• Watched The Pandorica Opens this morning – the most fantastic episode of NuWho in the last five years. The pinnacle. #

• Couple of hectic days including a meet and greet on Wednesday evening. Deploying a new 21CN platform – with some teething issues. #
• Just how rubbish is England? #
• This is taking on an almost Eurovision like car crash complexion. Don't even look like scoring. Dire. #
• Firing blanks. No attack. Buggery knows where Rooney has been all game. Against mighty Algeria. Comedy. Bad comedy. #
• There's a simple solution for Wayne "Invisible" Rooney if he doesn't like to be booed by 6000 fans – don't play like utter crap. Job done. #

• Watching a fascinating re-appraisal of Richard Nixon on the iPlayer, after an evening of Mark Williams On The Rails. Mmm. Nice. #

• Currently coding and listening to Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You. It's very, very good. Superb range of tracks and instrumentation. #

My radio station of choice is Radio 5 Live, and it’s full of the World Cup. Other stations? Similar. Radio 4 is however a little too dry for me, although I did have an extended period of listening to it when my old radio decided it didn’t want much to do with medium wave.

Injury this. Questionable selection that. You really can’t help becoming an armchair pundit such is the volume of speculation. Not that I really want to. I don’t know the cut and thrust of football, although the game seems remarkably simple to me. Obviously hideously dictated by the quality of the players available, but it seems fundamentally simple from a managerial perspective, and especially so for an International manager. The pool is both defined and fairly obvious, plus/minus some wildcards – it’s not like an International manager can buy/sell, or do all the wheeler dealing. To be honest, it all looks a bit of a con to me. This is not a high-brow, high-intellect sport. Sorry, it’s not. Really, it’s not.

As such, I’m beginning to get a healthy disrespect for the latest tales of woe. I think some chap once said “You won’t win anything with kids” – promptly before Manchester United cleaned up that year. Well, I say “You won’t win anything with injured players”. At times, a risk is staying with the status quo.

• Doctor Who was far superior entertainment to England’s first World Cup match. #
• Back from B&Q with a monstrous bag of grass seed to repair all the damage to the lawn. #

• Just come off a very stressful World of Warcraft raid. Sometimes these things are just harder than your proper job – like tonight. #

Contrary to the national orgasm currently sweeping the nation, I’m quite ambivalent about whole thing.

The most extrovert sign of the national obsession is the ever increasing number of cars sporting go-slower, fuel-wasting England flags – touted as some demonstration of national pride. In fact, the number of flags seem inversely proportional to the value of the car, and quite possibly the IQ of the driver. Not to mention the house flags, the most comical of which was a bijou council property sporting twin flags, both the size of the average living room. Probably seemed a good idea at the time, despite the loss in perceived property value.

I do occasionally glance at football – towards the sharp end of the season, I keep tabs on Manchester United. Mainly because it’s local, and I can’t say that I’m totally disinterested. Formula One is my spectator sport of choice, a much richer tapestry of politics and intrigue – and a much less mundane use of ninety minutes on a Sunday. I probably won’t be totally disinterested in England’s campaign either, but I certainly won’t be planning any viewing around it. Not that think it will be a problem for long – out in the quarter finals is my entry as a pundit.

• It’s still incredibly poor weather. Whilst my holiday weather wasn’t perfect, in comparison I certainly dodged the weather bullet. #

• Back to work today after the last fortnight off. Weather hasn’t been bad, hasn’t been uber either. #