June 9, 15.59pm
The little ticker on the BBC Sport website tells me there is just one hour and one minute until the 2006 World Cup starts in Germany. Alexis, who works in our office, is very excited. (Although not excited enough to bring in the WC wallchart he promised last week.)
I am perhaps a little bit excited - football is not my favourite sport by any means - but I am extremely relieved. The hype surrounding this World Cup has been all powerful stretching into every last dark nook and cranny of the media. We have had the endless saga of Wayne Rooney's broken toes - a story that has regularly appeared at the top of serious news bulletins and on just about every front page, which is staggering given the amount of real news there is.
There's the interminable phone ins and discussion shows about how England might do. And then there is the marketing. It appears that advertisers and marketeers believe it is impossible to sell anything over the next four weeks without attaching some sort of football motif to it. Beer and crisps, I understand. I consume a lot of them while watching sport. But watches, fridges, cars, telephone services, financial services? Give me a break.
The great thing about the WC starting is that - although the coverage will become even more all-embracing than it has been - there will actually be some football. And the pundits can then talk about actual, rather than imagined and anticipated football.
For the record, I think England will field the best team we have had at a World Cup in my lifetime (b 1971) and have our best chance of success since 1966. But I still don't think we'll win it. Sorry.
Back on topic: A visit to Waterstones at lunchtime almost ended in financial disaster as three of my favourite fictional detectives have reappeared in the shops since my last visit: Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne, John Harvey's Frank Elder and Roy Grace (making his second appearance in Peter James's promising new series). I just managed to escape without drowning.