Tree Lines on my Shirt

It was only the other week that Lauren mentioned to me that the World Cup is almost upon us. Until that point I had managed to ignore it completely. After this moment I started noticing the football themes that are creeping into our everyday lives. I hate football. I hate it with all my pee-pee. I could happily live in a world without football, it would be a world where a news report about the deaths of twelve people in Cumbria after Britain's first spree killing for fifteen years was cut short for live pictures of the English football team getting off a plane in South Africa (as happened this morning). It would be a world were grown men wouldn't cry about the outcome of a game that they had no input into what so ever. It would be a world where conversations between strangers wouldn't begin with 'so who do you follow?' A world without baby romper suits in team colours. A blissful world. I hate the competition of it all, I also hate the chest pounding manliness of the faintly homosexual idea of watching twenty odd young men running about in shorts for two hours. I hate the accouterments that come with it. I hate the fact that the world cup allows the knuckle dragging Daily Mail readers to dust off the St George's Flag and hang it from any available window so the country suddenly looks like a massive Right Wing Rally. I hate seeing cars go passed me bedecked in little plastic flags attached to the doors and covering the windows. 'Oh dear Officer, I'm sorry, I ran down that crocodile of schoolchildren. I just couldn't see them through the MASSIVE FLAG I've stuck to the front of my car' 'That's alright sir, it's the world cup after all, you're obviously a proud patriot, so we'll let this one go.' I hate the fact that for the next couple of months we will have the World Cup RAMMED DOWN OUR FUCKING THROATS by every media outlet. Whether England win or lose, there will be pre-match analysis, post match analysis, intermediate match analysis, everything else won't matter, football will change all the schedules, it will invade our private lives like some Orwellian nightmare, ringing alarms to summon us to raise our flags. I hate the fact that even though you try, you can't escape the fucking thing, you buy a pack of sausages from Co-Op and they have footballs printed all over them, young borderline rapist football 'stars' with too much money leer at you from adverts as you stand in queue in the bank. I hate the fact that all the pseudo-fans come crawling out, the people that don't care a jot about it any other time, but when it's the World Cup we must all be seen to be doing our bit. It's like the Blitz spirit but with Manchester United balls sewing machined together in Sri Lankan sweat shops by six year olds. You must be weird if you don't like it, you shouldn't be in the country if you don't get caught up in the nation's passion. Well, as far as I am concerned,

FOOTBALL CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF!!!