Reasons to be cheerful

Post coitum omnes animal triste est, and what a glorious white-knuckle ride that was. But now it's gone. I've used Reasons to be cheerful as a title a few times over the years, and it usually means I'm trying very hard to find some.

Rout

I once saw City lose six nil against Cardiff, our local rivals. Our forward players actually did quite well, particularly a strikingly short winger called Jamal Campbell-Ryce who was making his debut, but it seemed like every time Cardiff attacked they scored. Our keeper, the unfortunately named Gerken, gave a bravura display of coming when he should have stayed and staying when he should have come, and the defence were so unnerved by his ability to be everywhere and yet simultaneously nowhere that they didn't know what the hell to do, so in the end didn't do much.

I left at halftime, so technically I only saw them lose four nil. I've never walked out on a game early before or since, but it was an evening game, I had an 8:30 start across town in the morning, and I wanted time to have a beer and find some kind of emotional equilibrium before bedtime. It was one of the worst displays I've seen from any City side, and I've seen a few. I think they could have given Brazil a game last night though.

Memories: round and round we go

I once saw a TV play about a series of family Christmases in the same parental home, spread across a couple of decades. I know it was real because I was too young to be tripping when I saw it, but I can't remember its name and it's too vague a memory to be easily googled. The narrative device itself stuck in my mind as an example of the whole time's-arrow-time's-cycle thing, with the family Christmas remaining the same, even as their individual lives moved on.

It's the same way that I recall my life, except that the backdrop to my monologues and plot twists comes from football. Not that football is really the be-all and end-all, whatever I may say in here, but it does give my life a rhythm, as the weekend domestic programme chimes with the midweek Champions League counterpoint. Every April and May there's a crescendo, and every fourth year it carries on building to the grand World Cup happy finish. Truly World Cups are the real Christmas, as previously discussed.

So seeing David Platt's winner against Belgium in 1990 on my widescreen TV a few weeks ago instantly took me back to the tiny telly in the Midlands pub we used to drink in back then. I can almost taste the purple nasties - a snakebite with a dash of blackcurrant, if you're wondering. I think all the cells in my body that thought that was a good idea have since been replaced. Tiny tellies are also a thing of the past, in fact the widescreen itself was bought specifically for the last World Cup.

A week after the Belgium game we were back in the same pub on my birthday, watching England lose to Germany on penalties. By Euro 1996 I'd moved to Bristol, and I remember seeing Croatia v Germany in a pub in the Mendips with a friend, the last time we ever did acid. Germany won despite Davor Suker's trickery and the way the grass kept changing colour and moving around. Gives purple nasty a whole new meaning.

If regular readers think this all sounds a bit familiar, that's because it's a rehash of a similar post from Euro 2012. But then eternal recurrence is kind of the theme here, which makes this recycling a legitimate device with a real philosophical purpose. What purpose? I'm trying to push you into a short but intense existential crisis in a remote mountain hideout, after which you will emerge crying out to the crags and glaciers that you still choose life, even if it means reading my old posts over and over again until the end of time.

Ironically, I think this is the first time I've done that spiel. The first, but probably not the last.

Hot

If you're wondering why I use such short titles, it's to save characters when I post the link in Twitter.

Anyone with any lingering doubts about the impact of the heat on the tournament must have found the events of the last two days hard to explain. The earlier Friday game, France v Germany, kicked off at 1:00 pm local time. It was played between two European teams, and occasionally rose to the level of languid before rapidly reverting to sluggish and dull. The later game, Brazil v Colombia, kicked off at 5:00. It was played between two South American (and therefore comparatively heat-resistant) teams, and was one of the most entertaining games of the tournament.

So what exactly do they expect us to do?

There haven't been any games for a couple of days, and it feels like a dummy run for the endless weeks without football which are coming up all too soon. The final is next Sunday, July 13th, and the new season doesn't kick off until Friday August 8th. That's 26 days with no football, or nearly 4 endless weeks.

Back to work, you slacker

I have to go back to work this afternoon. I remember when that kind of thing used to happen all the time. May, it was. It was generally mild, but sometimes I had to wear a jumper. Now it's starting again.

Which means I don't have time to write a proper thing for you. Here's another one from 2006 - why the World Cup is better than Christmas. Amazing that something so clearly the case should need to be explained.

Europe versus Africa

It's remarkable the way the first three days of the round of 16 have fallen. Day one was all South America, day two was Europe against central America. Yesterday Europe had another continental battle, this time against Africa.

It's never quite happened for the Africans at the World Cup. Despite Pele predicting they'd win it before the year 2000, they've still never got beyond the quarter finals, and this year they haven't even got that far. As is now traditional they gave a good account of themselves, they impressed with their skills and effort, they made new friends and admirers etc etc, but it was Europe that got the actual results. And so it goes, most of the time. There's the occasional Isandhlwana but it's nearly always Rorke's Drift, and guess who ends up with all the silver.