I was pleased to say that Meg and I enjoyed a good night’s sleep last night which is always welcome these days. But last night was a quite extraordinary night in terms of the Euro finals because England actually qualified for the final. England’s opponents were Holland who took a lead with a brilliantly taken goal. But there was a fairly instant riposte in the form of a penalty awarded to England that made the scores equal. But England dominated the first half and played football which was far more attacking and less tentative that we have become used to over the competition to date. In the second half, the Dutch came back and the second half did not have the excitement of the first half and England seemed to be flagging somewhat. Then there was an inspired substitution and a player from Aston Villa, Ollie Watkins, was brought on. Less than ten years ago today, English football’s ‘quiet man’ Ollie Watkins was playing for Weston-super-Mare in front of a few hundred fans. But last night, with one second to spare in the full time period and before extra time threatened, Ollie Watkins scored a stupendous goal to rocket England into the finals on Sunday where they will meet Spain. I think that on the run of play, England deserved to win last night as apart from the two goals they scored, they had one goal disallowed for offside and on occasion the ball was cleared by a Dutch defender literally bouncing on the line. A video replay does show that the centre line of the ball had crossed the centre line of the goal line but the relevant rule is that the whole of the ball has to be over the line before a goal can be awarded.So England played as the Italians, Spanish and French have played throughout the tournament and one has to ask the question that if they were quite capable of playing like this, why had they not played like it before? However, this is tournament football and one has to prepared for a long haul and a change of tactics and personnel to meet the challenges of particular opponents so suddenly, Gareth Southgate who was regarded as the national villain when it appeared that England was on the point of exiting the competition has suddenly been transformed into a national hero. I suspect that Spain should quite easily win the final on Sunday and are probably the much superior team. Having said that, England start off as underdogs which is always a good position in which to start and the Spanish, finding that they are expecting to win, may well find that nerves gets the better of them and a crass mistake is made. In football, it is is not always the best team that wins and we have seen quite often in this competition that an inspired moment of brilliance can rescue a team from a generally mediocre performance. Our friends in Spain have texted me and are delighted to have England in the final although they are hoping that the Spanish prevail.
Today being a Thursday, it is my normal shopping day and I managed to get all of this done and back home within the hour which was my intention.Today was a somewhat lighter week than normal and I try to be fairly careful not to over buy as I hate throwing away food which has gone over its date. I managed to get everything I needed except that the bars of ‘dark’ chocolate which Aldi sells were sold out leaving behind masses of white and milk chocolate bars which the discerning shoppers seem to ignore in favour of the dark chocolate. Having said that, it is always quite a satisfying experience to get the shopping done and put away before the weekend. The day has been a rather indeterminate day today so Meg and I had to wonder how we were to spend the afternoon. If the weather had been a little finer and warmer, then Meg could have sat outside in the wheelchair whilst i cut the front lawn but I judged that today might be a little too cold. So instead, we decided to view again a YouTube presentation of a documentary called ‘A World without Beethoven?’ which we have seen before but is well worth a second viewing. The care workers’ schedules are somewhat misaligned this afternoon and I ha had to phone up the car agency to ensure that there was not a one hour gap at one point in the afternoon followed by a five hour gap later on. However, they did respond favourably to a phone call requesting a change but I am left in the position of not knowing exactly who is going to turn up this afternoon or when which makes life a little difficult to organise.
Now that we are one week on since the General Election, it is time for a little contemplation. There are times in our national political life, when the nation is evidently yearning for quite a dramatic change and the dates that come to mind are the huge Labour victory at the conclusion of WWII, Harold Wilson’s narrow victory in 1964 bringing to an end 13 years of Tory rule, Margaret Thatcher’s famous victory in 1979 and Tony Blair’s in 1997. And the statistics for 2024 are still mid blowing in that the Labour gained 412 seats and an overall majority over all other parties of 174. This, too, ranks alongside the other dates mentioned as the point of a decisive shift in British politics. But what the future holds can follow one of several scenarios.On the one hand, the Labour party can make a determined and consistent start to repair the ‘state of the nation’ because there is now an almost universal recognition that most of our national institutions from the health service to local government to our transport systems are in urgent need of repair. If this is done with a degree of commitment as well as basic competence and with no overarching scandals, then the Labour Party may be in power for at least two five year terms. On the other hand, who would have thought that a Conservative majority of 80 seats could have been turned around so dramatically in a five year period? Some Conservative thinkers are arguing that if a dramatic change can happen in one time period then it can be reversed some five years later although I think this is unlikely in the extreme.
© Mike Hart [2024]