World Cup: A Difficult Journey

I want to tell you about a very long and arduous car journey I took recently.  Things started off well and I was making good time, but after I had been driving for a while, I realised that I had taken a wrong turn.

This wasn’t because I didn’t know where I was going or how to read a map or anything, I just went on auto pilot for a while and stopped focusing on the route I was supposed to be taking.  Before I knew it I didn’t recognise where I was or how to get to where I was going.

I had a number of passengers travelling with me – in fact, it was they who had asked me to drive them, and suggested that I should choose someone to help with navigating and so on, and who would take the front seat.

I had actually prepared quite well for the journey – I had checked out the route on the map, checked out the alternatives in case I had to make a detour, made sure the car was in good working order and that I had the supplies I’d need if anything did go wrong.

Still I took a wrong turning.  So what to do now?

At first I didn’t think it was that serious, and was fairly sure we would be back on track in no time.  After all, up until now the journey had been a breeze.

My back-seat passengers all had different opinions on how I had gone wrong and what I should do about it, but they couldn’t really help because they didn’t know the route properly.  We all agreed that as we had come so far it would be foolish to give up now, but they quickly became unhelpful because they wouldn’t stop arguing and shouting about who’s fault it was.

At this point I wanted to focus on how we could fix the problem of reaching our destination, and decided not to worry about who was to blame until it was time for the next journey we were making in a couple of months time.  But my companions kept trying to divert my attention back to the problem of culpability, and then tried to convince me that I should just do as they suggested.

I knew that this was a bad idea because whilst they knew roughly where we were going, they hadn’t studied the map in any great detail and as a result didn’t really know how to get there.  To make things worse, they soon started arguing amongst themselves.

I needed to figure this out fairly quickly because I wanted to get there on time and if I was late it would be a wasted journey, but the escalating arguments in the back seats meant that I couldn’t focus.  I looked to my front-seat passenger for help and support in dealing with the arguments, but he started to tell me how he could do a better job and that I should let him take over.  This was despite the fact that he had no experience at driving or even a license.

Now that I knew I would have to do this on my own I began to panic a bit.  So I forgot the map and started taking random turns – a right here, a left there – in the hope that I would stumble across the road I should have been on in the first place.

Naturally I just became all the more disoriented and by this point the map had flown out of an open window in the confusion.  Now I became angry.  I started to shout back at my companions and tell them that if they didn’t shut up I would make them walk all the way home.  This did the trick with the front-seat passenger, but the sniping continued unabated in the back.

Eventually, after many hours of aimlessly driving about, time ran out and we had to turn for home.  After it was over I was told by my so-called friends that they no longer wanted me to drive for them on our regular trips, and that they would find someone more qualified to do it.

This was particularly hurtful as I was sure that I could have got them there if they had not reacted in the way that they did.  In fact, I later found out that I was not the first to suffer this fate, as they had had many drivers in the past who had been treated in the same manner and cast aside.

This might all seem a bit irrelevant and, if you are a regular poster on BBC 606, you might want to comment below and call me names and stuff but please bear with me.

Because actually it wasn’t me and my friends making that journey, it was England’s football team, it’s fans and it’s media.  And yes, they have taken a wrong turn somewhere and are as we speak turning against each other with frightening speed.