Hypertension

The Man disappeared in the morning and came home at lunchtime thoroughly despondent. He'd been to watch the England-Germany match, of course. We was robbed, etc.

There's some (ungracious) consolation in the fact that the US are out of the World Cup, too - although that doesn't do the cause of soccer in this country any good. I spoke to a friend this evening who is genuinely interested in all sorts of sports but who told me that when the US team lost yesterday he said to himself, ok, now I don't have to watch any more of that.

But as his wife pointed out, soccer will never be that big in the USA anyway, on account of its incompatabilty with commercial breaks. I'm no sports fan, but I can see that even a goal-less soccer game can be pure tension throughout each half. Whereas the main sports here seem to have been developed specifically to accomodate ten minute breaks for advertisements after every five minutes of play, creating no tension at all. Which could be better for everyone's health, I suppose - if only it didn't make for so many opportunities to fill up on junk food while-u-wait.