The beautiful game

I have tried many times to "get into" football but each attempt has ended in failure. My Father and Brother have been avid fans of the game for as long as I can remember and on numerous occasions I have attempted to do a bit of male bonding with them and watch a game with them. During the last world cup - whenever that was - I watched the first of England's games in their presence. I sat on the sofa with a can of beer in hand with every intention of giving it my undivided attention for the full 90 minutes. This was obviously a very important occasion for them. Seemingly as important as the birth of their first children.

By the end of the first half I had fallen asleep.

I was awoken by the pair of them standing over me, obviously irked by my lack of interest. I tried explaining that if footballers looked a little bit more like the lady in the photo then I might be able to stay awake and actually finish watching a game but I don't think saying this was particularly helpful. They reminded me of the fact that the country's reputation was on the line and that I should take more note of what was going on. It's a sad state of affairs when England's reputation hinges on the performance of our sporting teams. Having an already shaky reputation abroad I tried persuading them that relying on our lacklustre sporting teams to bolster foreign public opinion was like betting your house on number 27 at the local casino - bloody marvellous if it worked but inherently flawed as the chances of finding yourself living under a bridge are better than a Jihadist getting peeved at another danish cartoonist.

Work Experience

Oh what joy - I have a French work experience student working with me this week.

A young chap of 20, he is polite and speaks exceptional English as opposed to my infantile French. One thing I have always regretted is giving up languages at school as I now feel like an ignoramus when I meet people from the continent who can speak at least two languages. Anyway, I'm struggling to think of things that he can be doing whilst in my charge and I'm sure that he is spending the majority of his time playing World of Warcraft and looking at french-titties.com .

I'm not sure how I feel being lumbered with him. One side of me thinks that I should take the young fellow under my wing and show him a great time and give him an experience that will stand him in good stead in days to come and the other side of me thinks, "This little fucker could be taking my job in a few years so make sure he learns fuck-all".

This morning I have given him the rather riveting job of noting down the serial numbers from every computer, printer, and monitor in the building. This won't take him too long as we only have 20 of each. This afternoon I think I'll get him counting how many plastic cups we have - I know for a fact that the number runs into the thousands. If he finishes that then I'm sure that I'll be able to find him something even more worthy of his talents like counting the number of staples we have in the stationery cupboard or getting him to reconstruct a shredded letter. You may think me cruel but I'm sure he will benefit greatly from the valuable experience I will give him thus making him a valuable asset to any future employer.

He's a very naughty boy

Exactly how would we know if Jesus had returned?

He would have to do something really impressive in order to convince people he was the real deal that's for sure. He wouldn't be able to play the walking-on-water card that he did way back in the day as we've seen it done hundreds of times on T.V and we'd all think he was a David Blaine wannabe. Turning water into Smirnoff Ice would certainly get the attention of Friday night binge drinkers but would they remember on Saturday morning? I suppose he could record it on his mobile phone and post it on you-tube but he'll have his work cut out if wants to compete with face plants and happy-slaps.

Tony Blair recently said that he kept his faith secret whilst in office because he believed that people think you're a nutter iff you talk about you're religious faith in this country. If Jesus did start telling people he was the resurrected Messiah then he would be pumped full of drugs, put in a straight jacket, and sectioned under the mental health act.

The last person I can remember professing to be the reincarnation of Jesus was David Icke and he's really gone on to great things hasn't he!