arrival in athens

Again, it's been a while! But I've just had the satisfaction of re-reading my previous blog post and have the slightly smug sense that I called the World Cup pretty well - at least as far as England were concerned. The nation's bloated sense of self-importance on the football field was blown apart once more, and our deified Italian manager was to be found with feet of clay, eventually to be hounded out of the job by the Fourth Estate guttersnipes...

It will be a while before we win a major football tournament - if ever - but I suppose a miracle is always possible. That's pretty much what happened to Greece in the European Championships of 2004, and this is the country I find myself in now, embarking on an Inntravel island-hopping odyssey through theDodecanese - it's going to be special.

But first I find myself in Athens. I love going somewhere - anywhere - for the first time, as there's always so much to soak up. Not just the sights and sounds, but also the 'feel' of a place. Powerful first impressions seem last a long time when I'm travelling, and my initial take on Athens has been entirely positive. It's nothing short of an astounding place, with a palpable sense of history quite literally around every corner - whether it's the looming presence of the towering Acropolis, whose power is undiminished each time I notice it, or stumbling across some magnificently crumbling remains at the end of a narrow street.

Of course, I'd heard tales a few years ago of the city as the smog pit of Europe, gridlocked by fuming traffic, and an utter nightmare to visit. In these post-Olympic days, this is hard to imagine, though I don't doubt that it was true. Today, my first experience was of a gleaming airport terminal and an equally polished Metro system that whizzed me into the main hub of Syntagma with the minimum of fuss and the utmost civility. From here, it was a short change to Akropoli and then a five-minute walk to my modern and comfortable - yet unimpeachably characterful - hotel, the Philippos. After a shower and a beer, it was time to head out and explore...

What I found were swathes of beautiful young Athenians enjoying a typically balmy September night in the tender embrace of the open air. A constant hum of laid-back chatter and laughter filled the streets, and the fantastic al fresco bar and restaurant culture was a sight to behold. My deliberately unfocused 'recce' got me lost a couple of times, but I felt as safe as could be - wandering the lanes as I did, stopping at a streetside taverna for the occasional beer . One such blind alley led me to the square at Monastiraki, and my gluttonous eyes got the better of me as I eyed two Greek fellas' thassanis kebap at a taverna table. Quick as a flash, I was seated at the table next to them and was soon tucking into exactly the same thing. This was washed down with half a litre of ice-cold Mythos beer - all for the fairly palatable price of 14 euros.

It's now 3am local time and I feel as though I could stay up all night, such is the excitement I feel at arriving somewhere new, different and faintly exotic. This would be inadvisable, however: I have lots of discoveries to make tomorrow - I can hardly wait!

the greatest circus on earth

So, le coupe mondiale is finally underway. I can scarcely believe it! The gap between tournaments is so long that I can hardly remember the magic of the previous World Cup by the time the next one comes around. But, sure enough, it arrives on the scene... and, with it, all memories of previous encounters, in far-flung corners of the globe, become vivid once again.

Perhaps more than any other, I recall the wonderfully grainy – and almost

bleached-out and shop-soiled – live footage of Mexico '86; that gut-

wrenchingly triumphal dribble and finish by Maradona, setting an unholy seal on the travesty of the

'Hand of God' infamy. I even remember the cacophony of noise, and the cyclone of ticker-tape, which brought a "pre-Falklands" Argentina side to their home stage in 1978 in the magical – and highly controversial – Buenos Aires final against Holland (I was a mere six years

old at the time).

Oh yes, the memories come flooding back... 'Tardelli's scream' (l'urlo di Tardelli) of ecstasy when he won the trophy for Italy in Madrid, 1982; the monumentally anti-climactic finale that Baggio's impotent penalty-shoot-out misfire brought about at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in 1994; and – of course – the triumph of the world's greatest player, Zinédine Zidane, on his adopted home soil in 1998 – perhaps that was the year the French finally got that 'dirty immigrant'

chip off their collective épaule.

So how can this modern-day version possibly compete with such misty-eyed and rose-tinted memories? Well, only time will tell, I suppose. But it's fantastic to watch history in the making... which is what this surely is.

We should not ignore the fact that South Africa is one of the least-deserving nations to host such a tournament in the first place. It's easy to be fooled by the media spin and the glamour; by the Table-Mountain-touting lap dancer of a country who flaunts her obvious and natural assets to the naive visitor, while hiding her dirty secrets safely from view. But let's not be completely fooled by the media's agenda,

even if we allow ourselves to be temporarily taken in for the sake of the spectacle. The searing injustices of this land wallow not far below the surface, and its catastrophic divisions have got worse - if anything - rather than better, since the fall of the abhorrent apartheid system. This is a country in a dire mess, exhibiting an alluringly painted face.

This land, quite simply, is the most unequal on the planet. It's a nation where

42% of the population subsist on less than two dollars a day; and yet one which has seen fit to spend around 33 billion rand (£3 billion) on a mere football tournament. This, if nothing else, should teach us that something is seriously amiss with the world; and that our collective human values have become utterly mangled in the hunt for fame, glory and greedy showmanship.

But, as they say, the show must go on. And the appalling outrages of its staging (the eviction of the urban poor and the rounding up of the homeless to be dumped into so-called 'temporary relocation areas' and 'transit camps') has not prevented the curtain from rising on the stage.

And what a stage is now set! Superstars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Fernando Torres will compete for the greatest sporting prize on earth, all the while treading the unforgiving tightrope between superstardom and ignominy – a tightrope, lest we forget, that our own would-be megastars are wont to fall off. Indeed, What will befall Ugly Wayne this time around? Will he inspire a bunch of frankly half-decent colleagues to some kind of nation-girding achievement? Or will 'the lads' fall by the wayside, victims of a talentless Italian primadonna of a

manager who couldn't even be arsed to speak English

properly in the first place? Don't get me wrong: I think Capello's done a fantastic job, but it doesn't take much to anticipate the line of enquiry that the tabloids will pursue once the inevitable witch-hunt is underway.

But I'm lucky. I don't much care if England regains some kind of empire, if I'm honest. It would be nice if they made a big impression on the tournament, but this is – I fear – somewhat unlikely. My own personal favourites, if I dare whisper it, come in the effervescent form of modern Spanish football, and the

ingenious unpredictability of Argentina, with Maradona somewhat surreally at the helm.

To be honest, I just love the World Cup for what it is (and what the Premier league isn't): it showcases the very best players in the world, competing at the tip-top-banana level, for the highest prize in sport. What could be better than that? Moreover, there's a fair bit of national glory and pride at stake, too: the fulfilment of a nation's dreams (at least for a week or two) may well rest on a perfectly weighted cross; or a ludicrous penalty fuck-up, for that matter.

So can South Africa 2010 live up to the magical memories of the past? Who knows?... but I, for one, am ready for it. Normal life - apart from work - is pretty much cancelled for a month. And the tournament, as far as I'm concerned, already has its own soundtrack. Forget the wailing of Hansen and the gibbering of Shearer in the studio - the zithering wasp-like drone of the vuvuzelas is letting me know – in no uncertain terms – that this is the World Cup and I had better be paying attention. This is something special.

football fever

It's been far too long since I've been on the old blog – again – but what better reason to pick up the old quill than the arrival of the World Cup? I love this event... proper, meaningful football away from the tedious merry-go-round of the over-hyped Premier League. I love all the fans in their kaleidoscopic colours; I love the atmosphere, and – most of all – I love the games themselves... the best in the world pitting their skills and their wits against one another for the sake of national pride and glory.

Fußball ist wunderbar - bring on the beautiful game!

the deep freeze - in praise of snow

It's been far too long since I visited this old blog of mine, but two things have caused me to take this dusty volume off the electronic shelf and breathe some life back into the old comatose old fecker:

1) My old mate 'Traveller Pete' is embarking on another grand foray into the wide open world - this time for a hundred days in South-East Asia), and cranking his own sleeping bloggarhythms back into life

2) Closer to home, this 'il grande spectacolo' of an 'Arctic Winter' cannot pass without summoning up the old creative juices from the depths of my busy mind. Notwithstanding the media hysteria around the Big Chill (more hype is hard to imagine were David Beckham to give birth to Tiger Woods' lovechild), this experience has been - to me - utterly fantastic... and perhaps even more so for being so completely unexpected.

Of course the dimwits are using it as fools' proof that climate change is a mere fiction (ahem: this is 'weather', not climate, stoopid!); but, even to those of us who realise this is not so, this has come as a huge surprise. We have been led to believe that our winters would become ever milder, ever wetter and ever greyer - certainly here in this middling northern band of our hemisphere. So this pure unassailable white... it's everywhere and it feels like a dream!

There's also an undeniable nostalgia to it all. It transports us straight back to an era when schools seemed to close down practically every other day during deep midwinter. A trick of the memory, maybe, but there really was sledging to be done and plentiful snowball fights to be had. I also imagine the old school boilers were so useless in those days that even a shortish cold snap was enough to send the teachers home with their tails between their legs while the kids skipped insanely through the gates.

But there's also the sheer beauty of it. My in-car thermometer registered -12C this morning as I drove along the York-Malton road to work. Normally this road (the infamous deathtrap that is the A64) is a racetrack from hell; today it was bordered by magnificently wintry trees, glistening and sparkly white from every branch, twig and leaf. The countryside has been lovingly covered by a beautiful white blanket, ironing out all its messy imperfections, and leaving it gleaming and beyond reproach.


And there's also the staying power. Here in North Yorkshire, we've been in the Deep Freeze now since 17th December. That's nearly a whole month! Not for us the all-too-sudden slushy, dirty, slutty thaw as the white turns to a gruesome and sleazy brown. Give me crisp, glassy, icy pavements any day - rather than that greying shit-shaded mushy mess. I know it puts the poor oldies in peril as their brittle bones navigate their way to the local Spar; and I know it's hard on the brickies, the gardeners, the roofers and the builders - whose working lives have been brought to a grinding halt, and - with it - their earnings. But I can't help it - I'm sorry. I love it, love it, love it!!!

It's the child in me, I'm sure. I adore watching the snow fall. The 'little Steve' within me begs it to keep falling - faster, heavier, bigger; let those flakes cover the ground - please! The fearful child in me also dreads it coming to an end: 'no, don't stop; snow now; snow for ever; snow me in'. It's just a pure unadulterated (and what a great word, by the way, in this context) joy. That's what it is: joy at beautiful, mesmerising, uncontrollable nature in full flow; an unbridled eagerness to be 'taken over' and left at the mercy of something that no-one can even cope with, let alone control (certainly here in Britain!).

I would even argue that it changes us. Slowly, imperceptibly, maybe - but it does. To the point when it's not dreary old miserable, unhelpful, stagnant, workaday, selfish, taciturn Britain any more. Something else has taken its place: people go more slowly; they take more care; they worry a little more about each other. Some of them - god forbid - even begin to make eye contact in the street. Occasionally even to complete strangers! Who knows?... if they're not careful, they might even lose all sense of decency and strike up a conversation with someone they've never met before.

These 'crises' (for it surely is a crisis, if we're to believe what we're told) have a disarming effect on us. This 'white stuff'- it seems to bind us, in ways that our false and shallow society can never do. It prevents us from doing the rubbishy stuff as well: the shopping might have to wait; the mad dashing up the motorway too, perhaps. The unnecessary flights to here, there and everywhere might just have to be cancelled. It encourages us to get our boots on and walk; to think; to care about those closest to us, and about those who find things more difficult than we do. More than anything, in some small way, it teaches us to take nothing for granted: there are things we cannot control - the weather, our skidding cars, for sure... but also our lives and where we think they might be taking us. Our life could be snatched from us tomorrow, through one careless fall through the ice, or by a single swerving oncoming snowplough. It induces a kind of philosophical acceptance that nothing... nothing at all, is within our control.

There may only be one word for snow, but one word is enough. It's magic.