Cambridge

Here's a picture of a demonstration from Monday's market in St Ives:
I wouldn't want to play badugi with that bloke.

Yesterday I went into Cambridge on the Whippet bus (in America they have Greyhounds, here we have Whippets). Cambridge is an amazing city and I'm proud to say I was born there. Its academia seems to attract all kinds of oddbods, so you can be yourself there without ever feeling out of place. Yesterday I got a real buzz just from browsing the bookshops and clothes shops, even though it was a wet day. I bought nine books, a few clothes and a Glenn Miller album for my gran. I even found a fair-trade clothes shop called Wombat which must be one of the coolest words in existence. It's easy to forget that just like any other city Cambridge has its problems, such as homelessness, depicted in Alexander Masters' excellent book Stuart.

The World Cup starts next week, and every other car has a cross of St George flying from its aerial. Can England win it? Of course they can. But so can, realistically, a dozen other countries. New Zealand might struggle, but they did just beat Yugoslavia. I reckon there's a lot more luck involved than people realise. Qualify from your group, maybe winning it to get an easier draw in the second round, make it through that, then what? You'll be facing one of the big guns, and quite possibly a penalty shoot-out.

Tomorrow I'll be seeing an old university flatmate in London.