On the Road with Fabio’s Army

South Africa

For those of you who have been reading these tales since I first started writing them, it was no less than two World Cups ago - eight years for those of you who insist on still using non-football terms - that in the name of watching England, I spent the night on a Japanese park bench, & then afterward wondered if people would be curious to hear about it.  So a fair time has passed, and thank you for following me this far; but the fact that it was a round number of tournaments could only mean one thing – it was World Cup time again.  South Africa awaited.

First things first when planning your World Cup, you need tickets to the games.  Back in Japan I had managed to get hold of tickets through the England Fan Club, despite not actually having been to any England games during the build up; however too many people seemed to have clocked on to this strategy for SA, so it didn’t work any more.  For some reason now they only give tickets to fans that actually turn up and watch; oh well.  But it was going to take more than that to stop me, so way back in January this year (yes, I really did plan that far back) I went on to the FIFA website to hunt around for tickets, and see what I could find.

FIFA had a complex, but fair system; there were various phases of ticket sales depending on where you lived, who you supported, and if you didn’t care who you ended up watching; but then for one wide-open glorious month, anyone in the world could apply for any game they wanted. Quite simply if more people applied for a particular game than there were tickets, then they held a lottery for that game; if not, then everyone was successful.  Thinking to myself that England would likely be very popular, I went for the scattergun approach, applying for four games – two group games, and then the last 16 and quarter final games that England would (sorry, should) get to if they won the group.  Because I knew that we were bound to beat Algeria, Slovenia & the US.  I wasn’t expecting to get all of the tickets, but even if I only got one or two, it was all good & still gave me enough excuse to go on the trip.

Emails; they tend to rule our lives.  Now by the roughest of back of an envelope calculations, I reckon that I’ve received over 250,000 emails in my life since first asking “so this email thing, what does it do?”, but I can’t think of many that have got me more excited than the one I received from FIFA a few weeks after my ticket application:

“Dear Mr Mote, we are pleased to tell you your applications for tickets have been successful for the following four games…”

Does that mean that I’ve got into the free draw?  When is the draw?? No hang on a minute, I don’t think so…it seemed to mean tickets for all four games had come through….blimey I’d got them all.  I looked at the dates and the games spanned just under three weeks, and in all different parts of the country; South Africa here we come.  The only thing I try not to look at was the figure for the cost of all the tickets that had already been debited to my credit card.

Cape Town

So fast forward many months and some intense travel planning – I seem to have heard the phrase ‘Sorry there are no hotel rooms available on your requested date’ more times than I’ve received emails – but finally it was all in place.  Heidi was with me, very keen to experience the tour of South African vineyards and safari that I’d sold to her, with just the occasional football match squeezed in if time allows. And strictly no park benches.

And we got off to the best possible start, when we boarded the plane in Shanghai and heard the ‘magic beep’ as we go to board – yes we’d been bumped up to business class, something I celebrated by getting stuck into the red wine, whilst Heidi slept the entire journey.  Apparently the reason for this was that ‘I can only sleep on planes if I’m in business class’.  Ok then; maybe you better bring a book next time…

8 hours later we disembarked the plane, unfortunately having only got so far as Dubai – China to South Africa, it appeared, was a very long way.  As ever Dubai airport was heaving at 4am, and after twiddling our thumbs for a while, we embarked on the second leg.  No beep, alas, so I consoled myself on the next 9 hours to Cape Town by having some more red wine; Heidi was wide awake of course.

After that lengthy trip, arriving in Cape Town left us less on African time and more on pi r squared time, but either way I knew exactly the first thing I was going to do in the airport - go to the FIFA desk and print off my tickets.  I did this, I held them in my hand & yes they were indeed real.  Here we go.

We shared a minibus taxi into town with some other fans, some of whom had been travelling around the country already, but most of whom were also new to town.  Although we had all had different amounts of experience of SA to date, it seemed that we pretty much all wanted to ask the driver the same three questions:

-                      is it safe here?

-                      why was someone blowing a foghorn in the airport?

-                      No, really, is it safe?

The driver assured us that the answer to no.1 was yes, no.2 was our first taste of the vuvuzela, and no.3 was yes, really, don’t worry.

Cape Town, as most of you will know, is famous for Table Mountain, which rises up imposingly behind the city. The weather on the Table top can be erratic – the cloud that regularly covers it is known as the ‘Table Cloth’ – but on our second day, the sky was crystal clear azure blue, and so we thought it good day to go up on to the Table. 

Unfortunately pretty much every football fan in Cape Town also had the same idea, making it Table Mountain’s busiest day ever.  Whilst there Heidi & I met up with my old Dubai colleague Bryan, who was now based in New York; I was only mildly surprised to find out that NY was actually closer to SA than China.  The only way up to the top of the mountain is via cable car, so there was a sizeable queue; eventually we made it, although Bryan confessed half way up that he wasn’t particularly fond of heights & wasn’t really looking where we were going.  Once up on the top the views over the harbour were stunning, & it started to feel like we were finally on holiday.

Ever keen to do our cultural tour – no I hadn’t forgotten – the next day Heidi & I went on a tour round the Cape Town township, which is apparently home to over 1m people.  I don’t know about the exact figures, but it was undoubtedly a big place.

Whilst the tour guide was suspiciously rose tinted about the whole thing – apparently it’s properly known as a “separate development”, and people can afford to live elsewhere but choose to stay there because of the sense of community – it was still interesting, felt safe, and the people there, in particular the kids, did seem quite happy and friendly.  We stopped in one local place (for place, read shack) where they were serving the local home brew, made on site, for 80p a bucket – imagine the binge drinking if they sold that in the UK.  Heidi also met a witch doctor brewing his own potions; I drank the home brew, she drank the doctor’s potions, although to be honest we may have just got them round the wrong way, it was difficult to tell - either by taste, or by which did the body more harm.

That evening was England v Algeria, which meant every England fan was down in the waterfront area from it seemed like breakfast.  The restauranteurs & publicans were almost crying with happiness, until such time that we all trooped off to watch the game…and then we were just crying.  You all know what happened; Heidi had only been to one football match in her life before (and even that was a Spurs game), but she still had the perception to ask “why are they all running so slow?”  She also asked me which one was Wayne Rooney, but I had to say I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t seen him on the pitch during the game.

90 minutes of torture later we all escaped and headed back to the pub; Don Fabio was later said that he didn’t hear the boos because he could only hear vuvuzelas; well I was blowing my vuvuzela, but the guys next to me…less so.

Ah yes the vuvuzela…after some hunting, that morning I had finally found my chosen model, a metre long plastic tube with an England flag slapped on the slide.  It now takes pride of place on my desk at work.  I tell you what – they’re not easy to blow, it took some dedicated practice on my part to get the hang of it, but I put the effort in & by the end of the trip I was blowing with the best of them. Ahem.  People often ask if they were annoying – actually at the games, when everyone is blowing them, they’re not too bad; they’re far worse on TV, or in person when you hear them solo in the supermarket.  Or in the airport. Or in the street at 3am. As we did.  Regularly.

Next morning was culture time again, as we went on a trip to Cape Point, the ‘most South Westerly point of Africa’.  Basically if you turn left you end up in Argentina.  The tour was all very pleasant, and at Cape Point I found myself waiting for Heidi & the guide whilst standing by the lighthouse marking the end of the point.  People were coming & going past me, without my paying too much attention, when a rather stern Italian looking gentleman in a leather jacket went past me. 

‘Hmmm that’s a bit strange’, I thought, ‘that looks like Fabio Capello’

He was followed by a rather burly looking guy with an official FIFA pass hung ostentatiously round his neck; as the Italian walked up to the lighthouse, this guy stood with his arms folded, in the manner of steroided bouncers the world over.

‘Excuse me, is that Fabio Capello?’

No answer. I took this as a yes.

‘can I have a photo with him?’

‘Just no’

The bouncer seemed a man of few words so I didn’t see the point of pushing this further, so I stood & waited, knowing Fabio had to come back past me to get out.

As he came back into sight again, I tried to take a photo of the lighthouse that might accidentally be too far to the left & catch Fabio instead, but he was wise to this and deliberately hid behind his guide (he didn’t quite make it, as you can see from the attached). So as he came past me, I put down my camera to show that I wasn’t paparazzi, just an over-eager England fan who still believed that our boys would come good next time.

“Good luck on Wednesday!!” I chirped as he went past

Without even turning his head he said “thank you very much” and sped on.  Not surprisingly after the night before, he didn’t look very happy.

The other notable sighting at the Point was the local baboon population, who were notorious for attacking tourists and stealing anything they were carrying.  Sure enough one jumped out on us, one of the other ladies on the tour threw her bag down to distract the baboon while she ran off; I was asked why I hadn’t thrown down what I was carrying.  Because it was my pizza – I hadn’t had any lunch!!  They may be vicious creatures, but I’m not friendly either if I’m hungry.

Our last day in Cape Town we had booked to go to Robben Island, the prison that Nelson Mandela had spent many years incarcerated in.  The island is boat ride from Cape Town harbour, after which time you get bussed round the island to look at the key parts; or at least we did, the Mexican fan sitting behind us not only fell asleep, but degenerated into cement mixer industrial-strength snoring, such that we could barely hear the commentary.

We stopped by to look at Nelson Mandela’s cell; not sure what views people have of my holiday organizing, because when we returned to Shanghai, one of Heidi’s friends looked at our holiday pictures, in particular the one of this barren, cold cell, and asked, “is that where you stayed?” Yes thanks for that; maybe he had heard the Japanese bench story as well.

The second half of the Robben Island tour was walking around the prison itself, interestingly guided by an ex-prisoner.  Our guide was very honest about what went on with life there, & the conditions the inmates faced; less so about what he himself had actually done to get put in there.  He mentioned ‘crimes against the state’ and I didn’t like to push it any further.  I made sure to give him a tip on the way out.

Garden Route

Part two of the trip was in the car – road trip time.  Heidi doesn’t drive, so that meant I was behind the wheel the whole way; I was fine with that, as it meant I was in control of the car stereo as well;  I took great pains to teach Heidi the words to “Three Lions”, although the John Barnes bit from World In Motion was maybe one step too far.

We took a couple of days to drive along the south coast, named the Garden Route, starting from Cape Town, through Knysna, until ending up at Port Elizabeth.  On our way, the first stop was to do something that I had wanted to do for ages; being the warm, cuddly, affectionate type that I am, I have always wanted to get closer to animals, and here was my chance…to go cage diving with great white sharks.  They’re really just much misunderstood creatures at heart.

So I got kitted up in the thickest wet suit known to man – next land mass south is Antarctica after all – and we took the boat out to a small island inhabited by seals.  Apparently the sharks liked to eat the seals, so that’s why they hang out in that area.  Hmmm maybe the thick black wet suit wasn’t such a good idea.

I have to say I hadn’t felt any apprehension until I saw the actual size of the cage, which although maybe ten feet long, is only a couple of feet wide.  The idea was that we all get in the cage with our heads above the water; the crew throws some bloody water (“chum”) into the sea, and then they dangle some dead fish on a hook by the cage.  Old Bitey then swims by, and we duck down into the cage to see nature in all its glory.

The chum started flowing & sure enough it wasn’t long before the smell had attracted three or four sharks, and we’re being circled by fins.  Yes they really do swim like that. When my turn in the cage comes, I ducked down and the sharks glided serenely past.

If you’ve never seen a shark up close, I do genuinely believe they are much misinterpreted, & that Jaws has a lot to answer for in terms of human fear of what the sharks will do.  There was actually an accompanying advert saying that more people every year die in the world due to their toasters, than get eaten by sharks.

In the cage, we watched as the sharks went by.  They tended to mind their own business, swimming around with the minimum of effort, but with their eyes focused with laser precision.  When we reached the safari, the lion is the king of the jungle; here was the king of the sea.

I was starting to relax as the sharks came and went, taking a few photos as they passed the cage.  In fact I was feeing pretty calm, forgetting that when they choose to, they can move lightning fast.  As one swept past the cage, it suddenly turned and thrashed to grab the fish on the hook, smashing its head onto the cage only a few inches away from me as it did so.  Funnily enough I didn’t get any pictures that time, seeing as I had jumped about three foot out of the water & thought about asking for a change of wetsuit.  The attached video should give you a bit of an idea.

Back on dry land, and after a very pleasant couple of days on the road, we reached Port Elizabeth for the England v Slovenia game, vuvuzelas at the ready.  Thankfully this time England were a bit less rubbish, going ahead early on in the first half, and barring one late scramble, held on fairly comfortable for the win that saw us into the second phase of the tournament.

However something was nagging me all through the second half of the game, that England needed a second goal to be sure of finishing top of the group and getting an easier draw in the second round.  Unfortunately no-one told the players this as they seemed pretty comfortable with the one goal win, and within a few minutes after the end of the game I heard the news that I was dreading – the US had beaten Algeria, meaning England finished second, and although still qualifying, were now playing Germany.  It wasn’t so much the thought of playing the Germans in the next round that worried me, more that we now bought tickets for the wrong game & were about to head to completely the wrong end of the country.

It turned out that we weren’t the only ones.  Back in the hotel were scenes of complete chaos as many other England fans were desperately trying to sell tickets for USA v Ghana – some hope – or buy tickets for the England v Germany game – even less hope.  The game was in Bloemfontein, which is a moderately sized town, and I got the impression that they were out of hotel rooms within 15 mins of the final whistle going.  Also going on was the TV coverage that night, Sky news seemed to be showing nothing except the football and the celebrations of the England fans, which was slightly surreal to watch whilst being in the middle of it.  I didn’t see myself on TV alas.

With the whole second half of our trip already planned, I couldn’t face making the switch ourselves, so we stuck to the original schedule. U S A!  U S A!  After some waiting, we managed to get into a decent restaurant that night, where the somewhat harassed waiter told us that they had had the whole Portugal squad in there a few nights before, and that they’d drunk the restaurant out of wine.  Now the England fans weren’t far behind.

Rustenburg

After a stop in Port Elizabeth just long enough for me to lose some money in their casino, we took an internal flight up to the north.  On the flight I was surprised that even the SA Airlines staff were wearing yellow Bafana Bafana SA team shirts; all the time we were there, there was never any doubt of the enthusiasm of the local South Africans for the whole tournament, even after their team were knocked out.  But can you imagine BA crew wearing England shirts? I can’t see it somehow

The Garden Route had been delightful, but somehow driving through green fields and along a coastal road, somehow didn’t really feel like Africa.  Yet now landing in Johannesburg, and driving further out to Rustenburg, we were surrounded by red dirt plains; this was always more what I had had in mind.  Although after the first hour, it actually wasn’t that interesting. 

It turned out that our hotel in Rustenburg was quite a large, well regarded place, to the point that it was actually being used as home base by the South Korean team during the tournament.  Heidi was keen to get Ji Sung Park’s autograph for her Man U supporting friend, but alas the team were out that day playing their last 16 game. Which saved me the embarrassment of not really being sure what he looked like.

Given that the Koreans were based there, security was quite tight, with a lot of police around. However the rest of the hotel was pretty empty, and with the team temporarily away, the police didn’t have much to do.  So when Heidi & I played mini golf, we ended up with a group of uniformed spectators; if the only thing they have to do all day is watch me play golf, then they must be having a hard time.

The point of going to Rustenburg (quick tip – not a big town) was to watch the last 16 game that England should have qualified for, but instead here we were going to watch USA v Ghana.  I also realized that our quarter final tickets were now not England either, so I was on a mission to sell them to whichever team won the game that night – I even made a little sign.  The stadium was in the middle of nowhere, so there was a compulsory park & ride…it took some time, given there seemed to be a lot of parking going on & not much riding.

Even though we went as neutrals, the game was quite entertaining, and we had our money’s worth as it went to extra time, Ghana finally winning 2-1. There were a lot of USA fans there, for some reason most of them (only the blokes alas) decided to go around with no shirt on, despite the fact the temperature was pretty chilly.  The Ghanaian fans were mostly South Africans who had adopted Ghana as the only remaining African team; that was apart from one Ghanaian who came in full tribal dress, wearing a pot with boiling smoke on his head as he walked in & out.  I didn’t fancy being the guy having to sit behind that all day; anyway let me get this right, you can’t take a can of coke in to the stadium with you for security reasons, but you can take a boiling cauldron? How does that work?? 

Of course the other big fan group at the game was the England fans – glad to know I wasn’t the only one who had played the ticket lottery.  I bet there were more English there than Ghanaians.

After the game walking back to the coach I tried to kickstart my career as a ticket tout, but no-one seemed too keen.  Something about the tickets being USD300 each put people off, I can’t imagine why.  So the next day we went on a mission to the FIFA ticket centre to see if we could return them – naturally FIFA said no.  Heidi then tried to sell the tickets to the people waiting in the ticket queue, an idea which although seemingly good in theory, I had to point out a couple of flaws with:

1.                   Selling tickets on is illegal, so doing it in public is generally not a good idea

2.                   FIFA could ban you from going to future games or buying future tickets if you get caught, so the FIFA centre is not an ideal place to try to sell your tickets

The security guard had much the same view and politely suggested that we leave the building.

We had a long drive the next day to head cross-country towards the safari park, but during the afternoon had the minor issue of the England v Germany game to watch.  We weren’t going to get to the hotel in time, so we decided to stop in Pretoria, which was along the way.  After driving around the suburbs for a while, with not a bar nor TV in sight, we stopped at a petrol station & a local Pretorian kindly diverted us to the town centre, where we found a huge town square, with bars circling a big screen set up to watch the games.  Vuvuzela in hand, off we went.

There was a fair mix of Germans & English watching the game, and not surprisingly the Germans were getting louder whilst the English hid behind their hands as the game progressed; the spirit of ’66 was evoked for all the wrong reasons when Lampard’s shot wasn’t given as a goal, and in the second half Don Fabio managed to look even more miserable than he had the week before at the lighthouse.  At the end of the game the Germans celebrated, the English complained, and the local family sitting on the table in front of us paid no attention whatsoever as they tucked into a pizza that looked to be about three feet in diameter.

Back on the road & we headed to our hotel for the night, although my conversation was somewhat limited.  Talking to many locals during the trip, the feeling was that the World Cup had not brought in as many tourists as the country had expected; when the big fan bases came to town – England, Holland, South Africa – then everywhere was full to bursting, but a couple of days after & people had moved on.  But even given this, we were surprised when we turned up at our (admittedly remote) hotel, to find that we were the only people staying there.

“Oh we didn’t think you were coming,” said the receptionist, “We’ve sent the chef home”

One phone call later & the chef had been quickly summoned back for dinner, which we then moved out of the empty dining room & ate in the bar so that we could watch the Argentina game – being alone I was able to abuse the Argentineans vociferously without fear of retribution…after all Tevez was so offside….And its always good when you are the only people ordering food:

“What is the soup of the day?”

“Up to you, what do you want?”

Safari

Just to prove that I do, occasionally, live up to my promises, the last portion of the trip was a (almost) football-free trip to the Kruger National Park. The Kruger is a huge safari park, a couple of hundred miles long, where all sorts of weird and wonderful animals can roam freely, while gawking tourists drive around and try not to run them over.

We drove into park, as usual I was armed with a case worth of camera equipment, ready to catch the perfect shot.  I thought it appropriate to have some safari music playing on the car stereo as we drove in – none other “Circle of Life” from the Lion King.  Would we get to see Simba I wondered? 

As we moved on to “Can you feel the love tonight?” we were soon into the animals, spotting some zebras standing around, then some elephants feeding, and a giraffe ambled across the road in front of us.  Something that definitely didn’t amble across the road was the buffalo, when we saw a whole herd come pretty close to stampeding across the track.  There was a hint though that the buffalo are a bit more tame than they look – the cars all lined up to let the buffalo cross, but after a few went by, the rest stopped in the woods and allowed the cars to start moving again.  A few cars came & went, the next set of tourists stopped to look, and then the buffalo were back on the move across the road again.  Do they have traffic lights in the jungle??

We had a couple of false alarms with the lions, thinking we’d seen one sleeping only to find out that the sandy coloured shape we could see was in fact … a rock.  They are surprisingly easy to confuse. 

In the evening we were booked in a ‘lodge’ in the middle of the park, the only trouble with this was that they shut the gate at 5pm. As we had spent the day winding our way towards the camp, I had realized that we were running out of time to get there before closing, and so started to put my foot down. A lot.  So there was a certain sense of inevitability when I came over the brow of a hill, to be waived over by a man who seemed to have a surprisingly formal uniform for a member of the safari park staff.

Of course he wasn’t on the safari park staff, he was actually a policeman, who took absolutely no notice of my suggesting that we had to get to the lodge before it closed, and so gave me a speeding ticket.  100 quid!  In a safari park!! Gross miscarriage of justice I tell you.

Despite our unscheduled stop, we just about made it to the lodge; it turned out there was no restaurant there, just a shop selling meat and a barbeque pit outside our cabin.  Heidi & I loaded up with supplies, and by 5.30pm the gate was closed, the dark had drawn in, and we were left with nothing but a couple of steaks, a bottle of Stellenbosch red wine, a clear starry sky, and a portable TV with 20 people crowding round it showing the Dutch game to last us until morning.  We made do.

Day two of the tour, and fortified by a self-barbequed bacon sandwich for breakfast, we went off on lion hunt.  By mid-morning we saw a number of cars waiting by the side of the road, usually a sign of animals in the bush.  We stopped to ask one of the locals what he was looking at.

“third tree in on the right, the brown mound”

“that’s a rock”

“that’s not a rock…it’s a lion”

And sure enough the rock then swished a tail lazily through the air…it was indeed a lion, or in fact a pair, taking their afternoon snooze.  Some zebras ambled nearby & we waited to see if the lions were going to charge them or do something extremely natural and yet no doubt fatal for the zebras, but the lions seemed uninterested.  One of them did eventually raise their head…have a look around…and then go back to sleep, but at least in that moment I grabbed a picture that would show that we did, actually, see a lion.

That night we went on a night safari, which involved driving around trying to spot animals in the dark.  You do this by shining a torch into the trees & looking for a reflection from a pair of eyes…actually it wasn’t that exciting, given that we only saw the same animals we had seen during the day time, and by the end of the tour it was bloody freezing. 

But it did have one memorable moment – out in the savannah late at night, the driver turned off the engine, the torches went off, and we were left in the middle of nature, deathly silent and with a kaleidoscope of stars overhead.  Being the city boy that I am it was particularly noticeable, and we waited there for a few minutes drinking it in…before remembering that we were cold and it was probably time to get back.  And there was no mobile signal.

By our final morning of the safari we had added impalas (like a gazelle, thousands of them), warthogs (ugly), hyenas (you wouldn’t argue), and hippos (fat, ugly, yet somehow endearing) to our spotters list, but unfortunately missed out on the rhinos.  We saw a lot more zebras, and I made the fatal mistake of saying “zebras, they look nice but they don’t do much”, when the very next cohort of zebras (ok yes I looked it up) we saw had two at the front having sex right by the road.  It’s on the photo website if you really want to see.

We also joined a big queue to see a leopard, but by the time we got near the front it had ambled back off out of sight.  Still we had seen most of what there was to see, I was pretty pleased with some of the pictures, not least the zebra porn, and we left the park with another touching African safari anthem playing – “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by Tight Fit.

(To go off on a completely spurious tangent, there is a road near my Parents’ in north London, called “Wilmer Way”.  Whenever I drove down it I always thought of that song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, – think about it, “a Wilmer Way, a Wilmer Way, a Wilmer Way….” - and so here, by some convoluted logic, I found myself driving out of a vast African safari park, and the main image in my head is of an obscure suburban North London street.  Funny how these things work)

Johannesburg & Dubai

The last two days in South Africa were spent in Johannesburg.  Prior to the trip, Jo’burg had had the most notorious reputation for crime, but we cunningly avoided any trouble by spending all our time there eating & drinking with people we knew there, and not actually doing any touring around the city at all.  By this point I had also managed to sell my Uruguay v Ghana quarter final tickets, which seemed like a good move until it turned out to be one of the most eventful games of the tournament.

That we had successfully avoided trouble was of course until the last morning, when we had to drive to the airport.  I take full responsibility for…leaving Heidi in charge of the map reading, as she suggested we take a short cut on the way to the airport, which – yes! – ran straight through the middle of the worst area in the town.  Thankfully I think the locals took pity on my England flag still showing in the back seat, and let us through unscathed.

The best part of the first return flight was that Emirates gave live football updates, cheering me up no end as every update saw Argentina letting another goal in as they lost to the Germans.  Once on the ground, part of the plan for flying through Dubai was to stop over on the way back, so we stepped out into the 35 degree heat (it was 2am, after all), and headed for our hotel.

On our spare day, I wondered what to show Heidi in Dubai, and eventually settled for the predictable, if disastrous choice, of taking her to the Mall of the Emirates, which is one of the world’s largest shopping centres.  Inevitably she saw, ahem, one or two things that she needed, and we walked out some time later with…another case.  This allowed us to play a game on the return flight: how much luggage can two people carry, before they get charged excess baggage?  The answer would seem to be, somewhere close to half a metric ton.

Anyway after three weeks away, countless South African red wines (recommended), the odd impala sandwich (less so), vuvuzelas blown (with gusto) and arms three inches longer from carrying the bottomless cases, we made it back to China.  So did England’s performance put me off doing it all again?  Not in the slightest.  Truth be told, I have a Brazilian ex-colleague, lives in Sao Paulo…he’s already offered me his spare room for 2014.  Come on England…….