This strange country we call Ingerlund.

This evening, soccer fans all over the Green and Sceptered Isle – will be screaming IN-GER-LUND, as the national football team, take on Columbia in the World Cup. To be an England fan is to be an eternal and unrealistic optimist in the face of adversity, able to stoicially accept the defeat of your team – but we will go down fighting. It’s all part of the Dunkirk Spirit. “We lost, but we weren’t completely annilhated and we will live to fight another day.”

And as England go to their most impotrant football game in 10 years, there is a national crisis – a shortage of CO2 has meant that pubs are running out of draught beer – CO2 the gas that brewers put in beer to give it fizz and get it out the barrel, up the pump and into the punters’ glasses – no CO2, no beer. You can’twatch a football atch without beer.

So, to finish, a couple of fan photos.