So mid-year school holidays are well under way and, having finally made my way through the mountain of maths homework that was once again threatening to crash-tackle me and sit on my head while I slowly suffocate, I am now free to sleep in ’til noon, watch six hours a day of bootleg DVDs, do absolutely no exercise and gorge on high-fat, high-sugar empty calories until it’s time to go to bed again. Ah, the good life – I’m almost glad we only get two weeks of this at a time or I’d turn into a socially retarded blancmange, never to be able to utter intelligible sentences in civilization again.

Meanwhile, in case any of you have been living in a padded room for the past month, the FIFA World Cup is also well under way, and after thirty-two Australian years of “the only footy worth talking about is Aussie Rules”, everyone in this country seems to have jumped right on the soccer – excuse me, football – bandwagon. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, it could be another thirty-two years before it happens again. So, with that and SBS’s shamefully clueless-non-football-watching-female-targeted “hot boys in shorts” marketing campaign in mind (tsk tsk, although I must say they DO have a point…), I decided to join the parade and see for myself just what all the fuss is about.

Another perk of being on holiday is being able to get up at all manners of odd times in the night/morning to watch TV and not having to worry about repercussions the next day. On the eve of Brazil versus Australia, I set my alarm for the ungodly time of a quarter to two in the morning for my first experience of being a football nut, albeit without the extent of tragic fanaticism of SOME otherwise-sane fathers and husbands who have readjusted their body clocks to German time and have set up permanent camp in the living room opposite the TV. (Certain people spring to mind. You know who you are…) Turned out I didn’t need the alarm clock after all, as I was woken at 1:30 a.m. by insanely loud classical music blaring from the sound system downstairs which had mysteriously managed to switch itself on during the night. (Either that or a gang of marauding bandits had broken in but had suddenly been struck by temporary amnesia before they could nick the TV and decided to have a cocktail party instead of robbing us blind and forgot to turn off the music before they left. How nice of them. To not rob us blind, that is.) Naturally, it was absolutely freezing, and tiptoeing down the stairs in complete darkness, wrapped in a doona and half-asleep, was not the easiest task in the world. Not to mention walking face-first into the banisters after miscounting the number of steps, and trying to muffle the swearing and yelps of pain lest the parentals be alerted to my nocturnal activities.

Anyway, I managed to find my way to the living room without any further dramas and got settled in front of the television. I hate to admit the extent to which the media can toy with my emotions, but I think I experienced a stirring of patriotism in my cold, hard heart as the Socceroos came out onto the field. Even though I knew we were playing Brazil, and therefore we were going to get thrashed. But it was a surprisingly goalless first half as my own lack of fitness was acutely brought home by the strapping lads in little shorts bounding up and down that massive pitch for three-quarters of an hour without respite. I was tired just watching them. Although the lack of sleep might have had something to do with that…

And okay, 2-0 wasn’t really such as bad loss considering the opposition. Ronaldo (poor Ronaldo, everyone seems to be bagging him now for being fat and old, but I still remember when he was the young and virile and mohawked Brazilian hero of the last World Cup) executed some shockers, like when he went to kick the ball but totally missed and almost fell over. What the? That’s something you’d expect ME to do, not a seasoned professional athlete! But they still won, so I guess that pretty much says it all.

I have a confession to make. I know at this point I should be rhapsodising about the beauty of the sport and the mastery with which the players wield the ball, and I should especially be single-mindedly rooting for the Aussie boys, but I got a little sidetracked during that match. As the ball passed interminably from one player to another without any real progress being made and only a small number of way-off-the-mark goal attempts during the first half, I noticed the camera cutting to close-ups of a certain Brazilian player by the name of Kaka. (So sue me if he’s really famous and I’ve never heard of him before in my life –it’s called jumping on the bandwagon for a reason…) And oh my gosh, has anyone noticed how HOT he is?? I know most professional athletes are hot by merit of being professional athletes, but by GOD is he exceptionally fine! It goes without saying that I got a bit distracted after that.

Nevertheless, by the time the Australia versus Croatia match rolled around, I had become a fully-fledged momentary football nut like everyone else and I am proud to say that no one cheered harder when Harry Kewell scored the equalizer in the seventy-ninth minute than I. Go Socceroos.

(On another note: why has no one ever told me how scary the local library can be in the daytime during school holidays? Not a minute had passed after I innocuously took a seat at a table with this month’s Vogue and Vanity Fair when some random weirdo peered out from behind the magazine rack and stared at me, breathing heavily while I desperately tried to ignore him, for fully ten minutes. Then when I finally chanced to look up, the aforementioned random weirdo had, thankfully, disappeared, but I had accidentally made eye contact with this creepy Indian guy who had also been staring at me and he hit on me. Right-o! I took that as my signal to leave. And that is DEFINITELY the last time I pick up Cindy Chupack’s “Between Boyfriends Book” in public.)

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//8:14 pm

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