Growing up sometimes presents itself as a kind of strange multiverse. A world in which the comfort of experience confines you to particular spots in the world around you.

You take a certain route to work. You buy your pepper-steak pies from one shop, your morning coke at a single garage, you drink your sundowners at the Scud.

On Fridays you hit the booze in the usual place with the usual people, go to the same Liquid Lounge and listen to the same DJ playing the same tunes you’ve been hearing for 20 years.

Saturdays find you gocharing that lekker sausage, outside the customary butchery or bottle-store, with people you’re used to, drinking the usual poison at the usual pace.

See, it’s interesting to consider just how much we are creatures of habit. It gets more intriguing when something shakes your routine so violently, encroaches on your schedule so abruptly that you question your entire existence and the cocoon you have built around yourselves.

You start to wonder whether, in carving out your comfort zones and peer groups, you have limited your scope of experiences, and by swimming in your channel, you’re missing the obvious under-currents of a life you will never know.

Yesterday, for exampuru, I discovered that there is an entire sub-culture in Harare, where women meet on Sundays and play hockey. The catalyst for this new and intriguing find was my sister, who was invited to play for some club.

Forsaking my regular Naked Sunday, I went along with my lover in tow and next thing you know, my little Field (hockey) Mouse is in a league game, scores a goal, dubbed new fish and is a part of the team.

Where she got the energy to suddenly run around 35 minutes each way, carrying a fucking log no less, on a Sunday afternoon I have no goddamn clue!

Time to dust off those social soccer boots, my fellow sedentary boozers.

Cos  if the missus can do it, goddamn it so can I.

Face it, England were playing badly, before and after that ‘goal’. Yes, the goal should have been given, but rather look at the performance of the two teams we’re talking about – England were shit, they were NEVER going to beat Germany on that performance, and with Upson in defence … Argentina were irresistible, Mexico were NEVER going to beat them with their disjointed attack and crazy defence.

Yes, there are missed calls, bad calls in every sport (NZ-France RWC ‘07 anyone?) but like BuffDaddy told me, if your team is in a position where one bad call can cost them a result, then they don’t deserve to win in the first place.

It is time for video tech to be introduced on the goal-line, sure. Claiming that a couple of WRONG referreing decisions (not controlled by FIFA) indicate conspiracy, that’s missing the point(s).

No team can defend that badly against Germany and expect to win anything. England can’t be ranked amongst the top nations in world football, so don’t expect them to be in the semi-finals. Just because you know every player doesn’t mean every player is world-class. No team with a foreign coach has ever won the Football World Cup.

The sooner you face the facts, the sooner you direct your wrath where it should be; your own misplaced expectations and the over-hyping of a mediocre squad by a media more concerned with “narrative” than cold, hard reality.

England suck.

Anytime.

So I hear all these people blowing their horns against the vuvuzela. Really, you gotta stop.

FIFA thought about it last year, during the Confederations Cup in South Africa. Remember what happened? Public outcry, strike threats and racism accusations.

Now that the world has met the full force of the vuvu, there is a great outcry from all over the world. They’re loud, they’re killing atmosphere, we can’t hear the crowd, we’re watching games on mute.

You’re beating a dead donkey.

Some LOC people have stated the only way they’ll ban the vuvuzela is if it’s used as a projectile, so if one lands on the pitch, they may get banned.

Which has led to some (foreign) idiots trawling the internet trying to organise a mass vuvu toss, where they hurl the things onto a field during a game, so FIFA can ban them.

Yeah, that will work. Because your (pale lilly white) faces will be caught on camera, and the jig will be up. The vuvu won’t be banned, YOU will be banned and on the next flight out of Afreeka.

Sorry we can’t bring our clarinets and oboes to the games, that would bankrupt entire townships, chaps.

All we have is the vuvu, and I’m not putting mine down.

Also, you can call ME vuvuzela, cos if you blow me I also make a beeg sound.

In other news, am I the only one who thinks this World Cup should really be called Manchester City Summer Trials?

Just sayin’.