Friday 21 May 2010

WorldCupLondon

It's the World Cup. And maybe no better place outside South Africa to watch it than London, where every nation of the world lives somewhere, and so it's always possible to find that somewhere showing any game to the people who really give a shit about the result.

Some of my most memorable ball-watching experiences have been thus - an Italian bar in Soho erupting as they stole the game from Nigeria in World Cup '94, the entire population of Palmers Green dancing through the streets as Greece muscled Euro '04, a bar in Stokey bursting into Polish hymns as they lost to Germany in Euro '08.

I'd like to get a bit better organised this time. So please post as comments here or tweet with #worldcuplondon any suggestions for good places for finding people watching...

Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Cameroon
Chile
Côte d'Ivoire
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Honduras
Italy
Japan
Korea DPR
Korea Republic
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Paraguay
Portugal
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Switzerland
United States
Uruguay

Sunday 2 May 2010

North/South

I flew east from London on Thursday afternoon.

The plane looped north of Iceland to avoid any ash 15000 feet beneath, then over northern Greenland, waves of brilliant white slashed by black rock, this view North.



It then swept over Canada and down the Rockies before bumping down into Los Angeles on Thursday evening, just as the sun was setting.

A couple of hours in a transit room and we took off again out over the Pacific, cutting a south-east diagonal across the ocean. No land bar tiny islands invisible against the black sea, but rolling clouds lit silver by a full moon, and above an inky sky filled with stars I couldn't recognise.

I tried to take a photo but all that exposed was the blink of a red light against the engine.



Better to imagine this view South as the negative of view North.

We crossed the Date Line and landed in Auckland before dawn on Saturday morning. Friday was removed by view South.