I'm not a huge rugby fan (either code) but have just watched England progress to the final of the union World Cup, beating France on their home turf. I find games like this mildly exciting and always think that understanding the rules would probably help my enjoyment immensely. However, it still looks like legalised mugging to me. I'll probably watch the final next weekend. That'll be three games I'll have watched in four years.
England also won at football, beating Estonia in a European qualifier. I didn't see this one as, being a season ticket holder, I was at Elland Road watching Leeds United. Ignoring the fifteen point deficit we were handed at the start of the season, this was effectively top of the table versus third place (Leyton Orient). It probably lived up to that billing, in a strange way. An early goalkeeping error gave Orient the lead from a free-kick that they should never have had and, not long after, our keeper again watched the ball sail over his head, this time to hit the bar. Orient's scorer was sent off in the first half for using an elbow, so Leeds spent most of the game trying to break down a team of ten men. Unfortunately, we only managed one goal (Seb Carole with a curling shot from a corner) before Orient contrived to miss an open goal and have an apparently good goal disallowed (couldn't see it from where we sit but everybody who could says it was a goal, except the linesman...) A missed penalty from Tresor Kandol added to an exciting, but frustrating match and once again Leeds ended a match with more points than they should have won, even if this time it was only a single point. We stay in 12th place, just six points behind top spot, but teams behind us now have a game in hand...
Last night, I met with a couple of mates to see The Travellin' Band at The Roman Bath. A four-piece with a combined age greater than most football teams. They dressed the stage with Confederate flags and performed covers of Bob Seger, the Van Zandt brothers and others. Good guitar playing and drumming but the vocals were, for the most part, not that good.
I'm reading two books at the moment - I'm two-thirds of the way through Terry Brooks' "Voyage of the Jerle Shannara" trilogy. The first book was much the same as the previous trilogies but the second left me a little disappointed. Every since the first Shannara book, way back when, there have been hints that the world they are set in used to know technology. I know that the latest trilogy is explaining what happened to that but "Antrax", the book I've just finished had the first instance of the druid Walker and his companions meeting (and fighting) that technology in the form of an ancient A.I. To me, it just didn't work - swords and magic versus lasers and robots and none of the characters really seemed too phased by what to them would be the complete unknown.
Because I have the trilogy in hardback and wanted something to read while cycling at the gym today, I started Stephen Donaldson's "The Real Story", first in his "Gap" series. At about 200 pages, it's probably one of the shortest modern SF books, but the other four books in the series more than make up for it. I haven't got far into it, but it seems an easy enough read.
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