Total Fouling, and Two Traveling Circuses

Inevitably, someone's won the World Cup. And more inevitably, because I'm a mug, I watched them do it. So far as I can work out, the most entertaining aspect of debacle we were subjected to yesterday was that I was convinced to watch it in the same room as my grandma.

For the many of you who have had the privilege of not meeting my grandma, she's from that wonderfully old, flagrantly racist, and brilliantly mental breed of OAPs who you have to shout lies at to make them stop asking questions ("Yes Nan, there are normally this many bookings in a match!"). Mid way through the second half I was treated to a verbal treatise on how the Spanish manager might (or might not) look a bit like some film star from the 50's (or possibly the 60's) which she saw in that cinema in Barnsley before it burned down and was replaced by something that was inferior because the seats weren't quite so comfy. All of which was welcome, because even though Spain did win eventually, it was a dirty disappointment of a match.

Bernie Ecclestone's Flying Circus finally landed in Silverstone over the weekend, which was always set to be a bit of an event after the period when we all thought that the track had been consigned to the dustbin. As it was, Red Bull pulled out all the stops to provide us with a spectacular showdown both on and off the track. My current theory is that the team principle for the team is either spectacularly clever, or (as is more likely) is just a little dense. Whichever way round, the team managed to grab most of the attention all weekend after introducing a new, much faster front wing - which Seb Vettel promptly trashed in practice, and his team mate Mark Webber was ordered to surrender his wing to Vettel, and use the older, slower one. Having his team apparently discriminating against him did the emotional equivalent of setting the Australian on fire, and he went on to pull an astonishing drive out of his hat to win the race. Like I say - either very, very clever team manipulation, or blind luck and stupidity.

Finally, I spent the last week in Wales, and so far as any Welsh person ever talks about cycling, everyone was talking about Geraint Thomas. He's a cyclist for Team Sky, who's actually been around for a while - he was even in the gold medal winning team pursuitists on the track in Sydney 2008, it's just no one's ever really heard of him, and for a couple of heady days last week he was inside the top five of the Tour. For now, he's faded back into the main pack (as has Lance, after two crashes yesterday), but he's a name to watch - if not in this tour, then the next one. In terms of real results, Cadel Evans is currently in yellow, and Mark Cavendish has become the first British man to ever win two stages in a row.

In a few days I'm off to Hawaii to languish on a beach and ogle sea life, so unless I can wangle net access, there'll be no posts for a couple of weeks. I'm sure you'll manage.