CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR

HOLIDAY TIME DOES HAVE ITS ADVANTAGES, but one of them is definitely not the fact that I am often forced to spend time away from my wife, a torture worse than anything that any devil or daemon might set in store for me after death; thus, as it were, I can safely state that the time I spend in her company guarantees me eternal happiness.

THIS SUFFERING NOTWITHSTANDING, I am occasionally diverted to pay attention to what our leaders are up to, and the football match yesterday evening was one of those occasions. It appears to me that the English, despite what has been stated in popular fiction in the XIX century, have basically no ability at sport. We may be good at inventing games, but as soon as we tell foreigners the rules we will be thrashed into oblivion at our own game. This is not exactly being hoisted by our own petards, but a close simile.

THE DUFFEST ASPECT of the issue nowadays is that we no longer rely on drab Englishmen to drag Englishness through the mud, but bring Europeans into the mix. After having Sven-Goran “Shagger” Erikson as manager of the England football team, we might have learned that Europeans should not be trusted because they have never understood our values, as hardly any of them went to Eton.

ALAS, THIS IS NOT THE CASE. The present foreign manager of the English team speaks about the recent dismal depression in form as if he were a minor character in a Marx Brothers film, or at an audition for a Neapolitan comic opera. Of course, none of this is really serious at the moment, but after the recess, we will have to get down to the proper business of setting things to rights. One wonders whether Gordon is actually paying attention to all this in his spa clinic in Switzerland, where he is presumably having his brain washed.