2006-07-18 - 7:56 a.m.
World Cup fever - or at least, a slight temperature, but nothing too serious.
England was World Cup crazy when we were there, as England hadn't penaltied itself out of the trophy for the first few days. Mind you, they stayed World Cup (I tried doing it in acronyms, but it looks like the old fashioned English abbreviation for toilet) crazy afterwards, but before, it was *Craaaaaazyyyyyy*. The first thing I noticed upon being picked up by my father and driven into London was all the flags. "What's with all the, uh, Swiss? Norwegian? flags?" I asked, only to be told that I was a moron, and those were the England Saint George colours, and everyone was flying them in patriotic fervour in the hopes that vast swathes of white cloth with a red cross on them would inspire the England team to take the cup. (They, didn't, by the way. In case you hadn't heard.) I was quite relieved to find out that London had not been invaded by the Swiss in my absence. In any case, for the fist few days we were there, it was patriotic soccer-induced madness. Madness, I tells ya - and if you weren't suitably engorged with English pride, I think they scooped you up and took you somewhere sinister. (We don't know what happens to the people they "disappear", but I'm told there's been a huge increase of figures in the backgound of scenes at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Don't look at the ones in the very back too closely.) But, alas, it all went for nothing, as one of the England players tackled the wrong ball "by mistake", and England lost on a penalty kick. I could discuss the reasons why England lost until the cows throw up (or *you* do), but suffice to say, this has happened before. It was a ball-stomping good time while it lasted, though. Actually, it was interesting; on the day England played, we were walking through Islington in an attempt to find an exhibit the Museum of London runs where one can handle real artifacts dragged from the river (ooh, slimy!), and we got a bit lost. We wandered past a pub that had a bunch of rather rough-looking lads who were clearly making a day of it at the pub to watch the World Cup in a congenial beer-soaked atmosphere (soccer-watching is a group activity in London, as far as I can tell - all the pubs were packed), who were waving a huge England flag at passing traffic and threatening to beat up anyone who didn't cheer. I was all for slipping through the assembled yobbos (slang, Brit. Yobbo - someone who is poorly educated and stupidly violent, from YOB = Young Offender's Bureau, a government program from the '70s, or something like that) (Thus endeth the language lesson), but Bob admitted to a sudden urge to stand in the middle of them and yell "Go Chad!". While I would bet on Bob against some asshole (or, since we were in London, arsehole) drunk any day, I did rather want to spend my day away from the local police station. But Bob is smarter than that, and we slipped through the crowd with little more than a "go... team!". We never did find the exhibit (it was a little further away than we had thought), but we did eventually walk to the Museum of London. From Islington. This is not a short walk. Remember how I said yesterday that I was now in shape? That day had a lot to do with it. Go team, indeed. By the way, I have pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I promise I'll get the good ones up, and maybe I'll also manage a pic of the downtown Silver Spring Discovery Communications building, which has a giant inflatable shark sticking out of it in honour of "shark week" on the Discovery Channel. If you're anywhere near Silver Spring, you should definitely go see it live, as it were. It's epic.
Dorsal - Ventral
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