The dream is over. I watched the game in a Chinese disco on a big screen hung in front of the DJ stand. Loud Mandarin language pop boomed out, and two girls in shorts and crop tops danced on either side of the screen. Afterwards I wandered outside to see Cristiano Ronaldo's smiling face on a huge TV screen fixed to the side of a skyscraper. I can't believe that one of four very average sides will be World Champions this time next week. How much further forward are England for five years of expensive foreign coaching? Timidity and blandness instead of chaos and hell for leather, that's all.
Yesterday we took the bus to Hangzhou, a rich city swollen with half finished apartment buildings that resemble upturned packing crates. The journey was reminiscent of India - fumes and dust, dirty upholstery and karaoke videos playing at full volume above the driver's head. We passed field after field of advertising billboards - China's second largest crop after rice - spotlit from below and bearing pictures of urban development, Western consumer durables and Japanese high technology. After finding the city's famous West Lake we traced a route along the banks while the sun gradually roasted my skin, and then got hopelessly lost trying to find the bus station for the return journey.
I had planned an early night but it was too stifling to sleep even with the aid of a late night can of weak lager. The apartment is so hot that you have only two choices: leave the air conditioning on all night (too noisy) or turn it off just as you close your eyes and hope that sleep comes before the sweat starts flooding your body. Apparently cockroaches don't have the same problem.
This morning was my first lesson. Two slow Chinese teenagers with a combined vocabulary of five words. Fun and games.
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