The World Cup

I’d known for quite a while that we would be in France during the World Cup. Like most England fans, my head told me that we had very little chance of doing well this time round but my heart told me that I had to watch, just in case things turned out better than expected.

We don’t have a TV in the caravan but we do have a USB tuner which enables us to watch local TV on our laptop. We’ve not used it much because our language skills are not good enough for us to enjoy Spanish/French/Portuguese TV programmes, but it was one of my options for watching the England games.

The site we were on for the first game against the USA was remarkable in that it was the only site we have stayed on that had no internet access, no mobile phone reception and not even a hint of a TV signal. Fortunately however they had Satellite TV in the bar. Unfortunately, the only other people on the site vaguely interested in watching the game were a Welsh couple. Now to give them their due they were not particularly anti-English, bit I think it’s fair to say that they were slightly amused by the ineptitude of England’s performance whereas I was just embarrassed and faintly annoyed.

By the time of the next game against Algeria we had moved to a site which had good TV reception and I decided to watch the game on my own at the caravan rather than seeking out a bar in town – a wise decision.

For the final group game against Slovenia I was heartened by the fact the England’s fate was in their own hands and although there was no way that I wanted to take the risk of watching it in a public place surrounded by French, Dutch, Germans etc. I was looking forward to watching it.

I duly tuned in to the same French TV channel that had shown the previous England game only to find that they were showing the other game from our group – USA v Algeria! I scanned through all the other channels but none of them were showing football. So I missed the only game that England won in their 2010 World Cup campaign.

I’m not going to say too much about the Germany game – like everyone else I was annoyed about the disallowed goal, frustrated at the ineptitude of the England team and faintly thankful at the end that it was all over. At least from now on I could just enjoy the football without worrying too much about who wins.

We decided that with England out we should support the teams of the countries we’d visited in our year of travelling. France were already out so that left us with Spain and Portugal who played each other in the next round leaving us just Spain to support.

On the evening of their semi-final game against Germany we had been invited for drinks with some other people on the new site we were on, so I only caught the second half but one of the other guys on site, hearing that I had the football on, came and joined me.

We decided we had to do something special for the final so Julie and I organised a World Cup Final barbecue with the option of watching the game on our not very big screen. We had a really good turnout and it was great to watch the game with other football fans.

And it was great to watch Spain win after the disappointment of the England games.

P.S. I do have to be careful though as there are lots of Dutch on holiday in this region and I have occasionally found myself inadvertently humming a few bars of “Viva Espana” while shopping in the supermarket.