The World Cup in more headlines...

Captain Biko!!!

Praise in liberal circles as Stevie Gerrard reveals a prominent tattoo of the former South African freedom fighter Steve Biko beneath his captain's armband...'The eyes of the world are watching now,' pronounces the England skipper before solemnly chanting 'Keela maja, like - the man us dead, eh?' for several hours...

Nelson Riddle!!!

Will Mr Mandela be appearing at the opening ceremony and, if so, will he be visible behind Archbishop Desmond Tutu's shirt???

Vickery in a Tutu!!!

Mass confusion at the opening ceremony as England rugby union star Phil Vickery is caught on camera attempting to enter the charismatic clergyman. 'I thought he was an impala...' pleads the combative prop forward lamely as he's given an unceremonious going over by security officials on the way to the airport. 'What was he doing there in the first place??? splutters Richard Littlejohn in the Mail, 'the Rugby world cup was 13 years ago!!!'

Township Dive!!!

Red top fury as Bastian Schweinsteiger's theatrical tumble in the box helps eliminate England from the last 16. 'A name like that writes its own headlines...' croaks a distraught Fabio Capello, punching a nearby springbok in fury.

Nelson Widdle!!!

Anger in America as former president Mandela is caught by cameras, pitchside, attempting to emulate DaMarcus Beesley's infamous touchline emptying of the bladder. 'Clearly the senile old fucker should be in a home' rants President Obama, adding fuel to the flames in the wake of the recent BP oil slick fiasco during which he's alleged to have called the Queen 'a rancourous old cunt'...


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The World Cup in headlines...

Boer draw!!

England struggle in goal-less opener against USA

Rand-y scouse git!!!

Tabloids weigh into Wayne Rooney's attempts to cash in by ppning up Soweto the squad'st grab a granny night to Hello! Magazine photographers...

Roo-noceros!!!!

England teeter on the brink as their feisty striking talisman is gored during a rest & relaxation break to a national safari park

Veldt in Motion!!!

Sun's readership quadruples with the addition of the former poet Laurete to their team of pundits....

More to follow, no doubt....

I've posted elsewhere on here before...

...about how someone like Orwell would have been an excellent blogger. We'll never know. But I'd be equally intrigued by the thought of a smart phone or similarly tweet-enabled device in the hands of B.S. Johnson.

I say this because, reading him at his best, you feel startlingly close to Johnson's consciousness at times. All those internal interjections and self-doubts and muttered-under-the-breath clarifications and, 'oh well, what does anything bloody well matter anyways...?'

The cumulative effect is to make you feel that you're in frighteningly close proximity to such a fiercely functioning mind; you can almost feel all the clanks and frictive shaft shiftings of memory, for instance, as it whirrs and grapples exactly like the net haulers so stunningly evoked in 'Trawl'.

Johnson, I think, would have relished the immediacy of the tweet, don't you think? The logical extension, perhaps, of his book in a box conceit. (He once wrote a book that sort of came in a box kind of thing, so the reader could shuffle the pages and randomise their order - you dig?). The only problem would be in collating the material. (You'd want it in book form, ultimately, wouldn't you?)

Anyway, just a thought. If you haven't read him, you should.

OK, time for Question Time.

Nighty night,

Bob

This would have been much funnier if, instead of calling it "Wendy Hurrell watch", I'd called it...

The Hurrell Observatory...



...cloudy but mainly dry, a fair breeze keeping the temperature down to a maximum of twenty with small patches of rain drifting up over the south coast later in the evening...

{.....}

(...or even 'Wendy Watch' would have been an improvement...Not difficult, really...)


xxx
Bob

Hanging Chads...

You can tell a lot from a teamsheet, can't you? Aside from a handful of dull old Tims, Michaels and Jonathans, the USA team that plays England on Saturday will be a joyous riot of New World energy and democratic informality: Clints, Brads and Landons will rub shoulders with Joses, Carloses, Ricardos and even the occasional Herculez. Marcus, DaMarus Beasley, Demerit et al will link arms with Benny Feilhaber, Josmer Altidore and Steven Cherundolo. Will the pitch even find room for Oguchi Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra *and* (my favourite) Edson Buddle? Doubtless there are a million future Chads and Thads and Brads lining up behind their awesome battalions of Soccer Moms - and 'Soccer' isn't even their number one game.

And up against them will be our Johns and Franks and Joes and Robs and Waynes and Glens with only Jermaine and (God, how unlikely it sounds!) Emile to add any hint of the exotic depths of the brave new England!

Pleasant aromas...

...on the bus this morning. A sort of warm and drowsy, slept-in pyjamas smell, giving way to gently steaming espresso. Soon eradicated, of course, by the familiar bolt grease bus tang; but nice all the same, while it lasted...

B.S. I love you...

All that has helped me understand perhaps just one thing in my research to trace the causes of my isolation: I now realise the point at which I became aware of class distinction, of differences between people which were nothing to do with age or size, aware in fact of the class war, which is not an outdated concept, as those of the upper classes who are not competely dim would con everyone else into believeing it is. The class war is being fought as viciously and destructively of human spirit as it has ever been in England: I was born on my side, and I cannot and will not desert...

B.S. Johnson, Trawl

Wendy Hurrell watch...

...cloudy but mainly dry, a fair breeze keeping the temperature down to a maximum of twenty with small patches of rain drifting up over the south coast later in the evening...

{.....}

Montevideo killed the radio star...

We he held our office World Cup sweepstake the other day.


I got Uruguay...

A night at the opera...

For those of my reader(s) fortunate enough to be in possession of a smart phone/iphone type gizmo, I really can't recommend the new Opera web reader app highly enough. It's a brilliant way of accessing web content. You can choose text sizes that are actually readable and it seems to work well with all the sites I look at regularly - Arsenal News Review, the Guardian and the Beeb all are a joy to flick through now ( although there are the usual access issues on the Tarty Doris website, obviously, but that might just be the effect of the restraining order. That Holly Willoughby's a touchy mare, isn't she????

But best of all, it's *free*!!!!

As they used to say on the Goon Show; 'Get some today!!!'


L.U.V.on y'all,

Bob