My brother's ordeal, and one eternity to go

Today I sold Julie's Nissan Micra that she bought new in early 2009. It's a classic grannymobile. I don't know what colour you'd call it. Peach? Shocking pink? I felt ever so slightly silly as I drove it to the car yard. At first they would only offer $6000 - it needs some work on two panels and the colour could be a turn-off - but when they came up a thousand Julie eventually accepted on the phone. It'll be interesting to see what price they put on it at the yard. I wouldn't be surprised if it's ten or eleven grand. Julie's just found out that she might be moving from her Newtown rest home to a retirement village up in Napier next weekend. She doesn't think she can drive anymore, with her arthritis and neuropathy, so she was desperate to offload the car. This whole Napier thing has come out of the blue after a conversation Julie had with her niece. If it does happen, I won't be too disappointed that she's moved away, but I probably will go and see her. Any excuse to get in the car and well away from here.

I phoned my parents last night. They'd just got back from three days in London. They saw two shows and visited the Maritime Museum (which has changed a lot since I went there when I was 16) and a lot else besides. Today they depart from Newcastle on a two-week Nordic cruise. Where all this appetite for cruising has come from I have no idea. Maybe appetite is the word: you can stuff yourself silly if you want to.

This weekend my brother - a reservist in the British army - is embarking on a two-week SAS selection exercise in the Brecon Beacons. I have a hard time even thinking about what he'll be going through in the coming fortnight. Three people died from dehydration in last year's exercise - it was all over the news in the UK. With just a map and compass, you really are on your own there. I guess that's the whole point. But some of the soldiers involved, like my brother, have survived combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That they should put their lives at serious jeopardy in a training exercise just seems so wrong. I'll be keeping a close eye on the weather forecast.

Kevin knows the date I want him out by (well actually he doesn't, because that date has long gone). But he knows the date I told him, and assuming he's gone by then, I'm now half-way to having this place to myself again. It already feels like an eternity, so I've just got one eternity to go. At work yesterday I was doing a fairly menial task, but it was strangely therapeutic too, and the last thing I wanted was to come home to 24/7 Kevin and nonstop TV.

On FiveThirtyEight they were trying to get a measure of the off-the-mapness of Germany's 7-1 win over Brazil, largely by comparing it with famous blowouts in American football. But they missed one crucial fact: gridiron isn't on the global sporting map to begin with. No result in that sport, however shocking, can reasonably compare. You can say the same about rugby, although the All Blacks are a global icon, and if they were beaten 70-10 by Australia in a World Cup semi-final (heaven forbid), that would send out some pretty big shock waves. Only two sporting events in my memory come anywhere near Germany–Brazil. The first was Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta, when he obliterated his own world record and the rest of the field. That second 100 metres was stupidly fast. The other one that sticks out is Isner–Mahut. Not the same sort of achievement of course, but tennis is a global sport, and that match even overshadowed the last football World Cup, as well as the Queen's visit to Wimbledon, while it was happening.

Had Holland won that shoot-out against Argentina, their passage to the final would have been unsatisfactory (a dodgy late penalty to beat Mexico, followed by two consecutive wins on penalties). With Argentina getting through, I know the result I want on Monday morning: a convincing win for Germany, or failing that, any win for Germany. Before the final we've got the third-place game, which has a bit more meaning (and intrigue) this time than it normally does.

We've got brackets!

I've just been speaking to Bazza on the phone. He hasn't changed. We hadn't spoken in almost a frigging year, and he just launches straight into the men's Wimbledon final. Heck, I like tennis and have blogged about it here a lot, but a how-are-you or a fancy-you-ringing-me-it's-been-ages would have been nice, if a huge surprise. I plan to see him on Sunday week when I'm up in Auckland.

When I was a kid, at about quarter to five on a Saturday, you'd see the football results trickling through on the TV, one letter or number at a time, via something called the vidiprinter. If there was a big score, they'd also put it in words in brackets, just so you'd know it wasn't a typo, as in "Oxford 1 Birmingham 7 (seven)". I'd get a bit excited whenever I saw brackets. Well this morning we had brackets all right.

Seriously, who’d have thought it? I actually wanted the Germans to win (yes, I know, English and all that) but with two-thirds of the game still to play, Germany had a scarcely believable five-goal lead! Someone at work managed to get a live stream, and at half-time I saw a replay of the goals. They were a result of abject defending more than attacking brilliance, and it seemed that for all the talk about Neymar, Brazil missed Silva (their best defender) even more. But 7-1! And it really should have been 8-0. The look on the Germans' faces when they gave up that last-minute goal showed what a determined bunch they are.

I wondered last night what the legacy of this World Cup would be, and barring something truly ridiculous in the other semi or the final, we’ve got our answer. Even if Germany lose in the final. As shock results in football go, this one is a magnitude 9.5. Kids with parents wealthy enough to get them tickets to the game, will relive it 60 or 70 years from now. In some ways I’m glad Brazil were beaten. If they’d lifted the trophy, it would have glossed over the obscene amounts of public money spent on the tournament.

Nate Silver and his mates at FiveThirtyEight.com have come in for some criticism for their World Cup prediction model following this crazy result. Some of it is deserved. If you’re going to give Brazil nearly a 50% chance in a four-horse race, in a sport as unpredictable as football, they need to be pretty damn good. Better than they’d been in their previous five games, which I don’t think were weighted heavily enough in the model. But all this talk about all statistics in football being meaningless is pure guff. Of course you can model football results, just like you can model election results. You just need to get your inputs right.
Edit: I now see that the FiveThirtyEight model gave a Brazil a 45% chance of lifting the trophy before the tournament started. Yikes. That was way off base, surely. This isn't rugby where one side (like the All Blacks) can dominate. That they even came up with a probability that high and didn't seriously question it makes me wonder.
 

Here’s Joe Bennett’s take on World Cups (he wrote it before today’s match). Very accurate I think.

Odds and ends

On Saturday I spent a really nice evening at my cousin's place. I hadn't been there for nearly two months - among other things, my cousin had been in America on business. My aunt and uncle were staying, so there were eight of us for dinner. I did some baking - it was nice to produce something that doesn't feature on Mohs hardness scale. I saw the photos from my uncle's funeral - it was a DIY funeral with no undertaker, and the grey (but thankfully dry) day somehow added to the atmosphere.

I played two board games at Tracy's place last night. The first game was based on the popular French story Le Petit Prince. Four of us played: Tracy's mum joined in. It was simple to play but there was more going on than initially met the eye. You had to build a planet and make sure it didn't have too many volcanoes or baobab trees. It was a high-volatility game, or that's my excuse for coming last anyway. We then played 7 Wonders, again. That game has less volatility, making it more likely that Tracy, who must have something close to an eidetic memory, will win. She did, with an enormous score. My second place, and reasonable score, almost felt like a win.

Rolf Harris got nearly six years. Had he been younger, and had his terrible acts taken place more recently, he probably would have got (and deserved) longer. Actuarially, the chances that he'll die in prison are very close to 50:50. That's assuming he'll serve his full sentence, and I'm not sure that actuarial "rules" fully apply in prison.

The Wimbledon finals almost passed me by this year. Kvitova’s win over Bouchard, to claim her second Wimbledon final, clearly wasn’t much of a contest, but I would have been worth watching just to see someone play that well. The men’s final, which took four times as long, was a completely different story. They’re two absolute giants of the game; it’s hard not to be a bit envious of them. Look how many languages they can speak. Federer has two sets of twins, dammit. Djokovic's first child is on the way. It's easy to say so now, but when my aunt asked me to give a prediction, I picked Djokovic's five-set win, and even correctly predicted which sets he'd win. Of course it very nearly didn't turn out that way.

As I watched the Netherlands–Costa Rica quarter-final go to penalties, I was in two minds over who I wanted to win. On balance I probably wanted the Dutch to go through. Costa Rica looked like they were playing for penalties from the start, judging by all that fist-pumping from their bench after a goalless 120 minutes. Holland, on the other hand, were desperate to avoid that outcome, but when it eventuated they didn’t just think “oh shit”, they actually made something happen by changing their goalkeeper. In the end it was good to see Holland – possibly the stand-out team of the tournament so far – make the last four, but this World Cup would have been far less enjoyable without the plucky Costa Ricans, and it’s sad to see them go.

The group stage provided one goal for every 32 minutes of play. In the first knockout round, we saw one goal every 48 minutes. In the quarter-finals, it took an average of 78 minutes per goal. Goals aren’t everything of course, but those figures are some indication that this World Cup, which began with a hiss and a roar, is in danger of petering out. Another factor is the (disappointing?) lack of upsets in the knockout stages – on several occasions the favourite was in jeopardy, but each time they just about squeaked through. That of course means we’ve got a heavyweight semi-final line-up, even without Neymar, and the legacy of this tournament will largely depend on what sort of show the remaining four teams put on. More 0-0 draws and penalty shoot-outs won’t help. Even if Holland win it, which I hope they do.

Rolf Harris and cracking stats

Rolf Harris. He was on telly all the time when I was a kid. I remember him most from Cartoon Time when he did all those drawings in between clips. In 1993 he did his cover of Stairway to Heaven, complete with wobble board, which was rather good (and at the time I didn't even realise it was a cover!). All in all, I thought he was a jolly good Aussie bloke. Now, at age 84, he's been convicted of indecent assault on girls as young as seven, and he's likely to die in prison. You do that sort of crime, you do the time, even if you're 84. But it's worth remembering that it was a different world in the sixties and seventies. Since the scandal surrounding Jimmy Savile (he was also on TV all the time when I was small, and he seemed like a very dodgy bugger to me even then), several of these celebrity sex abuse cases have come to light, and we need to be a bit careful before imposing today's standards on events that happened decades ago.

Kevin likes to talk about his past. He recently talked about a time his girlfriend was stoned and almost burnt the house down by leaving a pan on the stove in the middle of the night, with two kids under two asleep. They didn't have smoke alarms. Apparently he wasn't stoned on that particular occasion, and he rescued his girlfriend and kids from the smoke and flames. He thinks he's a hero - "no-one gives me credit for saving those kids' lives" - and I tried to play down his hero status. At 22, and mentally a lot less, he was nowhere near ready to bring up a family, and neither was she. Sadly, he hardly sees his son and daughter from one year to the next.

I've started reading Quicksilver, the Neal Stephenson book that I borrowed from Tracy. She might be waiting a while for it. I have a feeling it'll be too clever for me. I finished Angela's Ashes which had the effect of making me realise I'm alive, and living with Kevin isn't all that bad. It really was miserable stuff. It also made me think what an amazing thing (from a food point of view) an egg is. You hear about super foods quite a lot; an egg is pretty much the ultimate super food. So many ways to cook them, and they're good for you (if you happen to ignore the dirty C-word). I ate two eggs a day during my one-month paleo experiment last October, and it hasn't done me any harm yet.

We're down to the last eight in the World Cup, and the classic matches keep coming. All eight group winners made it to the quarter-finals - I guess not many of the fancied teams finished second in their groups: they either went through as group winners or, in the case of Spain, Portugal and Italy, went home altogether. Five of the quarter-finalists required extra time, and two also needed penalties. The last three matches all went to an extra half-hour; those games were all goalless in normal time, but featured a whopping seven goals between them in extra time. All eight teams who played in Manaus, and therefore clocked up the air miles, have been knocked out. One of those was the USA, who were glorious in their extra-time loss to Belgium. Or at least I hope that the concept of a glorious defeat exists in American society.

What I hope the semi-final line-up will be: Colombia v Germany, Holland v Belgium.

Diving - probably my biggest hate in World Cup football - was the hot topic this week as Robben "won" that last-minute penalty against Mexico. A part of me thinks, wow, hats off to him for getting away with it, especially when it's someone that fun to watch, a bit like my admiration for an loose-aggressive poker player pulling off a crazy bluff. But there's one key difference - bluffing is a perfectly legitimate play in poker (indeed it's part of the essence of the game); diving to win a free kick or penalty is cheating.

I've been reading a few articles on FiveThirtyEight.com. It's an American site, most famous for Nate Silver's very accurate US election predictions. But it also covers sport, economics, social policy, whether we'll soon be paying to use the loo on flights... Most impressive is their analysis of footballer Lionel Messi - with all those charts and graphs, you get to see how, um, off-the-charts, this little man is. It's good to see some proper football stats for a change. People have this idea that stats don't "work" in football. Bollocks to that, basically, even if it's harder to quantitatively analyse football than cricket or tennis. Which brings me to Wimbledon. A lot has happened. Nick Kyrgios saved all those match points against Gasquet, then caused a huge shock in beating Nadal. Then Andy Murray got beaten today. Serena Williams hasn't been far from the headlines in the women's. But I haven't watched any of it and have only taken a passing interest really. With the World Cup and having a flatmate, something has to give.

Today was a crisp, sunny, South Island kind of day.

Shoot-outs: rights, wrongs, solutions

After watching one this morning, here is a fairly brief version of what I think about penalty shoot-outs in football. If I'm honest, I don't think much of them.

Good:
1. They're high drama. It's hard to deny this.
2. They're over quickly (good for TV companies I guess)
3. They give goalkeepers a rare opportunity to become heroes.

Bad:
1. They're nothing like the actual game of football - that's my biggest problem with them
2. The burden placed on one player is too great
3. Play before the shoot-out is adversely affected (both teams are happy to "play for penalties")
4. They happen too often, and in the biggest tournaments (it's quite hard to win the World Cup without resorting to one somewhere along the way)
5. Players are expected to score - part of the beauty of football is that goals come at a premium.

Sensible, feasible solutions:

1. Hold the shoot-out before extra time, with the outcome of the shoot-out coming into play only if the scores are level after extra time. That should solve number 3 in the "bad" section above, as one team will be forced to attack. It also partially solves number 2, as a player who misses a penalty has a chance to make amends in extra time. It won't solve number 4 - you'll actually get more shoot-outs - but I'm OK with that as the shoot-out wouldn't directly decide the game. If they ever do change the current system, which isn't that likely in the near future, I think this is the method they'll employ.

2. Extend extra time. They're highly-paid professional athletes. Why do they have to stop playing football (as I know it) after 120 minutes? Why not continue for additional 30 or even 60 if necessary, and perhaps allow more subs in that case? With the prospect of penalties pushed back, simply playing additional extra periods should solve both 3 and 4 in the "bad" section.

3. Remove players from each side at regular intervals. Pretty simple really. Fewer players, more space, more chance of a goal. Think of rugby sevens.

4. Replay. For the final only. Prior to the final, a replay could put the whole schedule out of whack, but for the final itself, why not?

5. You could combine any or all of the above, and for domestic competitions, such as promotion play-offs, there are other criteria you could use. If a promotion play-off finishes in a draw after extra time, rather that use penalties, the team who finished higher in the league should be declared the winner.

In my face

It's the weekend, but so what? I don't really want to see anyone this weekend, not even Kevin. Especially not Kevin. It wasn't long ago that some of my weekends were people-free, if you don't count the market, and I was fairly happy with that. Now there's someone around, and in my face, all the bloody time.

Yesterday I had a performance review at work. I didn't think I'd have one so soon. I did a lot better than I expected; I haven't produced or achieved anything there for weeks, but my boss didn't seem to care that much.

We're getting the wobbles here in Wellington again. Two earthquakes yesterday (although I didn't feel the first one) and two others that I've felt in recent weeks.

Tomorrow I'll be collecting for Autism NZ for three hours at the new(ish) Countdown at the end of my street.

The group stage of the World Cup has been completed; I don't think anyone can complain about a lack of excitement. The States surprised many by making it out of a tough group. Australia didn't win any games but won plenty of friends with the way they played (and scored one of the best goals). It's funny how American and Australian sporting teams (and fans) can be almost intolerable in the events they excel at, but very endearing in sports like football. Some of the images from the match between the USA and Ghana were of pure joy.
Uruguay also made it, as one of three teams to qualify despite losing their opening game. They'll have to play the rest of the tournament without Luis Suarez, who got a well-deserved ban that could easily have been longer. I couldn't believe Uruguay's population was only 3.4 million - that's less than New Zealand.
The football has been excellent with none of the ball-related problems that dogged the last World Cup in South Africa. The refereeing could have been better, but offsides are quite hard to get right and until they use technology to make those decisions, game-changing mistakes will be made.
I hope the knockout stage is as good as the group stage, and please not too many penalty shoot-outs (more about them in my next post).

Part two of the fruit series

In this episode (!) we talk about satsumas. I’ve eaten two today – it’s hard to eat just one. Of course people don’t use the word satsuma over here, which is a shame, because it sounds so squishy and juicy when you say it. Mandarin, which is the preferred term in NZ, doesn’t quite have the same effect. Around Christmas time in the UK, we ate boxes of the things. My brother was the biggest satsuma consumer – he’d usually eat the peel too – and we’d all know about it afterwards (and promptly vacate the room). Because they’re so easy to peel, and divide nicely into segments, they’re great for kids. They’re obviously firmly cemented in British society, for there exists a football team, some way down the pyramid, who play in orange and are known as the Satsumas. Here’s one of their match reports from 2000, written in Comic Sans; it makes following a non-league team sound way more fun than supporting Man City or Chelsea or whoever. (There are also at least two teams known as the Tangerines, but that nickname doesn’t have nearly the same level of awesomeness.) Click here for the post about persimmons. I don't expect this fruit series to last very long.

That leads me on to the World Cup (again, I know). During a dull moment at work (there have been quite a few of those lately) I was following the final matches of Group C. Colombia had already qualified for the next round, leaving one of the Ivory Coast, Japan and Greece to take the second spot. I would have been happy with either Japan or the Ivory Coast making it, but please not Greece. Colombia were beating Japan comfortably, so the match between the Ivory Coast and Greece was a straight shoot-out. The African side just needed a draw; the Greeks had to win. With the score at 1-1, Greece were awarded a last-minute penalty which they duly converted to book their place in the last 16 at the expense of the Ivory Coasters. Greece managed to qualify despite scoring only two goals in their group games and letting in four – the same record as England, who finished bottom of their group. I don’t know what makes Greece so unlikable in football, but whatever it is, they won’t care. Talking of unlikable, Luis Suarez should get a very long ban, if not a lifetime ban, for biting that Italian player, if that's actually what happened.

My flatmate had a check-up yesterday on his backside. He found out that he has an anal fistula and will need more surgery. He wasn’t in a good mood when I got home. I do feel sorry for him sometimes. “Fistula” is a nasty word, isn’t it? It’s the same length as “satsuma” and even has some of the same letters, but somehow it sits right at the other end of the word-niceness spectrum. I guess the meaning probably doesn’t help.

Joe Bennett has written a couple of interesting pieces lately. There's this one about multinational companies and the people who "work" at them, and this one about those extremely unhelpful people you get at information desks at UK railway stations. Oh god. Why are they always so deadpan? I still remember a few years ago asking someone at Leicester when the next train to Peterborough was. She wasn't far off the computer-says-no woman on Little Britain. "Twenty-one twenty-four," she said, or whatever it was. What? That's over three hours away! At least look like you give a damn that I'll be stuck in this hole for ages. By contrast I found the Italian information-desk people, usually women, to be very helpful, even though my Italian wasn't exactly brilliant. Train travel was a lot cheaper in Italy too.

Mum only found out on Monday night that her brother had died. I'm surprised it took them that long to get to a computer, even in a fairly remote part of the Dordogne, as they knew he was in a bad way. According to Dad she was beside herself, as you can imagine. I still wish I'd gone to the funeral.

My boss, and some World Cup crackers

It was good to go on a training course last Monday and Tuesday, because it meant I was busy. The main thing I learnt was how much there is to learn. The program we use has capabilities that seem almost endless.
My boss is one of those people who sends emails at 2:46 am, complains (boasts?) that he didn't get to bed till four, chain-drinks coffee all day, and always has several dozen urgent unread emails on his phone. I'm not impressed, nor am I particularly sympathetic. There are other people in the office, including me, who are willing to help him, but other people are all muppets. He's a smart guy, but he's deluded about his own importance and that of his work. (As I wrote last year, perhaps a certain level of delusion is healthy.)

Yesterday I took Julie to have a look at some apartments. She needs to get out of that rest home in Newtown that she's in now. It's a pretty awful place and it has a rather creepy black Siamese cat called Speep, which isn't a very nice name. After looking at the apartments, which I don't think Julie was interested in, we had a coffee. Two songs from my favourite album came on in quick succession, one on my car radio and one in the café, but Julie talked all the time, dammit, about this or that person who said this or that. I told Julie that rehashing all of that isn't helping anyone.

The World Cup kicked off on Friday amid plenty of negativity and cynicism. Brazil won the opening game, but were given a helping hand by the man in the middle, succinctly dubbed Referinho after the game. It wasn't a good look. I saw the FIFA "fair play" flag and thought, yeah right. But since then we've been treated to some remarkably open and exciting football, with goals coming at the breathless rate of 3½ a game. Half the teams have now played their first match, and all but two of them (Cameroon and Greece) have scored. Unusually every game has had a winner, and even more unusually, half those eight winners came back from a goal down. I've watched three games so far. Holland's 5-1 win over defending champions Spain was a joy to watch, not that I've got anything against the Spanish. Towards the end I was willing Robben, who seemed to be everywhere on the pitch, to add even more goals. Costa Rica sprung a surprise with their well-deserved 3-1 win over Uruguay this morning. Then, in the same group, England lost 2-1 to Italy despite (I thought) playing pretty well in an excellent game. The Costa Rica result doesn't help England's task in getting out of their group; they may well have to win their next two games. Kevin watched part of the England–Italy game; he regaled me with tales of his exploits on the football pitch - this surprised me because I find it hard to imagine him doing anything remotely sporty. I must say I really like the "vanishing spray" the referee uses for free kicks. It keeps the defensive wall the required ten yards from the ball, and stops the attacking side from stealing ground. A very simple and effective innovation.

It'll be interesting to see the teams from the bottom half of the draw over the next three days. Bosnia anyone? How about Iran (who, I seem to remember, beat the USA one time)? In fact I just saw this on Wikipedia about that match in 1998:

They crushed the united states in a stunning second goal, ending the tyrant rain with 2-1 loss. The Iran vs US game was predicted by Max Lowsen II (First King of Camelot) as being the "Da Best Goal". Er, what?

Last night I spoke to my parents. It was Mum's 65th birthday. They seem to be enjoying themselves; they're going to France on Tuesday.

World Cup memories etc. II

I spoke to Kevin and made it fairly clear that his tenancy will end this year, not next year or the year after. That means it'll probably be six months before I get my own space back, and that's a helluva long time.
Mum and Dad are in the UK and fly to Bordeaux early next week. Dad is really enjoying the sights and sounds of St Ives and Cambridgeshire. There's a lot more life there - human and non-human - than in Geraldine. I'll give them a ring on Saturday, on which day Mum becomes eligible for a gold card. That's hard to believe. She still seems fortyish to me.

The World Cup is now just hours away. I wanted to arrange a tipping competition for work, something simple where you just put in $10, pick eight teams in advance, and get points based on how well your selected teams perform. I'm normally hopeless at organising anything, but something like that I could comfortably manage and would actually enjoy doing. Then I thought better of it, realising there is virtually zero interest in the World Cup around the office. It could have been an embarrassment if, say, only three people entered including me. And what if I'd won? In Auckland these sorts of competitions ran all the time. I did reasonably well, even in the rugby ones, despite (or maybe because of) my lack of rugby knowledge.

In my last post I said 1990 was my favourite World Cup. That's got a lot to do with England's performance and being a kid, but perhaps it was the last competition where football (in the UK at least) was a working-class game, instead of the money-making machine it's become since. The 1994 World Cup in the States wasn't bad at all, and it got plenty of coverage back home. England weren't involved, but Ireland were, and they caused an upset by beating Italy in their opening game. There was one big black mark on the '94 competition however: the Colombian player who scored an own goal was shockingly murdered on his return home.

I've read some online comments about past World Cups, and most agree that 1998 (France) was better than 2002 (Japan and South Korea). For me it was the other way round. In '98 I'd had way too much of all the England hype and I wasn't too disappointed when they were knocked out. Plus I was in the middle of my A-levels which I knew I wouldn't do very well in. The motivation wasn't there. One of the highlights for me was Jamaica making it. By contrast, in 2002 I finished my university final exams on the eve of the tournament, and after months of intense study and high-pressure exams I could watch the games entirely guilt-free. Senegal's win over France in the very first game set the tone nicely (Senegal were like the new Cameroon); there were upsets galore. England negotiated their group of death, then beat Denmark comfortably, then faced eventual champions Brazil, and with a bit of luck... The only real downer was some dodgy refereeing which helped South Korea reach the last four at the expense of Italy and Spain.

The 2006 tournament in Germany promised a lot (the hosts beat Costa Rica 4-2 in the opening game) but didn't seem to deliver much, even if Togo and Angola added a bit of colour. I quite enjoyed 2010, mainly because of what I was doing (travelling for some of it) and New Zealand's performance - it's a cliché but they really did punch well above their weight by drawing all their games. This one will be interesting for sure, with so much non-football stuff going on behind the scenes. England play Italy on Sunday in, as far as I see it, a brand new stadium in Manaus, in the middle of a rainforest, where there's next to no interest in football. England's second match, against Uruguay, is in Sao Paulo, which according to Google is 1670 miles from Manaus. It sounds like unnecessary burning of fossil fuel, and an equally unnecessary logistical headache.

At least this time the World Cup will be played in a (mostly) hospitable climate in a country that actually cares about the game. If it really takes place in Qatar in eight years' time, heaven help us.

World Cup memories etc.

Rik Mayall has died at the age of just 56. What a shame. I was a bit too young for the Young Ones, but I did watch Bottom, a lot, and he was absolutely hilarious. Like him I once came off a quad bike, although I didn't fare nearly as badly as him. I rolled it and couldn't move from underneath it. This was on my cousin's farm in 2004.

Last weekend, as usual, was tiring even though I didn't do that much. On Saturday I met up with that woman and we went for a drive around the coast, north of Porirua where she lives. We "clicked" better this time, but I don't know, she's still one of the 98% (at least) of people I find scary after any length of time.

Last night we tried a new game called Fallen Lands. It had a fairly low goblin quotient and was therefore more my cup of tea than some of the stuff I've tried (endured?) recently. The game panned out unexpectedly, as I struggled to gain territory early on, and ended up with fewer territories than both the others. To everyone's surprise, including mine, I was the winner. I beat Tracy by one point. Spending less money to acquire territory proved decisive. After that relatively short game, we played Timeline. Tom and Tracy talked about Neal Stephenson's books at length, and Tracy, who wanted me to jump on the bandwagon, lent me Quicksilver. It's 900-plus pages and fairly heavy subject material; I hope she doesn't want it back for a while.

So Rafael Nadal is French Open champion ... for the ninth time. That's just crazy - nobody wins nine of anything, not on the men's side anyway (Navratilova won nine Wimbledons). I wish I could have seen the women's final between Sharapova and Halep. I see a score of 6-4 6-7 6-4 and I just know it must have been a good match. Sharapova's three-set record is phenomenal.

Another World Cup is almost upon us. It's hard for me not to have World Cup memories when I come from the so-called home of football. In 1986 I was six and ideologically opposed to football; I paid no attention to any of the games. I remember the unusual-sounding names of Uruguay and Paraguay, which I'd never heard of before, and getting excited because apparently someone had won a yellow car. I watched lots of game shows as a little kid; winning a yellow car seemed perfectly plausible. The 1990 competition in Italy was the first time I'd ever properly watched football. It was probably Pavarotti that did it for me, as well as England's run to the semi-finals. They scraped past Cameroon in the quarters. Just the word Cameroon sounded exotic and colourful. In the semis England lost to Germany on penalties and Gazza (a.k.a. Paul Gascoigne, who the whole nation had gone crazy over) was in tears. In reality there was a lot of dull, defensive football on show in Italy, but the English squad arrived back home as heroes. Surely next time they would win it. Of course the next time they didn't even qualify, and it's never been the same since.

Maps and work

Maps. I've always quite liked staring at them, and get to do that quite a lot at work. I'm supposed to be focusing on pipes and nodes, but it's hard not be distracted by roads and buildings. As well as digital maps, I sometimes get to look at physical plans that were drawn in the sixties and have been added to over the years; the distances on the plans are now a mish-mash of feet and metres, and luckily I'm conversant in both. For all my enthusiasm for maps (I'd like to get an old map to put on my wall) I don't think I'm especially good at reading them.

Work is going OK for now. On Monday morning I attended a meeting chaired by the head of department, the swarthy bloke who spoke French in my second interview and has a tan that you can't naturally acquire in Wellington. It was an hour and a quarter of high-level conceptual stuff; I couldn't see how any of it pertained to me. A woman in my team (she's been there a while) complained that nothing in the meeting was of relevance to her.

My background ("he's an actuary") has come up quite a bit. I was never actually an actuary and it's years since I last did anything remotely actuarial. The last exam I passed was in 2008 and it feels longer ago than that. I really wish they'd quit using that A-word.

Councils are notorious for their inefficiency and I've already seen several pieces of evidence that Wellington is no different. Less work seems to get done than people say gets done. Yesterday they needed to get Push and Pull door stickers and they had to be authenticated or some such bollocks. I suggested that someone visit the $2 shop.

Despite the new job, I still feel that I'm drifting through life (at best) with no maps or plans.

I called Birmingham's last-gasp draw a "great escape" because it kept them in the division, but really for those who follow football, it is one big escape, win, lose or draw. I get that need for escapism - I certainly have it myself. Football also gives you a sense of identity, something I've always struggled with.

The great escape

I'm not sure how they managed it, but Birmingham stayed in the second division (a.k.a. the Championship) thanks to an equaliser from defender Paul Caddis deep into injury time. It doesn't get more dramatic than that. They came from two down (and almost certainly out, you'd have thought) to draw 2-2 at Bolton, having dominated the game in large parts. Leicester, who won the league with a ridiculous points tally, beat Doncaster 1-0 with a dodgy penalty, meaning both Blues and Doncaster finished on 44 points. Normally you have no business staying up on that kind of total (last season Peterborough went down with 54 points; Wolves did likewise with 51) but somebody had to survive, and it was Blues who had the better goal difference. From looking at the stats and reading some recent match reports in which Blues sounded like a complete shambles, it's a miracle they stayed up. But miracles do happen. Let's hope they can capitalise on their good fortune, or at least consolidate. A change of manager mightn't be a bad idea.

Going down...

Eight days in the job. Getting to know quite a bit about pipes. Compared to people, pipes aren't too bad. They had drinks after work today. I didn't want to be there but I didn't want to be at home either. After work I had that sinking feeling. The end of the week, but weekends are hard work. I was wishing I was still back in Auckland doing some kind of temporary work where I could relax and not face the impossible task of building a rapport with my workmates. Did I mention that my job isn't permanent? It's a two-year contract. Two years feels like an eternity. The money is better - that's something - and the work is interesting, but there's all that other stuff. And I'm staring at a blank calendar with nothing to look forward to.

On Monday I got a letter from the apartment next door about excessive noise, both in Kevin's room and in the lounge. For me, that's actually a good thing - it gives me more ammo when asking Kevin to turn down (or off) the bloody TV. It's the second note I've had from the people next door.

That evening I played board games with Tom and Tracy. We played two games of Qwirkle which involves placing rows of tiles with matching shapes or colours in a similar fashion to playing words in Scrabble. It was a nice simple game, and I felt I had a reasonable handle on it. (I won the first game and came second in the other.) Then Tracy's mum joined us for a co-operative card game called Hanabi. Unlike any card game you've ever played (except Indian poker if you've ever tried that), you see everybody's cards except your own. Interesting concept certainly.

My new employers have come up with a new "logo". It's terrible. For a start it isn't a logo at all. It's text on a yellow background. Wellington is full of creative people; I don't see any creativity in this block of text.

Much debate on the Guardian website after the execution of Clayton Lockett. He was injected with a previously untried cocktail of lethal drugs, and only died 43 minutes later from a heart attack. I'm against the death penalty. Yes, some people commit such heinous acts that you wish they could be wiped off the face of the earth, but by killing a convicted killer, it starts to make you as bad as them - two wrongs don't make a right. There's little evidence to suggest that capital punishment reduces murder rates. Plus there's always the chance that you'll execute someone who was wrongly convicted. And nobody, no matter what they did, deserves to die slowly in agonising pain.

Also from the Guardian, here's a rather alarming article about prenatal screening for autism. Having met many warm, kind, intelligent people who happen to be on the spectrum, the idea that their very existence could be denied as a result of a positive blood test is repugnant.

I've written several times on the demise of sport as we know it. Most popular sport these days is like fast food, and it's amazing how people just mop it up. They announced this morning that rugby will soon feature a super eighteen. Yes! An upsized competition. Bigger is better. Then there's English football where the top players are paid obscene amounts and fans happily part with a large chunk of their own wages to see them play. As more and more money flows to the top of the game, some of the smaller clubs are struggling to stay afloat. One of these (and they aren't even that small) is "my team" Birmingham City, who are dicing with relegation to the third division (which is now called League One - go figure) for the first time since 1995. They've lost their last five games, and have only won two of 23 home games all season! Tomorrow night they travel to Bolton in their final game. They could draw and stay up on goal difference, or if they're really unlucky, they could win and still go down. It's hard to predict results on the last day (some teams have nothing to play for so you don't know what sort of side they'll put out or how they'll approach the game) but I reckon Blues are marginally odds-on to be relegated.

All walks of life

On Saturday I went on a walk to the lighthouse at Pencarrow with the tramping club. Ten of us did the walk. Danielle was there - she seemed to thrive on the mainly flat terrain; I struggled to keep up with her. There was Barbara, an American who has been on several of my walks including that (in)famous bush-bash we did in April 2012. We had a tattooed surfer dude by the name of Brad - I wondered why so many surfers are called Brad or Brett or Shane, and comparatively few are called, say, Nigel. Brad wanted to join the army and was doing the walk (with weights in his pack) mainly as preparation for his physical assessment. He had an inquiring mind and I felt he would do well for himself. There was a Japanese woman who, until she came to NZ, hated the very idea of walking or any form of physical exercise. And besides, she said, she was too busy. Leading the trip was a woman of about my age who was brought up in Elsworth, just a few miles from where I lived. She was with her boyfriend. We also had a woman about to begin a career as one of New Zealand's 1.7 million real estate agents. I asked her why agents get so much commission. "It's just the market." That's the 21st-century explanation for practically anything.

It was a decent trek and was more demanding on the way back as we faced the northerly wind. We climbed up to the lighthouse, New Zealand's first (it went live, so to speak, in 1859) - unsurprisingly it was pretty windy up there, but we had a great view and could see a snow-capped South Island mountain. Then we walked along by the lake before following the coastline back (into the wind, this seemed never-ending). I caught the sun a bit - I was exposed to it for five or six hours, and for some reason I didn't think to put on sunscreen. All in all it was a good day's walk. It was noted that I'd done plenty of day walks with the club but no overnight trips. Conversations about tramping gear ensued, but they completely missed the reason why I haven't been keen to move to the next level.

I might still be going to see the All Whites tomorrow with my cousin and her family. Or else I might be babysitting for her youngest. I don't know yet. I see NZ are paying $40 at the TAB to qualify for the World Cup. Those are extremely stingy odds - adding an extra nought would be a more accurate reflection of their chances. If the All Whites were to make it, it would be a candidate for the biggest story in the history of NZ sport.

Armies and mobs

My boss had family stuff to deal with this week so she was away for most of it. That made work a bit easier to cope with, but I still don't think I've got a long future there. I'd say it's 50-50 I'll be there in six months.

On Monday we finally played our second instalment of Risk. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first time. As we traded in sets of cards, new contingents of 40 or 50 armies came into play, and we all agreed that things were getting a bit ridiculous. One minute I had control of three continents, the next minute (well, next half-hour) Tracy's rampaging red army left me, um, incontinent. After two hours (that's five hours of total playing time), Tracy knocked Tom out, taking all his cards and gaining several dozen more bits of plastic. I'd forgotten about that rule, which makes eliminating someone quite a big deal. At that point we called it a day. I wouldn't have fancied my chances against Tracy's sheer numbers and, let's face it, her superior gaming skills. We commented on how everything was designed to drag things out, even the way the cylindrical playing pieces rolled off the board. It would be easy to tweak the rules to cap the number of armies at say 15 or 20, instead of incrementing by five every time someone makes a set of cards, and I think that would make for a better game.

Here you can see Tracy's stupidly large red army (her reward for wiping out Tom's green) about to take over the world. Some of the pieces represent ten armies, so it was even scarier than it looked. This is where we packed the game in.

The three of us had a good chat after the game, which I found more engaging than the game itself. We talked about crowd mentality. Someone is teetering on the ledge of a tall building, possibly about to end it all. A crowd gathers, and when it reaches a certain number (Tracy said 350 I think), people start chanting "Jump!" It doesn't matter who or where, when it reaches this critical size, this same terrible thing always happens. Supposedly it's because you stop being individuals at that point, and become a mob instead. The same thing happens when riots break out at football matches - people's ability to think as individuals goes out the window. In the past, people have said that football fans are often poorly educated and come from working-class backgrounds, and that explains their behaviour. But ticket prices have gone through the roof, pricing most working-class people out of the market, and guess what, hardly anything changes. You also see this phenomenon online - people showing extreme anger and hatred over just about any subject, taking sides, and losing all sense of self. I find it all quite scary.

Tracy, who is normally ready for bed shortly after nine, was instead (as she admitted) as high as a kite. I could do with some of whatever she was taking.

They showed the second half of New Zealand's World Cup qualifier with Mexico on TV at work yesterday. Wow, what a gulf in class there was. Without a decent keeper it could easily have been 9-1, never mind 5-1 (no exaggeration). It was nice to see that one trickle in for NZ at the end, even if it'll almost certainly make no difference to them. People have been quick to turn on the All Whites coach and team. There are two points I'd like to make. One, but for a couple of minutes of madness, Mexico would have been out of the running and NZ would have been playing Panama (surely a much easier proposition) instead. Two, the All Whites would be better served by joining the Asian confederation, as Australia did. They would then play more often, against better teams, and surely improve.

I've seen the dreadful pictures coming out of the Philippines following the typhoon. I've only donated $6 - I can't afford much these days. Although the impact on many people has been devastating (and will continue to be), I'd imagine the impact on their mental health has been far smaller. If success is having food, water, shelter and (maybe) medicine, all that other unnecessary stuff no longer matters.

I've been reading Shorty, a book of Barry Crump's short stories about a diminutive novice golfer that I picked up in a second-hand shop. I must give it to Mum when I next see her. It's a good laugh. Golf lends itself very well to story-telling. I found this bit, about a party Shorty was invited to, very funny:
It was a talking party, where you help yourself to drinks from a big table at one end and then go for a walk, talking to one person for a while and then changing partners. The tricky part is that you have to think of something to say to each new partner. Some of them play it in pairs or groups. I gathered from some of the things that were being talked to me, that the ones who were best at this game were considered the most socially desirable. I wasn't going to do very well at this game.
That pretty much describes my limited experience of parties, except mine is real.

Risky business

I'm feeling better now than I've done in months (probably since May) and have no real idea why. The diet, the pills (I'll be dropping back again on Friday), the long weekend, who knows?

Dad is supposed to be back now, but with the storm, I've no idea whether his flight actually took off when it was scheduled to. When someone in my family attempts to fly somewhere, myself included, a severe weather event is almost guaranteed. I gave him a ring at the weekend, and also had a longish chat with my brother who was a mixture of happy (that he's with his friends, half a world away from his horror story) and cheesed off with his financial situation, which is about as bad as mine.

Dad's trip to the UK has meant I've spoken to Mum on the phone even more than usual. I'm happy with that - we get on pretty well these days. She hasn't been feeling 100% for a while but stubbornly refuses to see a doctor. She thinks it's all down to the food she eats. That includes the rash on her upper arm that keeps slowly expanding.

The highlight of the long weekend for me was my first ever proper game of Risk. We played at Tracy's place - the same crowd (well, three is a crowd) of Tracy, Tom and me. The idea was that we'd play for two hours, and whoever occupied the most territories at that point would be the winner. I was fortunate to snag Australia early on, and it was close for the lead between Tom and me. As such, most of my attacks were directed at Tom. After about 90 minutes we felt like we were just getting going (man it's a long game) so we upped the time limit to three hours. I focused almost exclusively on the Southern Hemisphere, and as I threw more than my fair share of fives and sixes, I was able to control South America and/or Africa. But my luck ran out and Tracy, who had kept a low profile, came marauding in. At the three-hour point my yellow army still occupied more regions than Tracy's red (Tony's green army was on the wane), but with someone making such a strong fightback, finishing at that point wouldn't have been "right", so we decided to adjourn until the weekend after next, at my place. How do we do that? Ah yes, take a photo of the board. I'm not sure I can wait so long to play again - it was a very absorbing three hours. Tracy has so far had one extra turn (she started), I'm next up, and I'm already thinking what I should do with my new complement of eleven yellow plastic cylinders. Tracy said after an hour that she was doomed, but I think that was a bluff. She's a smarter, more experienced gamer than either Tom or me, and I'm sure she knows it.

My hand-me-down copy of Risk is the 1963 version. The actual copy can't be that old - it's probably early seventies, which admittedly is still pretty damn old. Even after playing one session I can see that Risk has its flaws, but it's still an excellent game, and in its time it must have been revolutionary. Board games up to that point were: roll the dice, move your counter the number of squares indicated on the dice, then do what it says on that square (if anything). Risk is a complete departure from this. Plus it does seem to simulate war rather well at times - often I was thinking, yes I took that territory but boy did I lose a lot of men doing it. I'm glad I've got this version which requires you to choose, in turn, where to place armies on the board at the start, rather than having them randomly determined. I think that choosing territories adds an extra dimension.
The instructions give me a window on what life was like in the sixties and seventies. "The rules which follow are new and are the result of continuous research and testing ... They develop strategy sooner and make for better play." So you knew the game took seven hours, but that wasn't a problem?! Wow. In 2013 a mass-market board game taking more than a couple of hours would be a non-starter. The time factor is probably the biggest criticism of Risk. Then there's the role of luck - it's hard to determine how significant that is given the sheer number of dice rolls in a game. Thirdly there's a rich-get-richer mechanism (the more territories you've got, the more armies you get, which enable you to control more territories...) - that would probably be my biggest complaint.

Before the game we talked a bit about computer programming. Both Tracy and Tom love it. "It's fun." Well, programming for its own sake, or even to achieve a goal I don't care about, ain't my idea of fun. I did a short programming course at uni but we weren't actually taught anything, as far as I could see, and the two or three people on our course who already knew about the language drip-fed the "answers" to the rest of us who were completely clueless. If, on the other hand, my program is doing something I'm interested in, you know, creating an app or something, I could see myself learning the relevant language.

On Sunday I went to sit out on the bank at the Basin, and to my surprise there was a four-day game going on between Wellington and Otago. The home side were doing well, and when one of the batsmen was dismissed for a century, on came Jesse Ryder for the first time since March when he almost died following that attack in a Christchurch bar. As it happened, his father, his girlfriend and other members of his entourage were right in front of me. I spent more time watching them than any of the players. Ryder raced to 48 by the end of the day and was out for an impressive 117 on Monday.
(Edit: I shouldn't pretend to know anything about domestic cricket. Jesse Ryder had moved teams over the winter and was now playing for Otago against his old side.)

This morning Birmingham and Stoke played a memorable match in the League Cup. With the score at one apiece, Blues had a man sent off on the stroke of half-time. Unsurprisingly Stoke, the superior side on paper, capitalised to go two goals up. Eleven minutes to go and Blues bring on Peter Løvenkrands, and what do you know, he pops up to score twice in the final six minutes to force extra time. Only three minutes into the extra period and Stoke go back in front. Blues are dead on their feet as they try to scramble another equaliser which they somehow manage in the 118th minute. It sounded far too good a game to be decided on penalties (and don't forget, Birmingham played the last 75 minutes a man down) but alas Blues missed their first two spot-kicks and that was pretty much that. For all my cynicism about football and team sports in general, this was a "feel-good" game for me, in spite of the final result.

Update: Dad is back; I just spoke to him. No problems with the scheduling, but he felt very ill at Hong Kong after an ultra-cramped Virgin Atlantic flight, and was worried he wouldn't be able to continue his journey. He vowed never to fly with Virgin again. He flew with Air New Zealand (a far less painful experience) on the second leg.

The muppet factor

Sunday's drama has made my work week more manageable - no matter what happened at work I was unlikely to feel as much of a muppet as I did on Sunday. Still, pretending to care, like in this morning's meeting, can get tiring after a while. Some people have meetings virtually all day every day and I wonder how they cope.

Dad has had a painting accepted for a exhibition in China. Painters were invited to submit their work, so it's safe to say the submissions were of a high standard, and only a small fraction of them were selected. In other words Dad has done well. He's also exhibiting some paintings here in Wellington this weekend - they're bringing them up in the car and will be arriving tomorrow.

With the situation in Syria comes the concern that my brother might be sent there. He's currently in the reserves of the British army.

Rugby's Ranfurly Shield is an interesting concept. Upsets in rugby are rarer than in other sports (such as football), and because a team only plays a handful of home games in a season, it can hang onto the Shield for years. Or not touch it at all for years. Otago, who I always thought were a big player in NZ rugby, got their hands on the Shield last weekend for the first time in 56 years. Yikes. I hope they hold onto it for a while.

The US Open tennis is in full swing. Well sort of - there's a lot of rain and no roof. Marion Bartoli isn't playing. She retired from the game after her incredible Wimbledon triumph. It's a shame that tennis should lose such a classy player.

In more sports news, there was a controversial and highly bizarre match in the league cup between Yeovil and Birmingham yesterday. You can read all about it here.

Ways to make a living

The opening night of Dad's UK exhibition was a success. He sold about a dozen paintings. He still has quite a following in his old stomping ground, which he hasn't come close to matching in New Zealand. I'm really proud of Dad (and, if I'm honest, a little envious). Not many people can make a living in the way he has. Mum's career as a primary school teacher is also something to be proud of. Since the early seventies she's been shaping people's lives; that's high-stakes stuff. Then there's my brother; his army career is awe-inspiring. All three members of my immediately family have been very good at their jobs for long periods of time, while I've been good at mine only very sporadically.

A riot broke out yesterday at Spring Hill, a prison in the Waikato. I wonder what sparked it, if anything. Back in 1990 there was a huge riot at Strangeways, a maximum-security prison in Manchester, that lasted weeks. It succeeded in bringing about major (positive) changes to prisoners' living conditions. A fly-on-the-wall documentary series about Strangeways is currently being shown on TV here in New Zealand. It's grim stuff, but strangely compelling viewing. One of the featured inmates makes a perpetual dirty protest; the amount of time spent on him is unreal and it all seems so futile. Another inmate (that for some reason I found endearing) talked about going to the gym: "If I had to choose between the gym and doing loads of drugs, I'd take me gym. Well, come to think of it, I quite like both."

I've been enjoying the French Open tennis commentary on the internet. You can choose to have the commentary in either French or English. They now have a Kiwi by the name of Matt Brown on the Anglophone team; I've been impressed with his knowledge of the game. Perhaps the match of the tournament so far took place last night while I was sound asleep. Tommy Haas, who's older than me by a full two years, beat John Isner in five sets. Remarkably Haas saw a dozen match points slip by in the fourth set, then had to save one en route to winning 10-8 in the decider, taking it out on his 13th opportunity. Grand slams produce these kinds of battles that you just don't see the rest of the year (and it's hardly a surprise that Isner should feature). Kiwi hope Marina Erakovic was beaten narrowly in the third round last night but she'll still get a helpful rankings boost.

Continuing the sporting theme, I saw this superb cartoon about club football. It's hilarious and very well done, and shows how unbelievably irrational some football fans are.

Tomorrow is a public holiday. Why we have a day off for the Queen's pretend birthday I'm not so sure, but I'm not complaining. Martin will be coming over. I haven't seen much of him lately.

Is delusion healthy?

On Wednesday I met up with Danielle and a friend (or acquaintance) of hers, a bloke who I'm guessing was 45 or so. He was a short, stocky man, whose eyeballs looked like they might pop out. Like Danielle he had problems, but like Danielle he got by; he had a job in the education sector I think. The three of us sat in the food court in the Reading cinema complex and didn't say a lot. Danielle remarked that she hadn't been to the movies for years. She said can't concentrate for the duration of a film, and loses track of the storyline. I'm better now but I used to have the same problem (and maybe still do to some extent, depending on the type of film). Danielle and I went to the tramping club but only stayed five minutes and didn't put our names down for anything.

Yesterday my cousin and her family came over to my flat for fish and chips. The boys were quite loud, and in the absence of toys in my flat, they had to make do with cardboard and sellotape, which provided no end of entertainment for them. I ordered too many chips and must have eaten at least half of them myself, between last night's tea, today's lunch and today's tea. As Mum would say, at this rate I'll turn into a chip.

It's been another mild day here (although as I type, we're in the middle of teeming rain and a rare thunderstorm). People's complaints about Wellington's weather seem laughable when you think that today is the equivalent of November 5th in the Northern Hemisphere. I remember how cold that day could be when I was growing up.

I've started reading a book called What Is Madness? So far it seems to be pitched at a level above me. Perhaps if I'd studied Freud or any of the other famous psychoanalysts it might make more sense. However one thing I've found really interesting is the idea that a certain amount of delusion can actually be healthy, and that being too in touch with reality can cause you to go mad. As an example, some of my workmates are keen football followers; in particular they follow the top Premier League teams. The way I see it, football at that level is pretty much meaningless. The clubs with the most money buy the best players, and guess what, they usually win. A player might represent Chelsea, say, but he comes from South America! What does playing for Chelsea, a small part of London, even mean? My work colleague will watch "his" team on telly, shout at "his" Brazilian midfielder, possibly even thinking he can influence the outcome of the match from his sofa 12,000 miles away. That's sheer lunacy, surely. But maybe having these delusions (and this is just one example) brings meaning to one's life that prevents you from going mad.

If delusion is indeed healthy, then (as with most other things) it must only be healthy up to a point. A couple of weeks ago I got a birthday card from my aunt (Dad's sister). She's certainly exhibited delusional behaviour at times, and she's also had severe depression and been dependent on alcohol. When I saw her in 2008 she came out with "Some people get all the help; others, like me, are always helping everyone else." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She's shown a distinct lack of care for just about anybody, all through her adult life. That includes her mother and her children. Her comment was entirely delusional, and instead of being a harmless sanity-preserving delusion such as the football example, it was a more serious delusion that seemed to be a result of losing her sanity. My aunt appears to be more sane now. Strange as it might seem, the death of her mother last year probably helped her mental state, and I don't think she's drinking as much. The fact that she sent me a birthday card is a good sign. But she's 65 now, and it's sad to see a life with so much promise (she was blessed with good looks and was highly intelligent) largely go to waste. I could write a lot more about my aunt and maybe I will some other time.

A final word about football, which I just said was meaningless. The last games of the Championship season (that's the second division) were played overnight. I was amazed by how tight the final table was. Leicester made the play-offs with just 68 points while Peterborough were relegated on 54 (a huge total to go down with). Birmingham, who were my team back when football was meaningful to me, finished slap-bang in the middle of the table with 61.

Dessert island

Only four people went on yesterday's tramp in the rain - the sensible ones (Danielle included) stayed away. We didn't get too wet and it was surprisingly warm as we walked from Willis St up to the Brooklyn wind turbine. There were lots of facts of figures on a board near the turbine which I found interesting. Coming down was quick. After three hours it was nice to get home and dry off having benefited from the exercise.

Tonight I attended the autism group with sixteen others. It was good to see Tracy who has recovered from her latest bout of illness. In an email prior to the meeting we were given two topics for discussion. The first of those asked which three items we would take if we were stranded on a "dessert island". Cream, a spoon and some scales? A dessert island sounds like a lot of fun, but with my dairy ban I'd find it quite challenging at the moment. The other topic was our most memorable travelling experience. We split up into two groups and spent half the time on each subject. We struggled a bit with the desert island topic but were more at ease when talking about our travels. I could have talked for hours on that subject, having been lucky enough to have had many memorable trips as a kid, but only had time to talk about my trip to and from New Zealand with my family in 1986-87. Things got rather tense on a couple of occasions at the group. One trait of autism is a lack of empathy and there was a distinct lack of it on show tonight.

One of the two TV monitors we have at work (the one that I can actually see from my desk) was unusually tuned to Sky Sport today. This morning they showed extended highlights of Chelsea's match with Manchester United (Man U won 3-2 as it happened). I was thinking how the Premier League is really just a series of exhibition matches. You see some incredibly skilful football played by some of the best players in the world, but the games are meaningless as the teams may as well be hand-picked. In the afternoon they showed live coverage of what turned out to be the deciding game of the hilariously-named World Series. Is American baseball just like professional football, in that the clubs (or franchises) with the most money can afford the best players and therefore win? Is the physical location of these teams as meaningless as in Premier League football? I'm guessing so but I really have no idea.