Anyone remember a children's telly programme from a few years back called Bric-a-Brac? In it, local boy and pre-school media god Brian Cant (we are not worthy) played the owner of a junk shop, and each week, to help our literary skills, he'd collect miscellaneous objects starting with the same letter. That memory surfaced because this morning, I put up the World Cup wallchart at work by the watercooler. To quote Ten Pole Tudor's 1981 top 20 hit, wunderbar!

We're gonna win that World Cup in Spain
We're gonna hoist that World Cup again!
— Spirit Of 66, Serious Drinking (who never troubled the charts)

I feel quite an affinity for the quadrennial competition that starts at the end of this week: born in '66 I was oblivious to England's brief period of global superiority on the football field, and my soccer consciousness only kicked in when the decline began, as we failed to beat Poland to qualify for the 1974 event. I was perfectly content collecting the stickers (incl. Johnny Rep and the Zaire team), learning the names of German towns and playing outside wearing my Tip And Tap top.

Zipping mentally through subsequent tournaments:

• 1978, carefree:
  • biked down to Solar Superstore, now Morrison's, to bulk buy a long forgotten wheat-based snack that included greasily wrapped players' cards
• 1982, exams:
  • tried not to let O-levels interfere with running home to watch a fab Brazilian team with Socrates and Zico crash out to Italy
• 1986, college:
  • watched the Hand of God incident in the TV room of the Duryard halls of residence at Exeter (before Uri Geller came to town)
• 1990, independence:
  • collected Italia pizza before settling down in my front-row seat in the flat for Waddle and Pearce's penalties
• 1994, BT:
  • group of us at work entered Fantasy Football comp in the Daily Telegraph; my boss, thanks to Chris Sutton, amazingly won himself a trip to the semis and final in the USA, but took his wife rather than any of us
• 1998, kids:
  • happened to be on hols up north, in kitchen of cottage, when the infamous Beckham sending-off incident took place

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else

1. tap on the knee and Ipswich lad Dyer will be out
2. tip for an upset: Japan
3. top footy record: Colourbox's Official World Cup Theme

Be seeing you!

Ed