The Digestive Issue 2

Ok, time for another biscuit.

Because Sunday is the day of THE DIGESTIVE – the weekly round up of all that was new this week on Bitsnbobs.

And – incidentally -the venue of choice for debate and comment if last weeks Digestive comments are the taste of things to come.

So settle down with your favourite cuppa and dip in.

Last week was a little bit football influenced as finally the Fifa World cup 2010, a registered trade mark I suspect, kicked in and got a little bit exciting; some of the teams realised that they had to win games and started to attack, others like the French just started attacking – firstly the trainer, then the journalists, then each other, then everyone else.

Then the French President ordered everyone home and told them to stand in the corner outside his office.

I got caned once, by the headmaster at my secondary school; his name was Carrington and his initials were a rather unfortunate R.C.

You have to say them quickly.

Which I had.

Which is why I probably got caned.

No, I’m kidding - it was because a group of us had been talking in the Library.

We called him R.C. a lot after that though.

Talking about registered trademarks, as we clearly were, I wonder if you caught the story of the girls who got arrested at the world cup for wearing orange mini skirts?

It introduced me to a new and intriguing concept – ambush marketing – that the organisers clearly encouraged through their reaction, as I don’t think many of us had realised what was going on.

Something else that was going on, and you might have missed this too, was the longest tennis match ever, anywhere - and the picture at the top of this week’s Digestive shows you the score and the two players.

Guess which one was the winner?

The summer finally decided to turn up this week and my feet are desperately trying to find their sandals whilst my children finally decided to do some revision for the end of year exams and are desperately trying to find excuses to stop.

Chocolate got a couple of mentions, in between mouthfuls, but mainly in connection with Father’s Day, which was of course LAST Sunday.

Today in South Africa the Fifa World Cup pits the English against the Germans, something the English football team usually tries desperately to avoid but surprisingly this time relishes, as there is a perception is that the German team are not their best.

We will see, well I won’t - because the Hip Hop Dance School that my daughter attends has programmed its end of year show for this afternoon!

So I will follow the game through the Guardian Newspaper’s excellent, and often very humorous, min-by-min account – where a reporter, watching a television in a London office, writes a description of what he sees.

It is an area of unheralded journalistic creativity and I offer you this recent extract as a final crumb.

“The teams emerge from the tunnel, led by the referee who picks the ball of its plinth. I remain cautiously optimistic that one of them will forget to do that some night and then have to scurry back to get it hoping nobody will notice. Alternatively, it would be amusing if whoever it is whose job it is to place it on the plinth decided, for a laugh, to put a rugby ball or a nice cake there instead. What are they going to do on the night of the final, when they'll need two plinths: one for the World Cup trophy and one for the official match-ball? These are the things I lie awake at night thinking and worrying about.”