Waiting Impatiently

I’m waiting. That’s what I do. I wait. I’m like the man in the Guinness advert. The one where he’s waiting for the right wave before he can surf. The wave like wild horses. And then once he’s done surfing, he can roll around in the sand with his surfer mates in a totally non-homoerotic way. I’m like him. Only I’m waiting for the world cup to begin. And if we win it, I may well also roll around with my mates in a non-homoerotic way.

This waiting is killing me. Driving me nuts. I’m not the most patient of men. But when there’s a major football tournament looming, I’m like an addict waiting for the dealer to show up. I can’t relax until I’m on the sofa and there are men kicking a ball around on TV in front of me. All these world cup countdowns constantly reminding you of how many days you’re going to have to wait before the big kick off. I don’t need to know. It’s like being at work and every five minutes someone shouting the time in your ear. It doesn’t help.

Plus I don’t really like the summer. Sure a sunny day is great but how many of them do we get. And as for summer sport, I just can’t raise myself to get involved. Formula One? Don’t care. It’s just rich boys racing around in souped up cars. If I hear there’s been a crash I’ll watch the highlights. Golf? Not my thing. I watched Tiger Woods the other week but only to see if he’d mentally unravel. He almost did. It was great. Other than that, I’m not bothered. Cricket I like but Bangladesh at home I can live without. They played a test match fifteen minutes drive from where I live. It was only a tenner to get in. I still didn’t go. I like tennis as well but only up to a point. Andy Murray lost in the French Open? I’ll try and get on with my life the best I can. All I really want is for the football to start.

You know how some people say they don’t know how we coped without dishwashers or mobile phones. I’m trying to work out how I coped last summer without football. Or indeed any summer without football. Because it’s only been three weeks since the football season ended (OK, two months if you’re an Arsenal fan like me) and I’m going crazy already. Saturdays are a complete waste of time. Like Sundays only slightly busier. And at least this year I’ve got a tournament to look forward to. Whereas last summer, the beginning of June heralded the start of two, virtually football free months. What the hell did I do all that time?

I didn’t go on picnics. I know that. It only stopped raining for about four days and the ground was damp the entire time. I didn’t have a holiday. I don’t really like them. I didn’t go to the Edinburgh festival. I have no interest anymore in getting upset at journalists from provincial newspapers making snide remarks about something I’ve written. All I did was sit about in a huff waiting for the Charity Shield. And as an Arsenal fan, for the last five years I haven’t even cared about that.

One man who’s no longer thinking about the World Cup is Theo Walcott. In the one shock in Fabio’s squad selection, Theo didn’t go to South Africa. This is the man (boy?) who started the whole world cup thing rolling with a hatrick against Croatia and here we are slightly less than two years later and he’s been replaced by Sean Wright Phillips. Football is a fickle game. They say it only takes one second to score a goal but it only takes twenty-one months to blow an England career, at least for the present time.

I’m sure he’s gutted but he’s twenty-one, good looking and a multi-millionaire. He’ll cope. He’ll go and sit on the beach at some exclusive resort, lick his wounds and wait six weeks for the world cup to be over and pre-season training to begin. And he probably won’t watch any football. But for the rest of us the waiting is almost over.