Saturday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

England last night were crashingly, shockingly, bruisingly awful. The newspapers are all over it, so I won't bore you here.

The only question I did have, as an irregular observer of football, is: why? It really bothered me, the whole thing seemed so inexplicable. There was a bunch of highly paid, individually talented, internationally rated men, bumbling about the park like amateurs after a night on the town. The experts had no clue. It was nerves, it was pressure, it was the expectations of the media, it was the coach, it was the four-four-two. Rooney was grumpy, but no one really knew why, since he has everything any twenty-four-year old could ever want. The manager said, vaguely, he felt the spirit was missing, which did not sound much like a technical term to me.

Then I suddenly got it. There is no explanation. Sometimes talented people find their talent fails. Great novelists write rotten books. Brilliant tennis players crash out in the first round. Lauded designers produce hideous dresses. Venerable banks go bankrupt overnight. Gifted politicians pursue disastrous policies. Comics lose their timing. Oscar-winning actors start chomping the furniture. Great horses get beat.

I am oddly relieved by this revelation. There need be no forensic post-mortem. It's just life, baby.

In the meantime, there are the trees:

And the flowers:

(Those are my sister's new plants, of which I am mildly envious.)

And of course there are these two, who never fail:

Have a lovely weekend.