.

As an England supporter, its not really funny.

Ok, blog at ya from Tokyo in a couple of days.

It took being down to 10 men for England to finally show how well they can play and, as many had said they would, Lennon and Crouch were the guys leading the charge. If they could have played like that throughout the competition I think they’d be in the semis and one of the favourites. It does allow us to indulge our national pasttime – berating the coach and players in the press, I am sure we will see coach Erikkson and Wayne Rooney get a good roasting.

I think my Beat The Press entry is down the toilet although I doubt many had Portugal in the last 4. Perhaps if its a Germany Brazil final I might bring off an upset.

And in the meantime, England gets a new coach and the preparations start for qualifying for Euro 2008.

The highlight of this match for me was my TiVo. I deliberately got up 20 minutes late so there would be some “tape in the bank” so I could fast forward over the half time show. It also meant I could fast forward over the many times one of the Paraguay players rolled around on the grass “hurt”.

Oh yeah, there was a game though not much of one. England need to shape up if they want to win this thing. I’ve never liked the send the ball forward, hope it hits the head of an attacker strategy the national team uses. Give the ball to Joe Cole, let him run with it, take them on and get people into positions. They should play how the Premiership teams play, aggresive attacking.

As with all England games, each one is going to be in doubt until the final whistle.

So, the Portuguese coach says he definitely isn’t going to be the next England coach; apparantly he doesn’t like being hounded by the press. Go figure. But it seems to me that the England football coach should be an Englishman, not some bloody foreigner. Can you imagine the French or German teams hiring someone from another country? Now, it may be that we don’t have any decent coaches (unlikely) but even if true, the England coach should be like the England players: English.

I know everyone has seen this before a thousand times over but in celebration of England’s 2-1 defeat of Uruguay last night, uninspired or not, and the fact we are only 100 days from the World Cup, let’s revisit:

the badgers celebrating Euro 2004

Today was the draw for the World Cup Finals being held in Germany next year. England are in Group B with Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden. Of course all games at this level are difficult (and any game involving England is ten times more difficult than it needs to be) but one would expect us to have a very good chance of progressing to the next round. You can see the rest of the groups here at the BBC.

Enough ranting and moaning, here are a couple of pictures from a trip I took with my Dad to Marwell Zoo last month; to see all of them go to this Flickr photo set.