So that’s it, the summer’s over. The golden generation has failed to stem 44 years of pain. England’s given up, the sweaty Richard the Lionheart costumes have been hurled at the washing machine, children have scrubbed off their facepaint. All we are left with now is a £12 million football manager we don’t respect, a disallowed goal, a few vuvuzelas and humiliation.
The next month will be spent apportioning blame; for the next four years we will hang our heads in embarrassment. As my six-year-old son dribbled his England ball to school yesterday, a builder shouted, “Give up mate — what’s the point?” It’s been a year to forget: volcanic ash, an oil slick and England didn’t even make it to the quarter finals.
Actually, this year could be vintage. All the ingredients are there. It might yet be another 1976, the best year on record for quality of life according to the New Economic Foundation. Remember the 1976 heatwave, Björn Borg winning his first Wimbledon, the birth of Punk, the Olympic Gold for John Curry and a new Prime Minister? 2010 could rival it.
British sport is on a roll. While 17 million of us were agonising over Frank Lampard’s non-goal, England had its other great success of the weekend, in Manchester rather than Bloemfontein, when our cricketers beat their deadly rivals Australia to win the one-day series. Two British drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, came second and third in the European Grand Prix in Spain. British athletes were showing that they will provide formidable competition at the European Championships next month. Meanwhile Wimbledon is appreciating both the Queen and the sun. Andy Murray has not lost a set in storming through to the quarter-finals and the country has already enjoyed the longest tennis match in history.
A Brit, Graeme McDowell, even won the US Open.
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Glastonbury has been a sunburnt triumph. British Airways cabin crew have postponed their strike. The new Prime Minister, David Cameron, has stripped off at the G8 summit and plunged into an icy lake, proving Britain can compete with Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy.
But it is the weather that could make it. According to François Lelord, the French psychiatrist and expert on happiness, the British are more affected by weather than any other country in the world. We love a heatwave when our lawns turn brown. It hasn’t rained properly for a month. On Sunday it was 30.3C in Gravesend, hotter than Greece. Teachers are giving up on lessons, families are booking holidays in the Cairngorms. This summer is already a scorcher.
So maybe we can forget about a 90-minute football game.