Category Archives: World Cup 2010

En route to Rustenberg, 7 of us in the car with me in the boot, trussed up like a turkey at Christmas. Chris and Simon, mates of Dom and Evertonians have flown in from England this morning. I would love to tell you what the scenery is like, trouble is I cannot actually see out of the windows, ok that’s an exaggeration, I can see out of the back window, but only up and I can report the sky is a wonderful light blue – think old school Coventry City or Manchester City shirts.

Plenty of chat up front, what the ANC are doing what they have done and what they will achieve in the years to come. Someone has mentioned District. 9 which is apparently based on a place called District 6 in the 1960s.

Various texts from Steve Eva who is with little brother Alan and Big Dave Mulhry. They are in a Fan Fest 20km outside Rustenberg. Can’t wait to get out of this boot. I really can’t.

You can feel it. It is everywhere. In the air, in the streets, in the shops, in the bars and on TV. The atmosphere of the 2010 World Cup is here and it is immense. Everyone is hyped up about the football. This is their game, it is their time and South Africa is ready. It is too early to judge whether this World Cup will live up to those in Japan /South Korea and Germany of course, but the early signs are good.

Yesterday was spent catching up on sleep, relaxing in the jacuzzi and enjoying the ‘winter’ sunshine. Then we took the car into one of the local shopping malls, Sandton, which by all accounts is one of the most upmarket shoppin centres in Johannesburg. Driving in the day was easy enough, especially given the sat nav and of course it is all very English in that they drive on the left over here. Traffic however is very much leading edge and first world. There is simply loads of it. We parked atop one of the two adjacent malls and headed to the food hall. You could easily have been in any mall in the US, indeed those of dear old LA sprung to mind. Indeed Sony had taken over the ground floor of one mall and were demonstrating 3D TV and gaming – something that those of you travelling to E3 next week will no doubt see plenty of. We eat some great seafood and decided to pick up a few supplies.

On the way to the supermarket, we passed this amazing ‘weapons’ shopcalled Sharp Shooter Retail. Everything for the hunter cum collector was for sale in this place. If you ever wanted to do a spell of William Tell or indeed Shogun, this is the place for you. I have never seen such a place, crammed full of swords, shields, crossbows, knifes (that Jim Bowie would have been proud of), hatchets, halberds, maces, fazers, guns (auto and semi automatic), uniforms and all sorts of para military apparel. This is after all a frontier country. The sales assistants were equally ‘focused’. One guy who was kitted in full camouflage fatigues was selling a father and son combo some boxing kit including head guard, punch bag and gloves. He was selling in so hard it was almost religious. ‘ The great thing about this sort of exercise, is that it sort of keeps your arms in a state of perpetual readiness, and the exercise is mindless and non taxing. You will find yourself incredibly relaxed at the end of a sparring session with your friends’. Certainly did the trick as the father shelled out several thousand Rand for the goodies. Another sales assistant asked me if he could ‘help’ and when I said I was ‘just looking’ he retorted ‘you are from England, yes? You guys really do cut your noses off to spite your faces. I mean if you outlaw all weapons and yet if a guy wants to do some damage, all he needs is a carving knife from the kitchen drawer’. This sort of direct comment did not really leave me anywhere to go….so I handed him on to Kirsty who chatted away for several minutes on the subject of personal defence.

So we thought we would round the trip off with a visit to Checkers, which is a big supermarket chain. As we were checking out, I saw a huge queue. Curious as I am, I wanted to findt what the fuss was all about. There were 3 queues, somewhat loose to say the least, one selling car parking tickets for the concert in Soweto that night and the other two for World Cup tickets – one for collections and one for open sales. Handily we had our docs so after about an hour we collected tickets for the first three England games – hurrah!! Remarkably, or may be not so remarkable, they were also selling England vs Slovenia tickets and quarter final tickets for both stadiums in which England could play if they reached that far. Predictions of tickets being easy to come by were seemingly well founded. The drive home was interesting, dealing with rush hour in Johannesburg was not as bad as I had expected, although we did have one near miss at the ‘robots’ (traffic lights).

Dom’s mate Pilks arrived and we decided to take Dom, Nat, Andy, Bella and Pilks out for a meal in the rather interestingly named Monte Casino (sic). This is a mix of Vegas, Dinsney, Dubai and ‘the old country’ (for those of you with Italian blood). It was a roofed experienced, once we got past the gun detectors at security. Picture yourself in any Tuscan town or city – Lucca, Pisa, Siena at night. There was a piazza and plenty of sounding restaurants. There was even an old Fiat 500cc parked in the square. It was a just a like a mama used to make a.

All in all a really great evening and a nice way to relax before the football starts in earnest.

So, here we are 12 noon Friday 11th June. The day that South Africa has been waiting for six years . Ecstasy tinged with tragedy however as the terrible news broke of Nelson Mandela’s 13 year old great grand daughter death in a car crash on her way back from the World Cup concert in Soweto. Let’s hope that is the only downer on this amazing African odyssey and that Bafana Bafana win today in memory of this little girl and in honour of the great man, Nelson Mandela. Good luck to all South Africans, this is your day.

High Jinx in Joburg! (Kirsty’s blog)

Well after a fraught bit of confused packing which includes swimming togs, shorts and flip flops alongside thick woolly walking socks, thermal long johns and my Kilimanjaro goose down coat (I’ve been told it’s cold)…we’re finally on our way! Though not before I managed to wrestle some antique Speedos from Andy’s hand so that they didn’t make the trip to South Africa, perish the thought of the perished gussett!

The England brass band were playing outside Heathrow’s terminal 3 to add to the excitement, though to be honest the atmosphere was more low key than I expected. That all changed when we landed in Johannesburg on a gloriously sunny morning to the most surreal airport experience I’ve ever had! As we were coming through passport control we were surrounded by Mexicans in enormous sombreros blowing on vuvuzelas, who were quickly joined by a large group of Germans in full lederhosen followed by another bunch of Mexicans, though this time wearing full wrestling gear, hilarious watching them trying to come through passport control and not wanting to remove their sparkly wrestling gimp masks!

Absolute pandemonium as we come through to the arrivals area, it was packed with TV film crews to capture the ‘fancy dress fans’ arriving in SA, hundreds of drivers holding up name cards and even more people trying to sell World Cup flags or touting for hotel or taxi business. Add the passengers from four large aircraft plus their luggage and a large helping of hysteria and you can imagine the scene. I have absolutely no idea why we thought this was a good idea but Andy and I decide to split up in order to find our driver with ‘Payne’ on his card (very kindly organised by Dom, our friend in Joburg), so I managed to locate the Payne plakard but had lost A Payne along the way. I can already tell that this is going to happen a lot on this trip and I’m starting to realise the true value of a sparkly gimp mask in a large crowd…wonder where I can get one and whether I can wrestle him into it on match days?

So a short drive through Johannesburg reveals the absolute sense of excitment about the World Cup, flags everywhere, the sound of vuvuzelas everwhere, people dressed in the yellow and green of Bafana Bafana (which I’m told is Zulu for ‘Boys Boys’) everywhere. At every set of traffic lights there’s a bit of a scramble to sell you flags, they have flags for all nations and competition is fierce amongst the sellers to the point of surrounding a car that isn’t sporting a flag. It’s obvious that the South Africans are so excited about the World Cup, all of the children have finished school for the duration of the tournament and there’s a celebratory feel on the streets, including a nationwide blowing of vuvuzelas at midday, you could hear them wherever you were.

So we make it to Dom and Natalie’s place…and what a place it is too! We’re blown away by the sheer size, it seems to go on forever, room after room, sun terrace after sun terrace and a beautiful pool…though the piece de resistance is the fact that the whole of the ground floor has been decorated with huge flags from every nation, they cover every wall, numerous living and dining areas and the bar area. Though despite a flag for every nation taking part in the World Cup (and Dom being uber organised has displayed them according to their groups), there is an area that has been reserved and is decorated entirely with the George Cross, which contains a wall covered with a projection screen ready to watch the football and one wall emblazened with ‘1966 ENGLAND 2010’

We’ve come to the right place!

Pictures showing Bella and little Andy (some with big Andy) next to the numerous carefully grouped flags…

So after a delightful evening playing 30 seconds with Bella and Andy and a beautiful dinner with Dom and Natalie accompanied by lovely South African wine, we retire to bed and sleep like logs that have travelled on an overnight cramped flight and had no sleep for 48 hours.

Tomorrow we may have a jacuzzi on the roof terrace before heading into town, though as Andy’s ancient Speedos were confiscated and he doesn’t have his PE kit then he’ll have to do it in his pants and vest!

Kirsty
Xxx

We have arrived at Dom’s ‘flat’ which is actually bigger than our house.Suffice to say that it seems like the whole of South Africa are so excited about the World Cup, and everyone you talk to wants it to be a great advert for their nation. So far the vibe is very good.

We are currently on the roof terrace in bright sunshine and all we can hear is Vuvuzelas, thousands of ’em. Bafana Bafana (the South AfrIcan football team) are parading through Johannesburg today to get their supporters hyped up even more.

Just by way of a tribute to this Rainbow Nation, I thought I would bring my T-shirts in rainbow colours. Ok I am missing a yellow one, but you get the point.

Paul Patterson, or anyone who knows him, tell him his car is waiting for him at Joburg airport. Please.

Can’t tell you how the atmosphere is here. It is like a scene from National Lampoon. Germans in Lederhosen, Argentinians in tracksuits, Chileans, Paraguayans, Spanish, Mexicans (fousands of em) and Slovenians just looking lost. This has got a Japan 02 feel to it already.

So here we are in Johannesberg, 8.30am and the place is packed with English and Mexicans (my third team). Once we hit our digs we will get the blog up for the day. This is it, the excitement is building. Like Christmas as a kid.

Before we leave these lovely shores, two little coincidences today, always a sign of a good trip in the making.

First I passed The Old Packhorse in Chiswick, this morning on my way to a meeting. This boozer was the location of many a great Friday evening with Dom Mearing, Gus Guntrip and Keith Naylor (all old school mates). Who will I be meeting in Joburg in less than 13 hours? Dom Mearing.

Secondly, in all the rush yesterday I left my wedding anniversary card in the office. So today I needed to buy one in Chiswick. Following the ‘All You Need Is Love’ sightings/hearings yesterday ( our wedding theme) I found a great AYNIL card today spray painted on a VW Camper.

This is going to be a great trip eta 10 hours.

Just a quick props to this site http://www.endthefear.co.uk/ which I came across today

And this picture is quite simply amazing.  Talk about get the message.

A masterpiece of design. Get the message?

Managed to catch up with the final 3 episodes of the wonderful ‘Ashes to Ashes’ last night, whilst thinking about packing and paperwork before the ‘Big Games Trip’.

This was the final episode of the fifth series featuring modern day Jack Regan come George Carter, the one and only Gene Hunt.  It was also billed as the ‘episode that you get to find out who Gene Hunt actually is’, which was interesting given that I never actually wondered as to his real identity, it didn’t seem to matter.

Anyway, given all of the hype, the closing episode was a fitting send off. This (the third) series of Ashes to Ashes had got back to the quality levels of the original two series of Life on Mars. Much like Minder in the 80’s, what had started out as a drama, had ended up a little comedic and much the worse for it. This third series of Ashes had got back to drama.

We saw the arrival of sinister copper Jim who was bent on antagonising Gene. Obviously he was going to play a key role. What was not clear however, was that whilst we all wondered what  Alex’s fate would be, we did not realise that Shaza, Ray and Chris would all be wrapped up so tightly at the end.

So, cutting to the chase, all the characters are dead coppers trying to get into Heaven. Gene, also dead, is Angel Gabriel, the setting is Purgatory (aptly given some of the plot lines) and Alex has no chance of getting back to the future and her little girl. But the sting is that Jim is the Devil, trying to lure the team to the depths of despond. Gene saves the day, by leading the crestfallen and tempted team from Satan’s grasp into the  kingdom of The Railway, the boozer from Life on Mars, namely Heaven. Shaza, Ray, Chris and finally Alex all pass safely into the pub and are ‘delivered’ safely so to speak. Gene sees off Jim and returns to East Fenchurch Police station to start all over again, with a noughties iPhone loving Old Bill who comes into the Nick.

Lovingly, the series signs off with the closing sequence of Dixon of Dock Green, and Jack Warner, reminding me of Saturday night TV as a kid. David Bowie’s Heroes sends everyone off into the spiritual sunset. Much like the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, there is a wonderful degree of poingnacy and love.

Which brings me round nicely to the end of this World Cup, when it comes.  Hopefully (and we can always live in hope), the end for England will be happy and on the 11th of July, however, as is more likely, much like the great British/English heroes that went before them, Edmund, Percy, Melchett, Baldrick, George, Gene, Ray, Shaza, Chris and Sam all exit with tears and sadness.

Until the sequel that is.  And there is always a sequel, a reunion, one more chance of glory and greatness.