I don't believe in omens. Bloody good job, really. First thing this morning, there I was, loaded up to the bloodshot eyeballs with gadgets and gizmos with which to wow you over the course of the tournament and two weeks' worth of pants, directions to Manchester in hand. About two minutes later, I discovered my car, a usually trustworthy little Micra by the name of Purdey, wasn't in the mood. Bah and balls, I thought...
Actually, that makes me sound level-headed and grown-up - I broke down into tears and phoned my dad, a somewhat cheaper version of the AA. Long story short, after nearly two hours of ringing round for a hire car, I was nervously negotiating London's Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon, in a very new, very-expensive-if-anything-happens-to-it, Renault Megane.
So I shook my ass up here rather late, I'm afraid, and all the fantastic pictures I was going to take at England's training session this evening have gone out the window. But, I have resolved to make it to as many training sessions as possible in the next week, so there will be pictures. Lots of them.
And tomorrow I can promise all manner of excitement - not just the first games of the tournament (group A matches kick off tomorrow from 5pm GMT), but I'm going to find a betting shop and see if I can make me some money on the games tomorrow night.
I'm not really a gambler - I only won on the Grand National because I backed so many horses it would have been harder not to - so chances are I'll bugger it up spectacularly. But, this is probably my first and only opportunity to max out a Guardian expense account, so what the heck, I'll bet big.
