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Jayne Dawson: Fun and games
It's always all about the accessories, isn't it? Saturday is a big day, big match, beautiful game, all of that, and I can't find it anywhere – my key accessory.
I've tried the loft, I've tried the kitchen (cleaning cupboard: sub-section – cloths) in case I had decided in a lapse of concentration to turn it into a duster. I've even tried the garage (decorating materials: sub-section – bits of rag). But nothing.
The day is looming, England expects, and somehow I'm going to have to get through it without my David Beckham T-shirt.
Yes, yes, no need to get your knickers in a twist, I do know that.
It's of little consequence to me that David isn't actually playing in the World Cup because my T-shirt was bigger than that – not literally, don't get funny.
Spirit
What I mean is that my T-shirt was not just about this World Cup, it was about encompassing the spirit of every World Cup.
It was about sportmanship, fighting spirit, perseverance, and the bonding, powerful, shared national experience that is this four-yearly, global phenomenon. Plus David Beckham is still very fanciable.
So although I know David won't be playing in this Saturday's game, unless things go very badly indeed and he has to run into a South African telephone box and change from his designer suit into his super-shorts and then appear on the field full of national duty and Kryptonite – and what fun that would be – it doesn't really signify.
My T-shirt, I like to believe, would have been my nod to all that Beckham has been, from his days as the floppy-haired sidekick to a Spice Girl, to his glory, bend-it-like-Beckham moments as England captain.
I wanted to revive it in the manner of an old band tour T-shirt. Heck, I wanted it to stand for the highs and lows of life itself. Anyway, I can't find it so now I'm going to have to wear some head boppers instead.
Because, as I say, it is all about the accessories – and there an awful lot of them about.
I myself have a good selection of the available options. Possibly I have a good percentage of the entire nation's supply.
For my family soiree on Saturday I will be offering my guests their pick of World Cup themed socks, a tea-towel, a beach towel, two flags, some wrist bands, a baseball cap, some head boppers featuring England flags – though not my pair obviously – and a blow-up football.
I could have added a football-themed tutu, some bunting, and one of those annoying rattle things, but there is a point, I believe, where jolly good fun tips over into falling victim to marketing, and the tutu and the rattle were it. I actually wanted the bunting though, I just forgot to add it to my basket.
Obviously, I kicked into touch the football-shaped bottle opener, some napkins with England flags on, and some paper plates in the shape of T-shirts, because they were plainly ridiculous items.
I was, however, tempted by the buns with the edible football garnish, but not so tempted by the Three Lions bag of salad leaves – there is pushing it, and there is just baffling.
Toys
The basic philosophy here is that if you have to sit through ninety minutes of football, forty five of them wondering if you're watching the right team, then you might as well have some toys to brighten things up a bit.
Apparently, a massive percentage of the audience on Saturday night will be made up of women – at the last World Cup fully forty per cent of the people parked in front of television screens were real, actual, women.
Most of them will not actually be watching the football though. What they will be doing is preparing the food – it's an American theme this time, girls, so I don't know about you but I'll be serving a good-quality beefburger.
Plus they will be handing round drinks, asking everybody if they can see the screen, apologising for the uncomfortable selection of emergency chairs and – every so often – wiping their hands on their World Cup pinnies, straightening their head boppers, and dutifully reciting the offside rule.
I'm not saying we women won't enjoy the World Cup, we sort of will, but the accessories will come first and the football a trailing second. And if anyone has a David Beckham T-shirt then... don't tell me.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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