Inclement Weather

Action shot live from Benllech

I'm bloody starving - two bowls of cornflakes and a banana thus far. To take my mind off the hunger I have been reunited with my old mate Senor Rioja.

I played nine holes of golf in teeming rain and high winds earlier today at Baron Hill - it's a testing little course and I am still feeling my way into how to play it but it is nice to have a course I can call home. The club defines seniors as beginning at 55 so next year I can perhaps get a little non-strenuous competition. I'll have to resurrect an official handicap from the wreckage of my game (Heaven knows I can't play to the last one I had) but we'll leave that torture for another time.

All in all I'm feeling rather chipper today. I've had a week away from work which definitely helps and I had a great (if bibulous) time in London. And last night I slayed  one of my own ridiculous demons - I emptied my email inbox. So when all is said and done I deserve my glass of the old vino.

The World Cup quarter final between Germany and France is on in the background as I type this. Thus far I have managed not to watch a single match all the way through. I have said it before and, in defiance of the rule against self-corroboration, I'll say it again, football is the best game to watch as a partisan. However my own social engagements and England's mediocrity have meant that opportunities for partisanship were initially limited and latterly non-existent. Now, who does an Englishman choose between the French and the Germans? Beats me.

One thing the World Cup has brought to prominence in my mind is the incident of the plainly bonkers Luis Suarez biting an opponent. First up let's discount the offender's insistence that it was an accident. Was it bollocks. But what it does make me wonder is why is the biting so much worse than the leg-breaking tackle? Suarez has been banned from all football for four months and the instinctive reaction is that this is deserved. But how does this compare to the punishment meted to psychopathic tacklers? I haven't got the answer to this one but it is interesting how this behaviour is so uniquely reviled. Mind you I repeat, plainly bonkers.