Line Up

Finally we find ourselves connected to the world via our phone line after a chap came round to repair it yesterday. In Manchester English he was doing a ‘foreigner’ and was only going to charge 50 ringgit for a job that took quite a while. We doubled the amount, as much out of gratitude as anything else. Still not sure if the lizards were to blame. It seems it could have been lightning, of which this area gets more than its fair share.

We’re also connected to world events, i.e., the footie in South Africa, via Astro, our satellite tv supplier, and, in contrast to Singapore, we don’t have to pay extra for the service. So I got to see Robert Green’s horrendous blunder watching the morning replay of the England vs USA game and since I didn’t know the score as I watched the game it was just as painful as it would have been if I’d viewed it live in the early hours.

The odd thing about mistakes that bad is that it’s hard to hold them against the perpetrator. It can hardly have been a lapse of concentration given that the poor guy was probably suffering one of the greatest adrenaline rushes of his life just being out there for the game. We all know it’s a case of the body doing exactly what you don’t want it to do because you don’t want it to do it so incredibly much. I’ll bet he couldn’t make himself do the same thing in practice deliberately no matter how hard he tries. Which goes to show we are none of us machines.

Unless we happen to be Germans.