Vuvuzela (anag) Zulu Vulva

Who didn't arrive in Rustenberg with the only knowledge of South Africa being Michael Caine in Zulu saying 'I thought I told you only to blow the bloody doors off?' Or that Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi, founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party, played Zulu King Cetewayo in the film?(and not very well, in my opinion).

Anyway, the big turning point in Zulu is of course the scene in which the British couldn't get the lids off their ammunition boxes. Obviously this is because they were wearing gloves made by the same firm as made Rob Green's goalkeepers' gloves.

You know what you can do with your Vuvuzela

If you're in downtown St Ives tonight, come down to the Wharf and listen out for me.

Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can try blowing my vuvuzela
You can try blowing my vuvuzela

Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela ay ay ay
Blowing my vuvuzela
Zela, zela, ay ay ay ay ay ay

It's Not Easy Being Green

So there I was watching the football, when somebody whose name we'll never remember has an optimistic punt at the ball. It bobbles off his toe end and skips along that weird grass they seem to have in South Africa (not a place I've ever associated with grass, other than the 'watch where you're walking, there might be a prostrate lion under your feet snoozing off a zebra takeaway' long yellow savannah sort of grass, definitely not the lush green stuff that you may have noticed allows players to slide half the width of the pitch on their knees when they've scored a goal), skips languidly across that weird green grass, two or maybe three times, almost not reaching the England goal at all. Did it actually happen in slow motion, like that grainy black and white footage of the real Dambusters practice run on some reservoir in Derbyshire or somewhere that gets unconvincingly cut into Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd pretending to be in a Lancaster bomber (it's engines uncannily like the sound of a vuvuzela)in the film reconstruction of the Dambusters raid? In fact,amidst the vuvuzela of the moment, was it just me or did the otherwise impecably high definition Hyundai advert that we call England's world cup coverage actually turn into grainy black and white in that split-second? Did I hear someone say 'There are some people on the pitch, they think it's all over?'

The moment the ball met the less than solid resistance of Rob Green's right glove, I had a mental image of Sooty, no not Sooty, not even Sooty's oblivioulsy but obviously gay and downright annoying right hand man (should that be left hand man?) Sweep, but Sue, the girly one of the Sooty menage a trois, going down to a well-choreographed punch in the face. It was as though there was nothing inside his glove. Abu Hamza could have saved that shot, or if he couldn't save it, at least he would have punctured the ball and stopped the fucker from going over the line.

But for Rob Green, let's face it, the worst bit wasn't that he didn't actually save the shot, it was what he did next. At that point, when his glove folded in on itself like an origami orchid, and the ball rolled past him into the goal he should have let it go. But instead, he turns round and starts scrabbling after it on all fours, like a dog pawing at a jellyfish in the sand. We could all have told him there was no point, especially with the thalidomide mime artist's gloves that had let him down so badly. No matter what he does with the rest of his life, that's the moment that will define him for ever. But it won't be The Hand of Rob that will become infamous, like Maradona's Hand of God or even the Tears of Gazza. When England STILL hasn't won the World Cup by 2040, will we be singing 'But I still see that tackle by Moore and when Lineker scored, Bobby belting the ball and Rob Green's arse sticking up in the air as he scrambles for dear life like the last man in the water at a Michael Barrymore pool party.'?

The Poltergeist, the Beachball and Virginia Woolf

When I was little there was this scary film I saw one night when I'd fallen asleep on the sofa and my mum and dad were watching the telly and couldn't be bothered to take me up to bed. What I remember about it was that there was this little girl who lived in a house that had a poltergeist (now I think about it, the film might well have been called Poltergeist) but the thing that really freaked me out was that it came out of the telly, which was scary enough seeing as I was watching the film on the telly, but the very worst thing about it was that it came out of the telly when it was turned off and the plug was pulled out. You didn't see anything, it wasn't like that woman who crawls out of the telly in that other film with the lighthouse and the scary video that tells you you're going to die if you watch it and drips water all over the floor. But the lttle girl knew, and she just stood there and stared at the fizzing screen and said 'They're here.'

And they are, this week. Emmets everywhere. We've had a family in at ours from Essex. Two kids, a girl about 2 and a boy about 4, blonde mum who looked about 15 from the back and about 40 from the front who seemed to have got a permanent cold all the time they were staying here, and a dad who wore pink shorts and an England replica shirt. I saw them on Porthminster beach yesterday, and the boy was chasing his sister all round the beach pushing her over and kicking sand at her when she fell down. All this went on right under the snivelly mum's nose, but she didn't seem bothered. In the end the little boy ran up to her and threw his arms round her legs and buried his face in the camel foot of her white jeans, while she shouted at the little girl for crying. Compared to the memories of her brother's brutality this little girl will take away with her, Virginia Woolf's memory of being touched up by her cousin on the hall table at Talland House during their childhood holidays in St Ives seems pretty tame to me, and we all know what happened to her. When I saw that film The Hours on dvd recently, I suddenly realised during the scene when the Virgina Woolf character (Nicole Kidman) drowns herself in the river, that Virginia Woolf's last living thought may well have been about bathing at Porthminster in one of those old knitted swimming costumes, a thought triggered by the fizzing sensation you get as your clothes fill up with water when you go into the sea fully dressed.

Anyway, I felt sorry for the little girl and thought it pretty funny a bit later when her bullying brother's beach ball got caught by the wind and carried off down the beach. Instead of stopping it for him (which I easily could of) I gave it a good kick, and watched him chasing off after it as fast as his little legs would carry him, until it blew into the sea and was last seen going round Porthminster Point. And that's what made me think of Virginia Woolf bobbing down the River Ouse remembering her childhood holidays in St Ives.