Pope Says Hi

Well, I got back home from Nigeria just a handful of days ago. Just in time to meet the Pope.

Yes, the Pope visited Edinburgh today, and though I couldn’t commit to meeting him due to my uncertain work schedule (he’s quite old now so needs lots of prior notice, and I thought I’d still be offshore), he decided to come anyway, and meet the Queen for lunch, some cardinal for a cup of tea, and have a little cruise round Edinburgh in between.

This simple arrangement has put Edinburgh into a bit of a tizzy, and they’ve closed every road and put every policeman onto Princes Street, where they jostle with people selling memorabilia, some collecting for charity, and thousands and thousands of schoolchildren. There was a lone protestor too, handing out leaflets about child abuse, but I give her short shrift as she was missing the spirit of the occasion.

Although I’m not a Catholic, I still share many things in common with the Pope and his many millions of followers, such as neverending guilt, an appreciation of the (now sadly defunct) S Club Juniors, and of course, papal infallibility. Of these, papal infallibility is the most important. A lot of people don’t seem to get this, when they complain about the Pope and some of the beliefs he espouses that they claim are outdated. The guy is infallible. He doesn’t make mistakes. Don’t you get it, guys? You’re the ones that’re wrong. If we can all just stop listening to our inner voices and start listening to the Pope’s voice, then maybe we can start to get things right too.

Today then, after getting out of bed and performing my morning ablutions, or whatever you call them, I thought I’d stroll into town to say hi to the Pope. I live just five minutes from Princes Street so it seemed rude not to. The Pope had originally planned to cruise down the Royal Mile, which would have been far more convenient for me, but it was deemed a security risk and Princes Street chosen instead. By security risk, I think they were referring to the cobbled streets, which no doubt would have been a little uncomfortable a man in his 80s, especially after having had lunch. When you’re the Pope, security in its normal sense doesn’t apply, because any bombs or bullets that come your way are deflected by flashes of glorious light. The former Pope, John Paul II, who was a more kindly Pope would just have the glorious light absorb the bomb or bullet, but the current one, Benedict Sixteen, is bit more badass and would actually deflect the bomb or bullet back at the assailant. For this reason, I guess all the police gathered today were here as much for the protection of the people as they were for the Pope.

My first jaunt down town, about 10am, was a pre-Pope stroll, and duly established that there were lots of people. I’d checked with the BBC news and they said the Pope would be arriving incognito at Holyrood Palace to meet the Queen, so I decided not to hang around just to watch a blacked-out vehicle pass, surrounded by noisy schoolchildren and excited Catholics, and so went and bought a coffee and a sandwich then back to my flat, where I played Football Manager. Football Manager, as ever, was quite engrossing, and I realised it was almost noon, and that the Pope would be doing his Princes Street cruise at half-noon, so I quickly got moving, to the National Gallery where I reckoned would be a good spot to watch the Pope.

...and I almost missed him. The Pope was early! He had explicitly told me he’d be going down Princes Street at half 12, which I naturally took to meaning he’d be starting the journey then. But no. It was 12.25pm, and he was already halfway down! Crafty Pope. If I’d been just thirty second later I would have missed him, but fortunately I arrived just in time to see him majestically swoop by in his rather odd Popemobile, which reminds me of something I’d expect to see old people drive in Florida, perhaps when golfing.

In truth, it was exactly as expected, a bit of an anti-climax. An old man drove by in a car – that’s basically the synopsis of the day. Fair enough, it was an unusual car, and the old man is God’s ambassador on Earth, but I don’t believe in God and aren’t particularly interested in cars, so perhaps it wasn’t the event for me. Besides, after learning that in the last eight years of the Queen Mother’s life, over 80% of her public appearances were, in fact, done by an animatronic puppet, I can’t help but feel sceptical when I see a famous old person in public. Was it really him? His smile was appropriately benign, but his gaze was unfocussed and his wave very fixed.

I’ll leave you to decide. For I managed to get one photo, very quickly taken, of him as he drove by. Look!

There he is, just on the right. To the left of the ice-cream stall. See? No? Honestly, just look a bit harder.

Ok, here’s a zoom in and arrow. What do you think? Pope or puppet?

Sleeping In A Bed Of Dead Puppies

Sleeping in a bed of dead puppies. That’s how The Mountie described our situation right now. The precise breakdown of the analogy or metaphor I’m not sure of, but I know it instinctively feels right. These puppies have been dead a few days, there’s a fair bit of mush, and God they stink. Sleeping at night is peculiarly comfortable, but certainly not desirable.

We’re now approaching five weeks in Nigeria and from today are officially further behind than when we first arrived. The rig and the job has been plagued with problems. The fatality last month is naturally the most significant, and was all wrapped up with the catastrophic crane failure. But since then, other problems have followed, all of a technical nature but all with the result that we’re still here, still on the rig, and still waiting. Waiting to work, or just waiting to go home and remember that life takes place in an actual vast world and not just on a floating boat in the anonymous Bight of Benin.

It’s of great frustration. We only have a couple of days of work to do really, but operations just cannot seem to get to that point. Our equipment is working well and we’ve successfully demonstrated our system is ticking away nicely, and rig operations were at the brink – a day away! – of being far enough along so that we could wrap everything up, smile, high five each other with a “job done” holla, and go home. But operations have gone into reverse, equipment is returning from the seabed back to the rig, and we’ve got to start it all over again. It’ll take at least a week to properly being again.

I could bore you with rig operation chat, but it’s all just a bunch of acronyms, pieces of yellow-painted metal, gaskets, valves and all of the aforementioned failing in creative ways. For most of the time, The Mountie and I are just innocent bystanders anyway. We’re set up and ready to go, and have been for some weeks, but even when the starting pistol finally went it turned out to be a false start. And so we mooch around in accommodation, stare blankly at walls, and malign the fact that we are grown men sleeping with dead dogs.

The Mountie has hope, however, even if he doesn’t feel too hopeful. His holidays are approaching and he gets swapped out next week. My own hopes have been gathered together, crushed into a small box the size of a little acorn, and put aside in the back of brain for use at a future date. There are murmurs that I may be swapped in a period of time larger than a week, but I know that if this happens then I’ll be punched hard in the face and sent packing to America, for another job. It’s a more appealing prospect, I’ll admit, than continuing in the Groundhog Day that offshore Nigeria seems to have entered, but it’s not quite the same as arriving back at my sun-kissed cottage in the countryside to be met by my beaming wife and my two lovely children – Rufus aged 4 and Mooshella aged just 2 1/2 , and my haven’t they grown? – rushing up to and embracing me, or whatever it is that normal life is (I forget the precise details now).

But let’s not upset ourselves with vague visions of the future, and concentrate on the plus points of the here and now. Such as my nightly helideck walks, on a helideck that rates very high on my comprehensive helideck index. Or the cakes, which have occasionally been quite nice – the Danishes were spectacular (though they’ve been absent for some
time now...). Or the excitement of getting back laundry and wondering what else has gone missing – I’ve only two pairs of socks now, and The Mountie lost 80% of his wardrobe but went on the warpath and got it all back (except the socks). Or the stairway banisters, which have just the right amount of friction to them. I think that’s all.

Yes, that’s all.

My Two Lives

I have two lives and two careers right now: my life offshore in the
oil business, and my intense career as a football manager of a lower
league English club. It testifies to the state my head is in right now
that I’m not sure which one is real and which one isn’t.

I strongly suspect that the oil career may be a figment of my
imagination. According to that, I’m still in Nigeria but haven’t done
anything at all in weeks, which oddly seems to be the case every time
I go to Nigeria. A couple of weeks ago there was the fatality
offshore, resulting from the sudden and catastrophic failure of the
crane. Myself and The Mountie were downmanned and sent back to the
Novotel in Port Harcourt, where we spent a week drinking gin, playing
a Nigerian card game involving Swiss flags, Star of Davids and latent
psychic abilities, and lamenting our Groundhog Day existence that
seems to have been going on since March. I’ve worked out that so far
this year I’ve been away 150 days, which is 67% of the year, but about
110 of these days have been in Nigeria, overwhelmingly hanging around
in the bland Novotel. It occurs to me, at the back of my mind, that I
once lived in Edinburgh, and had friends and family, but that’s dimmed
to a mere dream within a dream.

Fortunately, unlike the darkness of the Novotel in late May, myself
and the Mountie kept ourselves psychologically healthy with the
aforementioned gin and card games, but the Novotel wasn’t to last
long, as last week we returned offshore. We had great hopes that this
would herald the recommencement of operations, which for us are only a
few days worth of work before we’re finished and can go home. But this
was a somewhat foolish hope, as a week has gone by now with absolutely
nothing whatsoever happening.

A couple of years ago, on this same rig, a different crane failed
suddenly, dropping a gigantic piece of equipment on a guy, killing him
instantly. With that and the more recent crane accident, people have
become understandably jittery, so for the last two weeks very
extensive ongoing checks and tests have been undergone on the
remaining three cranes. These are very, very nearly complete and very
soon – so we believe – a decision will be made as to whether we can
carry on.

In the meantime, myself and The Mountie have only had the most minimal
amount of work to do, and otherwise have had a lot of time to kill.
Table tennis has killed a small amount, as has eating Danish pastries.
But there’s still a lot more time in a day.

The last couple of days have seen helideck pacing kill an hour, after
most of the week was rendered non-viable by weather and “random”
incidents. The most concerning of these was a few days ago, at about
9pm, when I’d ventured up onto the quiet helideck on a peaceful, calm
evening. After doing only a few circuits, I was greatly alarmed when a
fire hose – fixed in position and aimed at the centre of the helideck
in the event of a helicopter fire – suddenly spluttered into life and
became spraying foam and water. A few paces more and it would have
sprayed over me. As this was spluttering, the hose at the far end
exploded into life with much more force, ejaculating a forceful blast
of foam across the entire helideck, and only my far distance from it
prevented me getting soaked or even knocked off my feet. The far one
soon stopped, but the close one continued, sluggishly. I left the
scene and returned half an hour later with the hoses again dormant,
but couldn’t get into a rhythm as I was in too much fear the hoses
could go off again at any moment.

They’ve behaved since then, but the helideck only kills at most two
hours a day. Meals maybe another hour. Washing, coffee, meetings, and
checking very slow internet another hour or so. But there’s still a
lot of time in the day. So what do I do?

I have become a Football Manager. My greatest addiction has returned.

As a young lad, many years of my life were lost to a game called
Championship Manager, in which I could take the helm of a football
club and take it to glory or ignominious failure. It was a game that
could suck a day, then a week, and suddenly a year from a life without
you even noticing. All engrossing, I lived many lives as the manager
of teams such as Manchester Utd (I deliberately got them relegated by
playing Ryan Giggs in goals and fining him every week), Italian
minnows Casale, Wycombe Wanderers, AC Milan, Portugal, Ivory Coast and
tiny Kettering. But recognising that I was growing up without social
skills and with the knowledge only of obscure winning tactics in a
fictional universe, I kicked the habit. It was tough, but I kicked it.
And for years I’ve been clean, with a mere tiny relapse a few years
ago when bored in the North Sea.

It struck again. It only took The Mountie to say, “You want a go of
this?” and offer me Football Manager 09/10 (the modern incarnation of
Championship Manager) and suddenly my life has been sucked from this
world and replanted me in another.

In this new – real, it seems – world I am inhabiting, my name is R.
Russell de Russell (I’ll let you guess what the R stands for), born in
1964 from Belgium, and I am the manager of the Blue Square South side
Thurrock, average attendance 200. The year however is now 2017 (with
Cameroon and then – oh no – England winning the World Cups) and after
five years coming 15th every season, I managed to get promoted to the
Blue Square Premier – which, for unfamiliar readers, is just four
leagues below the top division. I have achieved the heights, such as
being voted Blue Square South Manager of the Year and signing 38 year
old Jimmy Bullard, but also seen lows, such as my debt-ridden club
almost being bought by a consortium who threatened to replace me.

It’s tough, being the manager of a poor, barely supported football
team with a yellow home strip and light blue and purple away strip,
trying to motivate a bunch of players being paid about £100 a week,
but I’m thriving on it. Many lower division Belgian clubs have tried
to prize me away from Thurrock but I have remained resolute and stuck
with my little team, who now command crowds of up to 900.

Of course, being a full-time manager is a demanding and full-time job,
and so I am utterly immersed in it, with no time for outside thoughts,
such a friends, family, sleeping or working on an oil rig. Thus I am
dedicated to my profession and my football management lifestyle,
blocking out the distracting world around me as I stare at a laptop
screen that has become my real world. My career has become my life and
everything I am.

Thus, I now have two lives. My real life and my imaginary life. And as
the scenario of sitting in a room on a giant boat in the Atlantic
Ocean south of Nigeria and getting paid to do nothing there is clearly
a nonsense one, I can only conclude that my football management career
is my real life, and lose myself forever in this most immersing of
addictions.

Fatality Offshore

It's been a pretty dark time over the last few days. Myself and The Mountie went offshore with the full expectation that we'd be done in no time, as for once matters were fair cracking on and moving speedily. But things went wrong.

There was a fatality, plus two serious injuries, on board during a crane accident. A crane was load-testing, which basically involves dunking a large bag in the water, and the calculated extra weight tests the crane. Except this time it failed catastrophically. The crane basically snapped and threw three men in the water. Two were saved and flown to Johannesberg for treatment, the other wasn't found.

For myself and The Mountie, it started literally with a jolt. We were in our cabin, on our laptops, when we felt the drillship jerk slightly. I dismissed it rather casually as a large wave, The Mountie thought something large might have been dropped. A few minutes later the rig alarm went off, saying "Man Overboard" and informing us all to muster. This very simply involves going to the lifeboat and standing next to it. A straightforward operation, but the most chaotic muster I've ever been part of, as it took over 45 minutes to get even a remotely accurate headcount. It was only after this period, and after some increasingly plaintive PAs requesting the guy phoned the bridge, that it transpired that there was a man missing. It was thought only two men had gone overboard. In fact, there had been three. Despite boat and helicopter search-and-rescue operations, he hasn't been found, and I presume was dead within minutes of hitting the water.

As far as my own safety went, I was never in any danger, and the work I do offshore doesn't really expose me to too much. Nonetheless, it's very sobering to be on a rig when there's such an accident. I saw the guy who died at the morning meeting, and by the afternoon he was dead. I'm sure he just expected it to be a routine day, just as I had, and just as we all do most days.

The upshot of it all is that operations have been suspended. The crane is hanging off the side of the rig and needs to be recovered before they can recommence. There has to be a full investigation into the entire incident. Also, separate to all this, another piece of equipment needs repaired that could take some time. This means that after a few days offshore, myself and The Mountie are back in the Novotel, waiting indefinitely for things to restart. We are occupying our time with football, Football Manager, gin and chess, cards, anticipation of the "day's special", and occasional dips in the pool. But no table tennis - the table is still broken, and bats missing.

I've deliberately kept all names of the rig, rig operator and oil company out of this blog, as I don't want people accidentally stumbling upon it. Everything I've said here is unofficial, as there were no rig meetings about it, and therefore only rig rumour to go by, but I think it was mostly reliable. From the internet I've found the following:

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article224696.ece

and also (copy and pasted):

Hay lads

the rig i am on in Nigeria the xxxx xxxx today just had a major disaster i was watching as it happened, they were load testing the port aft crane when the fu..... crane boom snapped!!!!!!! also ripping the crane cab to bits throwing the crane op and the ET around a 100ft to the sea below seen the poor buggers falling they were lucky it wasnt the deck cause it was close............also the lad who was supervising the load testing is missing i.e dead, the ET is in a serious state the crane op is hurt but looks like he will make it. IT TOOK xxxxxxxxxxxx 15 MIN TO LAUNCH THE FRC BOAT THE SMALL CRANE/HOIST WAS SPEWING OIL AND WOULDNT LOWER!!!!!!WTF!!!! AND OVER AN HOUR TO GET A FULL MUSTER....................... be safe lads cause disaster is never far away offshore specialy down here

Back Home At The Novotel

Ah, things are back to normal. Yes, I'm back in the Novotel in Port Harcourt!

As I calculate it, the Novotel has been my home for the year more than my actual home in Edinburgh has. It has assumed a grim familiarity, which ranges from my intimate knowledge of every choice from the menu to being greeted by name by most of the staff. The identikit rooms - I must have stayed in about seven different ones by now and the only thing that varies is the number on the door - I could easily navigate blind.

I am here again with The Mountie, and this time we're digging in for the long haul. The majority of March, April and May were spent in the Novotel so we know what to expect, and are now armed with chess, whisky and cards. Of greater concern is the table tennis table, now missing two bats and a net. We have brought this issue up with reception, but if you know the Novotel and you know Nigeria, you can be assured this will not be remedied very soon at all.

With a little luck though, it will be only a handful of weeks here, and I can return to enjoy a little of the festival in Edinburgh, and resumption of a normal life enjoyed for almost a month since I returned from Norway in late June. Having been practically away for almost four months by that point, I was feeling a little jaded but have been suitably refreshed by a pleasnt few weeks that included:

- The World Cup. Not a classic one, in the end, and a rubbish final, but it still overtook my life for the couple of weeks after I returned from Norway.

- Whisky. I have acquired an expensive taste for whisky and boast a respectable little collection. On the plus side, it means I am drinking less beer; on the minus side, it means my alcoholism is getting pricier.

-Golf. I played a round of golf with my grandfather and my cousin. It was the first time I'd played golf in 18 years, and I was actually not too bad. It was very enjoyable, and I intend to play more, with the ultimate goal of one day getting one hole on par.

-York. I went to York with a brunette. I heartily recommend it.

-Film. I'm supposed to be writing a film with BBC documentary film-maker Mike. It's been slightly hampered by him being in London for weeks and now me being in Nigeria. Despite that, we've still done about a third. It's awfully good.

-Mother House. My mother bought another house. In the country this time. She bought it because it was the only way to combine her solitary cat and her manfriend's five lively Labradors. It appears to be working, but I give it less than a month before the cat gets torn to pieces in a fit of canine enthusiasm.

That's all. I'm going to finish drinking my Old Pulteney 17 Year Old. Myself and the Mountie drank half a bottle of Dalwhinnie 15 Year Old last night and it somewhat hampered our enjoyment of today, but I'm recovered now and as I may be going offshore tomorrow I need to savour what could be a last evening for whisky for up to... a week!

World Cup: Improvements

The Rubbish Trumpet World Cup 2010 is gathering momentum: just when it seemed the entire tournament would lifelessly vanish in a droning blaze of goalless draws and perfectly spherical balls shooting vertically into the high altitude ionosphere, all of a sudden the football playing representatives of the various nations have become reanimated and started to entertain. In today's game featuring Mexico ripping out the wane heart of France there was even the astonishing novelty of hearing the sound of singing: above the sound of a billion bees came the sound of Mexican triumph, victory over the French and trumpet bearers together in the simple yet so relieving sound of celebratory chants from human voices.

The trumpets were also silenced yesterday, when the host nation were soundly thrashed 3-0 by a farming nation smaller than Moldova and condemning them, almost certainly, to being the first host nation to be elimated before the second round. I know I shouldn't take such smirking delight at such a fact, and I have nothing against the badly named country in itself ("South Africa" is a description of a location, not a name, much in the way that the "Central African Republic" is a description of a country and its political system rather than a proper name for a nation. For the record, I would name them "Gun Trumpet" and "Superland" respectively), but for their efforts in reducing all crowd noise from the varied joys of the sound of thirty-two nations' unique support to the constant steady menace of approaching insects I feel they deserve a swift booting from the tournament. Mind you, FIFA deserve a bit of a slap too for standing idly by. I've decided not to call them FIFA anyway, as the acronym is French, and so from now on I'm going with the English version, IFAF (or, for the pedant, IFoAF).

But controversies within a World Cup are part of the fun. I've accepted all remaining games will be soundtracked by a ghastly buzzing and don't really mind, just as long as this unique part of South Africa's apparent culture doesn't stray beyond the tournament; I also clearly enjoying moaning about it as much as possible. I'm enjoying this new football, widely accused of being too round and having a mind of its own, and thus responsible for every bad kick or goalkeeping fluff. I'm mightily impressed by IFAF throwing out thirty pretty girls from a stadium because they were wearing orange and therefore promoting an unoffical brewery - the consequences, of course, being days of news and coverage for the unofficial brewery. And most of all, I'm loving the fact that Maradona is back, as de facto Argentina coach, and looking meaner than ever. Snappily dressed and with a gangster beard, he struts about the touchline, flicks stray balls to players with occasional fancy flourishes, and gives brilliant press conferences where he says stuff like: "[Pele should] go back to the museum", "We all know how the French are", and (after kissing and hugging his payers upon a 4-1 victory) "I still prefer women. I am dating Veronica, who is blonde and 31 years old." Oh, Maradona.

So, things are getting better and I hope I read the signs correctly that indicate a promising World Cup ahead. However, like most things, improvements can always be made. The quality of the football is a matter for the teams and although integral to the enjoyment of the tournament is mostly beyond IFAF's (oh, ok, I'll call them FIFA) control except for tweaking certain rules and introducing comedy joke footballs; however, FIFA can deal with logistical issues and make general tournament-wide innovations that can have a positive impact for the crowds and the TV viewers. So if I was the entire organisation of FIFA, this is what I'd do (in no particular order, except for number one).

1. Ban stupid plastic trumpets. Obviously.

2. Change the way tickets are sold from the second round onwards. This is from personal experience, going to two games in Germany 2006. One was a first round game between Korea and Switzerland and had an amazing atmosphere, perhaps the best I've ever witnessed. Why? Because it was full of Korean and Swiss fans who had bought their ticket in advance, knowing their teams would be playing. But the second game I saw was a second round game between Ukraine and Switzerland. And it was terrible. Not just the dire football, but the total lack of atmosphere. This was because when I - and most others there - had bought the tickets, it had just been a second round match gamble, and most people had calculated either Spain or France being one of the teams. Therefore, the crowd was full of French, Spanish and mostly curious Germans, and had a minority of Swiss or Ukranians. During the day we saw loads of French and Spanish trying to sell their unwanted tickets. So the stadium was full of people who didn't really care - not conducive to an electric game of football. I suspect this is the case, to varying degrees, for most later games. I'm not sure exactly how it could be done, but FIFA need to try and ensure the tickets aren't sold way in advance to random punters (like myself and the curious Germans) but hold back, say, two thirds until they know which teams are playing. If a country can't fill their third, then sell it to the opposition or the host nation fans. Anything that maintains the good atmosphere of the first round onto the later rounds.

3. Don't book players for taking their tops off during celebrations. Come on, FIFA, what's this all about? It's not as if they're revealing their erect ejaculating penises.

4. Ban players retroactively for diving in the box. This isn't my idea, it's derived from an idea by Justin, but video evidence should be used after games and if a player has blatantly dived in the box - whether leading to a penalty or not - they should be banned from the rest of the tournament. I'm not suggesting changing the game's result, just stamping out diving players. Because it's sickening when a game is decided by cheating.

5. Don't ban players from playing in the final just because they've picked up two yellow cards. A red card in the semi-finals, ok, fair enough, if it was something really cynical at least. But the final is meant to be a showcase between the two best footballing nations on the planet, and to have that game minus one, two, three or whatever of the best players in the world, just because of some earlier minor indiscretions, undermines the game.

6. Have the women's World Cup on simultaneously, in the same country. I'm serious. Nobody really gives a damn about the women's World Cup - especially women - but if it was to be held in the same country at the same time, then I believe it would generate a lot more interest. If the games were held in the morning, or at a time not clashing with the men's games, it would attract a lot more passing interest. No doubt some might complain it would be it the men's tournament's shadow, but that's better than being entirely invisible, and being in the midst of the world's biggest sporting spectacle would be excellent exposure for the game, and would provide a nice counterpoint. Even if in women's football, Germany always wins.

7. Declare a month's national holiday everywhere in the world. You know it makes sense.

My situation as a viewer is unchanged: still offshore Norway, still flitting between Norweigan television coverage and all kinds of internet streaming, with zero alcohol beers helping me through the matches (there have been a few where proper alcohol really would have helped). I'm realising my situation, given that I'm offshore, is astonishingly lucky, as the games fall at excellent times (as long as I'm willing to cut my sleep a little short) and the rig action is very quiet right now. Jobwise, there's a thing stuck in a hole - but you don't want to know about that. Happily, I can be here for no longer than one more week, which will see me through to the second round, where (I pray) I can watch the remainder of tournament in a succession of pubs, in a series of incoherent states. And that would be a result.

South Africa 2010

It's the World Cup: I love the World Cup.

In this bleak and heartless universe, where life is just a vehicle for the expression of pain and where death is a godless and eternal void, the World Cup is a genuine ray of light and burst of colour. Temporarily, we can put aside the crushing misery of our daily lives, and revel in a festival of football, and glory in the sublime achievement of mankind to organise this global event that overtakes an entire nation and captivates billions of diverse individuals across our spinning heavenly body. For a whole month, magic dances and we are all enchanted by the dazzling spells conjured by the feet of a few hundred supremely blessed athletes. If you - yes, YOU - are not touched by the World Cup in some way, then you are not fit to be a member of our species: please leave mankind immediately.

Truly, there is nothing quite in the same realm. Sure, the Olympics may have more participating countries, but it only takes place in one city rather than across a nation, is far less focussed and has no building storyline or theme (except of "unity"...), and the best sport featured - the 100m - takes place in the first few days meaning the weeks following are all downhill. The World Cup is focussed only on football, with recurring heroes and villains, impossible moments of drama, bitter injustices, outstanding skills, and a rising level of excitement and tension as the tournament draws to its brilliant and ultimate conclusion to crown one team only as the Champions of Earth.

Even those not normally partial to football are touched and stroked by the World Cup. My mother, not known for a close interest in the beautiful game, openly enjoys the tournament, and will include it in her conversations and even watch the occasional match. It is a worldwide event, coming round for only one month every four years (that's one out of every forty-eight months, or 2.1% of time itself) and this rarity of occurrence makes it even more special.

Indeed, as is often regaled during social converse, you can track your life by World Cups. Looking back on each tournament and where and how you watched it, the progress of your life can be observed. The first tournament I can remember is Italia '90. Aged 11, I wasn't really into football then, and didn't watch many games, but I recall being on a school trip to Holland, and hearing the result of the opening game, a massively surprising 1-0 victory for Cameroon over Argentina. I bought a poster of the Holland team while there, and watched most of the later games, back home in Dingwall. Dingwall was the scene also for USA '94. This was certainly when the World Cup came alive for me. My abiding memory is of the (instrumental version) of the Bernstein's West Side Story song "America" being used as the BBC's theme, and my whole family tapping furiously in vague rhythm every time it came on, and eating a grand curry for the final, where poor Roberto Baggio blazed his penalty over the bar to give Brazil the cup. I watched loads of games, mostly on late at night, and that was it: aged 15, I'd fallen in love for the rest of my life.

Fast forward then to me at 19, and an Aberdeen University student, studying (rather improbably) biochemistry. Of course, by the start of France '98, the university year was over and the vast holidays of the undergraduate had begun. The majority of the games that tournament were watched at home, in my conservatory, shared with the likes of Green and M. Fraser, on what was considered a rather swanky TV back in that past millennium. The opening game was Scotland vs Brazil, obviously a big event, and made even more memorable by the tremendously misjudged gesture by my deviant friend, H, who appeared wearing a Brazil top. This did not go down at all well, and H has never really lived this down. I may have had a short-lived diddy evening job at an off-licence that summer, but can't remember if it interfered with the football - I have a feeling I may have missed a few games because of it. Regardless, the final took place at the same time as "T in the Park", and with a large crowd of bohemian youths/neds, I watched France beat Brazil 3-0 on a big screen, to the surprising delight of the masses.

My favourite World Cup was next: Korea/Japan 2002, aged 23. As well as being a brilliant tournament, full of surprises and upsets, it also was the premise of a self-set challenge to watch every single game of the tournament, but without compromising my lifestyle. My job then was evening work washing dishes at Estaminet, which was my post-university career for a couple of years. My lifestyle then was basically that of a total waster. I would finish washing dishes - or rather "washing dishes" might be more accurate - at 10pm, and then go out almost every single night and get myself into a state of absolute intoxication. As the games took place, in UK time, between 6am and 2pm, some nights I couldn't even go to sleep as the football would be starting. Even when I did sleep, it would only be for a few hours, as every day for almost three weeks I would have to be up by 6 or 7am to watch the first game of the day. Hours of football then followed, and then I'd have to go to work. And then further intoxocation. It is no understatement when I say this was all very bad for my health. After three weeks there was a blessed two day break from football, but by this time I was visibily gaunt. I had barely slept in that time. The World Cup final was an interesting twist. It took place at noon on Sunday - and, astoundingly, my work decided to put me on an entirely unprecedented ten hour shift, 12-10pm. I thought they were surely joking, as I only ever worked evenings, 6-10pm, but they were gravely serious and said I'd be fired if I didn't turn up. As it transpired, they had brought in a few TVs for the final, to show in the bar, and were expecting a few people and thus extra dishes to be washed (they were wrong). Anyway, I got around this by smuggling a TV into the kitchen, propping it up on a sink, and very slowly grating a large block of cheese for two hours while watching Ronaldo score two goals against Germany. This successfully completed my mission of watching every single game that tournament (although I was barely conscious or coherent for much of it).

Aged 27, I had just returned from two years living in Korea by the time of Germany 2006, and had just started a new job - the job I'm doing to this day. My intention was again to watch every game, and I almost succeeded. What failed me? The World Cup itself, as I went over to Germany for a week to watch two games - South Korea 0-2 Swiss, and Swiss 0-0 Ukraine (Ukraine won 3-0 on penalties). While there, I watched loads of games on big screens, in Cologne and Hanover, but it was the actual transit between UK and Germany, via Holland, that took place during the games that resulted in missing a few. The rest of the games were either watched at Justin's, or at work. Still very new, I was on base every day for training. Except training in these days came in the form of using your own initiative, as it was termed, or "speak to someone else" as it might be put in plain English. This suited me very well, as after speaking to people in the morning, and perhaps actually doing some real training, in the afternoon I would hide myself in an obscure unit, set up an elaborate "test" with some electronics and let it run while I watched the football via BBC or ITV internet streaming. I watched the final at a friend's parents' house in the country, after being invited for a weekend-long barbecue. This barbecue/party invite was entirely independent of the football, as that group of friends had no real interest in the most important sport and tournament in human history, so I had to watch the thrid-place match alone, but we all watched the final together and thoroughly enjoyed Zidane's glorious finale. I believe this barbecue has since become an annual event; however, as I behaved quite badly I've not been invited back since.

And so we arrive to the present day, aged 31, mature and wise. I was deeply worried before this tournament as I'd not booked any holidays and there was a real fear that if I was sent away on a job, depending on the nature of the job I might miss a considerable amount of football. Although sometimes I spend vast swathes of time on rigs or in hotels just to hang around, I also sometimes have quite a lot to do. In the case of the latter, sitting down for two hours of football three times a day would simply be unthinkable.

Happily, I appear to have got lucky, and my current stint in Norway is extremely accommodating for watching the World Cup. I'm on night-shift, 7pm to 7am, which means that the first two games of the day (1.30pm and 4pm, Norweigan time) can be watched before I start work. It does mean I'm only getting about five hours sleep a night (8am to 1pm) but I can live with this. The evening game (8.30pm) is marginally trickier as I'm on shift, but fortunately the bulk of my time is currently spent monitoring data in a remote unit where I'm little disturbed. The internet here is utterly fantastic - the fastest I've ever seen in my life - and so this means I've been able to stream the matches.

Yes, streaming matches online has very much become a flavour of this current World Cup. Although I have the option to go to the rig's "Blue Room", a cinema-like set-up that shows the games, I've mostly been eschewing that to watch them either on my own room's TV or on my laptop. This is because for the first game of the day, I'm still so knackered I can't get out of bed, and because online I can get English commentary. Sometimes. Streaming games online is becoming somewhat of an art, a juggling act, because it's all so unreliable. Most of the sites I try simply don't work or require dubious downloads, and some manage to show only seconds of footage before freezing. Happily, I've hit upon a few winners. The improbable iraqgoals.tv is a gem, and shows a mixture of BBC, ITV and Australian TV commentary, and I watched part of yesterday's Italian game via it, with Italian commentary. I've discovered another site with loads of links, mostly useless, but I've managed to watch ESPN coverage from it once, and it handily links to iraqgoals.tv. There's worldfootball.us, a new discovery, and - Justin, you'll love this - justin.tv, which promises more than it delivers, but did help me to watch the England-USA game hours after it had actually happened. The England-USA game is the only one I missed live, as things were incredibly busy then while dealing with a minor crisis and so two hours of football was definitely out, but I managed to see the highlights plus the second half, hours later.

Of course, the quality of internet streaming is awful, though better than nothing obviously, but this adds to the flavour of the whole tournament for me. Sometimes it freezes or stops and I can't really make out the individual features of the players, but I can still see clearly what's going on and every day is a challenge as there's never any guarantee as to which website will be working, and Norweigan TV (on this rig) only seems to show certain games. But that's half the fun of it, desperately trying multiple websites just before kick-off, and then having to switch after half an hour when the chosen one gives up.

I think I'll probably have another week of this before heading back onshore where, one would imagine, it would be much easier to watch games, especially as the volume of games decreases. With luck, if I'm not whisked away to yet another job, I might get to watch the second half of the tournament in Edinburgh, in pubs, drinking, as opposed to watching it alone drinking the alcohol-free beer supplied on the rig (which I'm quite getting into, if truth be told). As long as I get to see all the games though, I really don't care where I am, or how little sleep I'm getting.

A word, finally, on this year's World Cup itself. Isn't it rubbish? The quality of football has been pretty dire, and the games dull to watch. I think it'll improve, as things warm up, but watching a series of 0-0s and 1-0s is not entertainment. No, and especially when soundtracked by that damn stupid trumpet. If you're going to let a few hundred (? thousand?) people blow some bloody atonal one-note trumpet for the whole game, almost entirely drowning out the natural ebb and flow of the crowd, why not just rig up the stadium speakers and blast out the bee-like buzz at full volume and save everyone the effort? This awful trumpet is becoming an absolute blight to this World Cup, making the games unpleasant to have to listen to, and making it impossible for the viewer - and, I'm sure, the actual crowd - to get into the feel of the game. Football (as well as many other sports) is very much driven by crowd atmosphere and so to drown out cheering, booing, singing and chanting by some blasted ugly horn that drones incessantly for the entire duration of the match creates a weird feeling for the game that affects both fan reaction and I have no doubt the football quality itself. The trumpets are continuous and aren't "played" in reaction to the game's events, rather just blown for the sake of making a racket, oblivious to the action.

These trumpets are obviously the bane of South Africa 2010 and in addition to the half-empty stadiums (seemingly caused by terrible infrastructure and traffic gridlock rather than poor sales) and propensity for the crowd to Mexican wave at every opportunity, I do fear that this may end up being the poorest World Cup in my experience. I hope I'm wrong. And I especially hope that God reveals Himself and cuts off the mouth of every person playing these trumpets.

Regardless of my trumpet-hatred and the poor football so far, my love of the World Cup is totally unshaken and each night shift I look forward to going to bed just so I can wake up the next morning, ready for hours of football. Tomorrow (well, today technically) is New Zealand vs Slovakia, The Coat of Ivory vs Portugal and Brazil vs North Korea. Now, just look at these three ties and wonder in awe at the majesty of this tournament.