Car workshop on the walk to work. So closing down after 32 years had nothing to do with not updating your phone number for the new London codes, then?

Tube strike day two. If nothing else, it’s getting me very fit. I switched to my other pair of shoes today, after yesterday’s blisters, and found they had holes in the soles. So, I guess I’ll be buying new ones at the weekend.

Anyhow, I walked into the office and back, much like the rest of London (although there were a fair few skateboards around today, which made the more crowded than usual roads an exciting place to be). It was actually quite pleasant: I almost hope we can have a strike one day every month. It would do great things for London’s general health.

Although it wouldn’t be so fun in the winter.

So, there was an hour of walking each way, then a day of boxing up the office ready for our move tomorrow morning. How we have managed to accumulate so much rubbish in so short a time down in the basement (we can call it that now we’re moving up a level – before, it was the ‘lower ground floor’) I don’t know.

Everything is now either in boxes or bags for the bin, and probably being relocated as I sit here typing this. The best thing, though, is it means tomorrow will be a leisurely start as we’re not due in until 12.30.

That leaves plenty of time for a leisurely swim in the morning. Hopefully the pool won’t be so full as it was this evening when most of the other ‘swimmers’ seemed to be more interested in doing handstands than breaststroke.

Sometimes I think it may be getting close to the point where I switch gym.

I’ve never been a fan of unions. They have their place, but only if used (and run) responsibly. Today, though, with the tubes on strike I can’t say I have much sympathy for the drivers’ cause. Particularly not as their gripe is that they are ‘only’ being offered a 3.5% pay increase PLUS a decrease in the length of their shifts by 2.5 hours a week. Considering they are already on over

Well, dye me ginger and call me Cilla Black, but it seems offline.co.uk has turned into something of a dating site. The Euro2004 entries are a few days old now, but they’re still picking up the odd comment here and there. Today’s is the oddest of the lot… so far:

Hi, Christiano Ronaldo, are you in Lisbon, can you send me a reply?

Hey, prove the world that you are the best.

I am fan of you, man, 28 years, from Calcutta, India.

You have great speed, anticipation, change position quickly and also you are the only TWO FOOTED player in the modern world.

You have great hair style and attractive look.
I love to meet you.

I watch you on TV, as I dont have enough money to visit Lisbon to see you.

I watched everywhere you play with Man Utd. also.

I love to see you got euro2004 Championship Cup and joyful, cheerful in the field.

If you dont get that, well, I shall cry and cry for a whole day.

As much I love you.

I dont know how can I meet you as I am not rich and cant go outside my country as it will be expensive for me.

Wish you great success and hope you will be no.1 in the world.

SUBHASHIS MUKHEREE
CALCUTTA,
WEST BENGAL,
INDIA

I’m very impressed with Lisbon. I could happily have slept all morning yesterday, but the chance of some free time in a city I’d never seen before was too good an offer to pass up, so I left the alarm set to the time it was for Thursday morning, and crawled out of bed into a sun-drenched morning.

I was pretty much the only one to make breakfast, as far as I can tell, so headed out on my own to the main street, which looked like last night’s festivities had never even taken place there. The whole place had been scrubbed clean, with all trace of glass, drink and spent fireworks gone.

It may only have been ten, but already the sun was baking hot, so I retreated to the cool shade of a metro station and caught a train down to the old town. A bargain at

So how come I didn’t know about this football thing before? It’s great. Or at least it is when you’re there. I still can’t imagine myself watching it on telly, but I’ve never felt so tense, excited, disappointed, elated and keyed up all at the same time as I did last night.

The stadium was packed. 65,000 people, screaming and yelling for one team or the other, and at times it was deafening. As the Portuguese span their green scarves around and around you could feel the rush of air as it whipped around your ears. As the four drummers at the very top of the structure (would you call that the gods?) banged their drums, the English chanted back at them, drowning out the far more tuneful Portuguese songs by dint of the fact there were 40,000 of us, and only 25,000 of all the other nationalities combined.

All around the terraces, on every level, English flags with the names of clubs from right around the country were draped over the sides, like bed-sheets hung out to dry on a multi-million euro line, and we were so close to the pitch that we could look up and see all of those above us and on the rows below, chanting and singing and waving their arms in the air.

The first English goal came almost too soon for us to notice, but it and each that followed was greeted by a deafening roar from the crowd, as the mass of people bounced up and down in joy or despair, and the drummers started on again with their banging, or the crowd lapsed into a staccato rendition of the theme from the Great Escape.

Of course, all of this is small beer to regular football goers, but to Mark and I, on our first game each, and Ashley on his third, it was still something novel. The 90 minutes of the match and the 30 minutes of extra time in which they battled to pick out a winner flew by. Before we knew it, the players were lining up to take penalty kicks at the goal in the hope of eliminating their opponents. Beckham’s naff attempt went flying off into the middle of nowhere and until about the fourth Portuguese attempt we were one goal behind. They levelled it off at four each and you could feel the tension in the air right around the stadium, like the heavy static buzz that precedes the start of a storm.

England missed another one, and then it was the turn of the Portuguese goalie to lob his boot at the ball. It sailed through the air, and so did out goalie, but they shot off in opposite directions and the ball slammed into the back of the net, sending the Portuguese crowd wild.

There was screaming and yelling and the blowing of whistles and it sounded for a moment like someone had opened the gates to hell. The high-pitch whine rose and rose until it felt like it would tear apart the skin of your ears, and then the green and red flags and scarves were back up in the air, being flapped around and sending a warm fast wind swirling around the banked stadium.

Me, in the sponsors’ village, reflected in Mark’s glasses

We turned around and hugged and shook hands with the Portuguese fans behind us, wishing them luck with the rest of the tournament as they thanked us for a good game, and then pootled back to the sponsors village where we’d eaten a dinner of sea bass and rabbit and duck (and there was I thinking football was all about beer and pies) to drink and talk about the game, and then get back into our coach for the slow drive to our hotel.

The streets were filled with singing, chanting and dancing fans waving flags in the air, hanging off lamp posts, running out from their houses and into the midst of the static traffic, or hanging precariously from the windows of their cars. When it was clear we were going nowhere fast they opened the doors of their vehicles and partied in the street, waving at us as most of us waved back.

One or two of our group, of course (the ones who couldn’t see beyond the fact we’d lost and appreciate the fact we’d all had a fantastic time) disparaged them, calling it pathetic and saying that they were behaving as though they’d won the whole tournament. I didn’t point out to them that if it was been us who had won we’d have been doing precisely the same thing. Hypocrites.

Anyhow, it was they who went to bed with depression when we got back, while the rest of us headed out into the streets to celebrate with the people of Lisbon.

I can’t help but feel glad that we lost. The party atmosphere was amazing, and if it hadn’t been a win for the home team nobody would be out celebrating. As it was, though, the main street that lead down through the centre of the city to the sea was crammed full of people; men, women and children draped in the national flag, or with their faces painted up in stripes of red and green.

The street was filled with several thousand celebrating fans

Every statue and light fitting was lost beneath a mass of people climbing up its facing. Footballs were being kicked high up above our heads and falling into the crowd, only to be picked up and kicked again so that they bounced up and down among the seething mass of people like lottery balls popping out of Lancelot. The braver elements lit flares and fireworks and held them up above their heads, waving them over the crowd so that the air was filled with white smoke, and all the while the only two police officers we saw just looked on from the sidelines.

There was no suggestion it might turn nasty, and it didn’t matter that we were apparently obviously English. The locals talked to us in our own language, sang with us, and carried us on down the road with them towards the station as a million people, seemingly co-ordinated by some invisible force, wandered on towards the square where, earlier in the day, the English flags that had been strung up around the stadium had been laced up to the lamp posts and fountains. Then, it had been an English enclave in the middle of the city, but now it had been reclaimed by the people of Lisbon. The English flags had gone and the fountains, on the edges of which the English fans bad been sitting earlier in the day were now filled with empty bottles and the near-naked bodies of the fitter fans, drenching each other as they jumped and danced in the water, celebrating their win.

Earlier in the day, the square had been full of English flags

We slowly made our way back up the hill towards the hotel some time around half two this morning, feeling thoroughly drained, and fell into our beds. I’ve had my fair share of press trips, but of them all, in the last seven years, this is the one that I will perhaps remember the most vividly. To spend a night like that with some of your best friends, and to finally understand what it is people see in the bizarre game of football in a beautiful city like Lisbon takes some beating.

Me liking Lisbon

So, Lisbon with Canon for the quarter finals of Euro 2004. England v Portugal.

I had been expecting the city to be packed, but after a brief wander down the main street with Mark, it seems the whole place is deserted, so we returned to the hotel bar with everyone else and sat drinking gin and Cosmopolitans with Ashley until about 10 minutes ago.

I’ve not seen much of the city on account of the darkness. Our flight was delayed, so after two and a half hours on a knackered plane (my window rattled through the whole flight, which was somewhat concerning) we landed in darkness and used headlights to pick out way through the city streets.

The in-flight entertainment was fairly dire. It kicked off with the news and then progressed to three propaganda films about Portuguese castles, Portuguese lace and Portuguese cheese. It was all in Portuguese, of course, so I didn’t understand it, in spite of the fact that the volume control on my seat had only two settings: off and LOUD, which kicked in at about 17.5 on the 0 to 19 scale of volume dots.

Anyhow, I should probably sleep now, under the watchful gaze of the scary Canon woman staring in through my bedroom window. A genius piece of ad placement.

We have made tentative arrangements for meeting up tomorrow morning for breakfast. so I’m going to have to set an alarm. After several drinks and no real food since lunchtime, though, I suspect I may be eating it with a dizzy head.

Hmmm… so England beat the Czech Republic 4:2 tonight, which means I’ll be watching England v Portugal on Thursday. Apparently this is a “Good Thing”, and Chris of the Brennan has been encouraging me to learn a chant that goes (roughly) along the lines of ‘Engerlund Engerlund Engerlund’.

Repeat as necessary, varying pitch and tone, preferably while holding a canap

My washing machine is making some very strange and slightly concerning noises.

It’s Andrew’s birthday on Thursday, when I’ll be otherwise occupied in a stadium in Lisbon (he says, rubbing it in), so today was the traditional summer barbeque.

In the rain.

Fortunately the barbeque is a permanent fixture, which means it has a room-sized roof over the top of it, so we could burn meat (and vegetarian meat substitute products derived of carefully modified fungus) with impunity. Or at least Andrew could while we all huddled around the dining table, complaining about the arctic gales gusting through the back door.

All very merry.

I introduced everyone to Mancala, and then to Cathedral, and won every game after which, bizarrely enough, nobody was too keen on a return match. Hmmm… Anyhow, I played with the cat for a bit, as she doesn’t much care for board games.

It’s as well Kathryn and Emilie Ems both said it looked like I’d lost weight on Friday as I think I ate more than I’d normally consume in a whole week this afternoon. So much for those shorts I bought yesterday with the 28in waist.

Stopped by at the pool on the way home, intending to swim it all off, but my body was more occupied with digesting the genetically adjusted mycoprotien instead, so couldn’t really be arsed with moving my legs around more than was strictly necessary.

I gave up after half a mile, feeling vaguely numb from the waist down, and went around to Paul’s to pull the covers off his suite.

A busy few. It’s as well the pub was open late last night, as I didn’t get home until gone 10, which still left several hours for chatting with Trevor and Jon about their impending holiday. They went to Sitges this morning, which must mean it’s a year since I was there. For once, that’s one of those passings of time that actually feels much longer.

Ended up in town this afternoon: real-world shopping. Perhaps my least favourite thing, and completely pointless when you could use the net instead. Unless, of course, you’ve left it too late. I ended up mooching around from one shop to another, and spent four hours doing what I could have done in 20 minutes online, but game back by the gym for a swim, in a pool that was rendered practically unswimmable by some cretin with an eagle tattoo on his back, throwing his screaming kids up in the air so they splashed down into the water beside the swimming lanes.

Kids are supposedly banned after six, but nobody seems to monitor what’s going on.

Hmmm.

Anyhow, I ended up coming out feeling springy and fit, and only missed breaking my record by 60 seconds, so it wasn’t so bad, all told. Came home and cooked a massive dinner when I should have been thinking about holidays and travel. Beyond a flight to Faro, there’s nothing planned so far.

An afternoon with the train map and the Die Bahn site is called for. I’ve planned pretty much every European trip through it for the last three or four years but I see it’s been redesigned and I can’t yet find my way around.

This is going to be a good test of my rather basic German comprehension.

Now I’m not usually much of a one for reading The Sun, but you have to admit today’s front page was a work of genius, picking out six English yobs who got themselves in trouble for rioting in Portugal and printing their pictures with a descriptive word written beside each one: Halfwit, Peabrain, Plankton, Thicko, Stupid, Witless.

A. Work. Of. Genius.

And what a fantastic word plankton is. It was long overdue a revival.

Beyond that, football is a wonderful thing. I don’t understand a single thing about it, but as England and Switzerland were playing tonight (and apparently we won 3-0, which by fluke of coincidence was pretty much the UK and Switzerland’s Eurovision scores this year, too), which meant nobody wanted to come home from work on time, leaving the trains all but deserted.

We could do with more of that, please.

Anyhow, in preparation for heading off to Portugal myself in six days time, and spending three days dodging the English yobs, I’m trying to learn the rules of football, without success. Last time I watched a match was in a bar in China, which complicated matters somewhar, so I’m still very confused about anything beyond the fact there’s a ball, 22 people and two goals.

I think the safest thing to do will be to just cheer when everyone around me is doing the same.