The eccentric Rupert, Shane and I got together in a pub in Otley to watch the mighty, bloodyminded English march past the French who were leading 68 minutes into the game but now stood motionless with their hands on their hips, exhausted and bowed staring in resignation as Jonny lined up the ball right in front of the posts and went through his crouched, piss-taking protruding bottom routine which is hardly a Kiwi Haiku but rather more effective and sent the English spirits soaring towards the final and France into national mourning.
I spilt beer all over the table as we all punched the sky and even Rupert managed a little smile.

All these national teams love their silly nicknames; Wallabies, Pumas, Springboks, All Blacks. But my team is a country guided by the imaginative firepower of some of the greatest and wildest free-thinking writers and imaginations of them all, a country that produced the sublime and unsurpassed Shakespeare, Blake, Whinnie the Pooh, the King James version of the Bible. All these great minds came together round a table when this beautifully ugly game was invented and worked long and hard through the night racking their flippin’ big brains in search of the one name that they all agreed would inspire awe and fear in every living being around. Eventually they found that word and wrote it down. They had dispensed with all those glorious animal epithets and written a word that held more magic and power and history and passion and inspired more love and ardent lust to strive for the pinnacle, the peak, the apex, the zenith than any word before. Those great minds wrote just seven letters and the word was….

England

Love from an emotionally exhausted
James