Happy 1st Anniversary

One year ago today I wrote my very first blog post. Awww . . . look how widdow it is . . . .

Only I don't have anything supercool or momentous to blog about today, so I guess I'll talk about the World Cup instead.

Everyone here has gone insane, y'all. Months ago I started seeing England flags. People starting hanging them on the outside of their houses and flying them on their car windows and pubs started putting up the kind of bunting and streamers that you see at car dealerships and state fairs, only it's all little England flags.

BBC news, with typical concern regarding anything that might make England look like an oppressive colonialist force, started taking polls about whether seeing English flags hanging up like that might make people uncomfortable. Because perhaps it's in poor taste to be quite so specific about which country this is. I guess possibly it could affect those who didn't realize they were in England. "Wait, I am? Huh. That explains the crappy weather." If such a survey were carried out in the US, the journalists would get a lot of blank stares. And then some righteous indignation to the effect that if people don't like being reminded that they live in God's Own Chosen Land then they can just git. One nice man interviewed on the news says that he supports England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and that's the way it should be, because they're all British. Granted, he was English rather than Scottish, Welsh, or Irish. It's easy to be benevolent when you're part of the winning team.

Last Saturday was the first England game--they played Paraguay and won 1-0. It was a gorgeous sunny hot day and I walked into town to run some errands. Every pub I passed was completely full of people watching the game in standing-room-only conditions, yelling at the top of their lungs. Sainsbury's was blissfully cool and empty, and the checkers (who had to wear Sainsbury's uniforms rather than the red and white everyone else had on) secretly wore flashing England pins and asked customers for the update on the match. "Has Paraguay scored?"

At the market, the stall-owners weren't even pretending to sell things. They were all listening to the match on the radio, and some actually had their backs turned to us while watching on small portable TVs. At the fruit and veg stand, the owners finally gave up and started offering huge bags of grapes and peaches for 1 pound each in an effort to get rid of things so that they could head to the pub. "Look, England just scored, take it, take it!" So I got about 2 pounds of lovely red seedless grapes for next to nothing. Suckahs . . .

I walked home just as the game finished and everyone started pouring out of the pubs and the front-yard barbeques, singing and cheering and right trollied. Two girls had found an ingenius way to twist an England flag around across their breasts and fasten it behind their necks so that it became a sort of bikini/halter top. I'm sure St. George would be proud.