Writer's Notebook

It's been billed as the event of the century. 5 long years people have been waiting. Yet now that it's here, it's hard to know what the event really is. Everyone's talking about Thursday, but the real action - i.e. sitting back in my armchair, beer in hand, trying to decide why the man in the centre is not performing as well as he usually does - has long since died away by then.

Of course, we do all participate in the event itself; rushing into the station, pencil in hand, surprised at the long list of names someone thrusts into our hand. We can't be bothered to figure out who they all are. A quick X marks the spot and it's all over. Your own personal record - 27.85 seconds from start to finish, unless of course, you can't remember which name on that long list you really wanted to mark. As you leave the station, there's a somewhat anti-climactic feeling. But at least, you've participated and there's always the next time to look forward to... five years on.

That evening, once it's all over, the excitement mounts again, whipped up by media boys showing us how interest is down, but promising to get us all excited in whatever it was that didn't really interest us in the first place. But in spite of the promised excitement, you fall asleep in front of the T.V. and wake up to find those bloody ***s have won after all. So it's off to work to join your colleagues in the greatest slanging match the world has known.

The real event has begun.