London Gripped By Football Fever

A strange thing happened on my way home from work this evening. I left work at 4.45 we are currently working summer shifts 8-4 sounds fun and very continental doesn’t it? Actually it’s because we have no air conditioning and by 5pm the office has turned into Dante’s inferno and people are dropping in the heat! But anyway I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, so, I left the office and was immediately greeted with a cacophony of car horns, it seemed every lunatic driver in London was out and driving like maniacs! I also noticed that nearby offices were haemorrhaging people mostly middle aged men who were moving faster and sweating more profusely than any of them had done since 1974. What the hell was going on?

Aha! it dawned on me this mass exodus and loony driving was in fact not a terrorist attack or mass evacuation but an en masse attempt to get home or to the nearest pub with a TV, for the world cup and more precisely the England match.

Within 10 minutes the traffic slowed to a trickle and the streets were almost empty with the exception of the odd woman or gentleman, of the Cher enthusiast variety, emerging from buildings rather like cockroaches after a nuclear holocaust, to find the streets deserted. Every pub along the way was positively oozing testosterone as hordes of sweaty men crammed in to get a glimpse of the game and every so often a great collective roar or groan went up.

Was I suddenly taken with an urge to run home and drink a can of larger and chant Engerrrrlaaaand at the TV? No I was not! and in fact did my shopping in a nearly deserted Tesco…..bliss! And thought, what a shame that it’s only a football match, rather than World Hunger or The war in Iraq that can actually unite a nation and cause grown men to stop for a moment and share a collective purpose.

BTW Apparently we won 2-0

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