Psychoblog

tonight is the quarter final match of england vs portugal. it’s going to be really nervy, as all big england matches are. like you can’t bear to watch it, but you just can’t look away. car crash tv at it’s best/worst. i remembered this morning that i have actually seen an england vs portugal match in the flesh. it’s the only england match i have been to see and it was at wembley just before they closed it. very glad i got to go. it was when glenn hoddle was manager and i got to see him and the players arriving on the team coach because helpful tall boyfriend of the day lifted me up over everyone.

work things are still really busy. had a meeting with supervisor this morning and he uttered forbidden words like “time running out” and “speeding things up”. i’m feeling a bit traumatised by that, but we have tomorrow off to go camping so that’ll make things better. it’s raf waddington airshow and i loved it last year so hopefully this year will be great too. must remember not to crack my nose against carl’s back when hiding from the noise of the jets this time.

oh how i ache. last night after work i played netball for the first time in 9 years.

when i was at school i was one of the fringe players for the team (one of the ones that got brought on when the star players were knackered). i think i was a solid, dependable type player who never really shined, but was a bit of a workhorse. i loved playing then and i loved playing last night too. got a bit slow towards the end though when i couldn’t run around anymore (we played continuously for an hour). made some good passes, made some terrible ones and had the ball per-doing off my head at least once. it’s funny which bits of your body ache the most after exercise. doesn’t seem that related to what you were actually doing, but never mind. if it all tones up then i will be happy.

finding it difficult to concentrate on work today. my eyes are very sleepy. got a lot to do though, and it’s all stuff that i need to be doing concurrently really. had a really good session at the mr centre yesterday with clever people. they are working with me to see how best to analyse my data. i learnt a lot of things from them and i /think/ i understood it all. i managed to teach them something too, which was good for my ego. even if it was only a little, almost inconsequential, thing.

wedding stuff is ticking along nicely too. after a bit of a todo i managed to get hold of the chosen bridesmaid dresses that will look good on both michelle and pregnant jill. invitations are being posted today and tomorrow. i think soon i will need to start panic-gyming.

oh, and obviously gutted about the england match. i think that was the most ridiculous ending to a match i have ever seen. never mind, just got to beat everyone else ever and win the cup, that’s all. or do what we normally do and finish 2nd in the group, scrape through the next round and then lose in the semis spectacularly after a brave battle, due to missed penalties/stupid sending offs etcetc.

we voted yesterday. the east midlands is one of the areas to have all postal voting and i think it has worked okay here, but it’s blatantly not secure. you had a ballot paper to put your x on and then another bit of paper to sign and get a witness to sign. it said your witness could be “anyone that knows you” so mine was carl. as someone pointed out, if you are going to forge the first signature then you would have no qualms about forging the witness signature and lets face it, no one is going to know or care. i think they should stick to the proper voting booth things and then have postal voting for those people who request it for whatever reason (isn’t that how it happens anyway?). there is something quite cool about slipping into a booth to record your secret vote. it makes you feel a bit more important and involved in the democratic process than stuffing it into an envelope that is quite likely to get lost in the post. and where did they get their envelopes from anyway? that was the ickiest tasting sealy stuff i have experienced in ages.

i found it difficult to decide who to vote for. labour were obviously out straight away. the bnp are just stupid and ukip are a bit too close to bnp territory for my liking. the respect party i don’t know much about, but they like trade unionism. that’s fair enough, but it always seems that trade unions are a bit aggressive and make the everyday people suffer for things that the employers do wrong. probably a gross generalisation, i don’t know enough about it. there were 2 independent people running who didn’t bother sending any information round on who they are and what they believe, so they were out. i briefly considered the green party, but i’m not sure if they really care about anything other than environmental issues.

so really it just left the conservatives and the lib dems. my biggest argument with the conservatives is how they just followed labour on the iraq war, which left us with the lib dems acting as an opposition to ask the questions that really needed answering. the biggest argument i have with the lib dems is that they are so pro-europe. the thing about europe is that it just annoys me sometimes, with the stupid things that come out of it and get forced on people. and the euro annoyed me when we used it in italy. it seemed that as soon as you broke into a note you got left with all this change that was too small to use. i just know that if we were right in europe there would be more annoying things. but then i thought that since the issues were war vs europe annoyance, then europe was obviously the lesser of 2 evils. besides, i think that although we are closer to america in culture (God help us), we are more matched to european countries in ideology. european food and drink is /so/ nice too.

so anyway, that was settled. now i’m looking forward to the start of euro 2004. i put my wallchart up last night on our freezer. it is fixed in place using positive words from our fridge poetry set, like “cup” and “glory”. hopefully the karma of these words will filter through and help us do well. i will be wearing my best england socks on sunday. i have 4 pairs now. should be enough to last between washing days to see me through the tournament.

go england and (in turn) go darius vassell.