One Day On

For those of us inclined to be English, these are now what might be termed Troubling Times. We had to wake up this morning, and remember again that we're now in an era when the biggest World Cup defeat we've ever suffered was at the hands of Germany. Every generation of England football watchers has their defining game against the Germans that will forever remain in their memories as that game. The match you can mark your life by, with a time before it happened, and all subsequent times since.

For me (and the rest of us that became sentient in the early nineties) it was the semi-final of Euro 96, and our reoccurring ineptitude with spot kicks. For kids of the noughties, yesterday was your rite of passage. Well done, you're now truly inducted into the cult of the three lions.

We learnt a lot of new words yesterday too (and not just the ones David James was yelling): "goal line technology" being the most irritatingly haunting three. I'm not going to wander into the debate as to whether if that goal had counted England would have done better, or even if that now makes it 1-1 on dodgy crossbar based ball antics, but I will say that if I ever meet Sepp Blatter, I will follow the stern advice of Alan Rickman, and take out his heart with a spoon ("because it hurts more").

If you breathe more, and munch the calm pills, you might notice that other things happened last week too. Andy Murray's waded his way through a wall of grump into the quarter finals of Wimbledon (beating the winner of Queen's, and without a fish joke in sight). And as far as I know, Isner and Mahut are still playing.

The Valencian Grand Prix added its own degree of confusion to the weekend, firstly because what's usually billed as a poor man's Monaco (all of the dis-excitement, but none of the dancing girls) turned out to be actually quite exciting, and secondly because Mark Webber decided to fulfill his boyhood dream of becoming a Fighter Pilot (unwisely though, because he was in a car at the time), resulting in some spectacular (but shortlived) aerobatics courtesy of Heikki Kovaleinen's car-cum-launch ramp.

Finally, rightly back on two wheels (where we belong on this blog), the Tour De France starts next weekend, which means this week most cycling teams will be getting outside their own weight in pasta, and thinking tactics rather than actually riding too much. Sadly, Tom Boonen (perhaps the closest thing we've got to a Cycling Rock God) will miss the Tour, because he sustained a pretty nasty knee injury while running over Mark Cavendish's head.