Can't work up any enthusiasm at all for the World Cup Football Final tonight. I'm no footy fan to start with, but I can usually bring myself to watch 1 game every 4 years. This time I just lost interest when Brasil were knocked out (and they deserved it-they were crap), and out of Spain or Holland, the truth is, I just don't care. And to enjoy a game properly you must have at least a slight preference. Still, at least England disgraced themselves as usual, to the unadulterad joy of all Welsh, Scottish and Irish folk....
So, this gives me a brilliant opportunity to go out for either a walk or a bike ride this evening. The weather is good, and if I go over the park, or town, after 7.30, I'll have the place to myself, give or take the odd ball of tumbleweed. Magic! No squawking brats, squeaky snappy little dogs, kids on skateboards, people pushing prams who don't look where they're going, blokes who only have dogs or children so they can have something to shout at, and all the other things that conspire to make my life less fun than it should be. And empty roads to cycle on.
I am growing, or to be more truthful have grown, into a gloriously miserable old git. Almost anything that other people enjoy pisses me off, and no one else likes the things I do, so everyone thinks I am just a bit wierd (this statement of course excludes those who know me. They already know I'm wierd). My tolerance of people at large and their irritating lives is worn thin, and I don't know if this is a part of getting older or just me being ornery (lovely word from my childhood watching 'B' movie westerns. There was critters and varmints, then there was ornery critters and ornery varmints, which were worse) which I always was a bit. Everyone needs a hobby and being a misserable old git is mine, and as long as you lot persist in having brats, dogs, noisy lifestyles, ridiculous 4x4 cars and kids who cannot listen to an music track from beginning to end without switching to another one (this sends me inexplicalbly into a frothing rage), I will defend my right to my hobby.
If any aspect of the World Cup has really put my back up though, it is the unrelenting, unavoidable, all-present marketing. This is as bad as Xmas. Products which have no connection with soccer at all cannot be allowed into the shops without a little football logo on them somewhere. I sort of understand why TV manufacturers jump on the bandwagon (although I wish they wouldn't), but what have crisps, or orange squash, or shampoo, or motor oil got to do with it? In one TV advert, for Marks & Spencer, Caroline Quentin claims to love the football, but spends the time you'd have though she would use to watch the match, which is on in the background, in the kitchen preparing a sort of pick'n'dip salad with M & S products, which she then wheels into the TV room as the game finishes. The sheer illogicality of this has annoyed me to the extent that I have resolved never to shop at M & S again (yes I did, sometimes). I would have really liked to extend this boycott to all the products which have so irritatingly been connected with the World Cup in this spurious way, but that would result in death from malnutrition fairly rapidly. 'But it's only once every 4 years' they say, but in the 2 intervening years there are the Olympics (yawn) and the Rugby World Cup to put up with, and every bloody year enhances the misery of winter with fucking Xmas. which will start any day now.
And another thing...all TV adverts jumping on the bandwagon inevitably have the soundtrack of cheering crowds-but they cannot possibly represent the World Cup crowds as there are no vuvuzelas. Ah, vuvus-has anything ever been devised which is more perfect for the purpose of annoying me? Seriously, fire one of those fuckers off anywhere near me and I promise you will need major surgery to remove it.
Thank you, Ann, for provoking me into writing this here blog, as I've got some of the bile off my chest at least!
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