I visited the famed Hill of Tara at the weekend. It's a hill, or rather a series of hills. In Tara. It is windswept. It draws tourists like you wouldn't believe. Did I mention it's a series of hills? In Tara? That's about it. To be fair, we didn't stick around long. Large groups of tourists and windswept locales do not agree with me. Maybe something happens if you wait for long enough.

Of more interest is the cafe-cum-shop next to the hill(s). It sells Hill-related items. Browsing through the pagan-themed books on display, I came across a work with the following title: Silver Moon: Your Magical Guide to Working with the Moon. (I seem to be coming across rather a lot of odd books in Co. Meath these days) I noted that the book was:
A. A manual. Like you can actually work with the moon. As if it were, say, flowers or wood. An entire planet seems an unwieldy thing to work with.
B. Not one of those cheapo practical guides to lunar craft, but a magical one.
C. On sale, implying that people, presumably those intent on a spot of moon-work, actually purchase these books.

There was also a book called Love Magic: The Way to Love Through Rituals, Spells and the Magic Life. Ah, I see.
And one called Truth Fairy: The Way to the Truth without a Lie Detector Test.

I made that last one up (but only the second part). I was scanning for more loopy books when my girlfriend dragged me away to eat. My sandwich was very nice. It was called Moon Sandwich: The Way to Your Stomach without Driving Back into Navan.

You're a funny guy, Sven. (By that I mean both 'funny ha-ha' and 'funny strange')
England's World Cup squad, eh? There's Peter Crouch: skinny-malinky, long legs, big banana feet himself. There's Theo Walcott: a virtual child with no Premiership experience and barely any lower division experience either. And a couple of highly talented, entirely incapacitated strikers in Owen and Rooney. It sounds like the beginning of a joke. The beanpole, the baby and the two crocks. Let's hope the punchline is delivered some time around mid-June (come on, Trinidad and Tobago).

It's as if Eriksson simply doesn't give a shite any more and has embarked on some surrealist experiment which happens to involve a World Cup. He'll doubtless be pilloried in the English press. And with good cause, perhaps. From an Irish perspective, though, it just makes the pantomime that is the English build-up to a World Cup all the more entertaining. We've had the portentous drama of the Rooney injury saga. Now Eriksson's squad selection has added a touch of farce to proceedings. I look forward to Uri Geller taking on the magician's role and harnessing the English nation's psychic energy in a last-ditch effort to cure Rooney's busted foot (sorry, metatarsal). Alex Ferguson could play the pantomime villain yet if he refuses to release a not fully-fit Rooney.

Is Eriksson actually secretly laughing at the English? Getting his own back? It's my fond hope that he is. Consider this: Theo Walcott is very small (5 foot 5). Peter Crouch is very, very tall (6 foot 7 last I heard, but I think he's still growing). The potential for comic, little and large style photos of the pair of them standing together is enormous (not as enormous as Crouch, though). That's obviously why Eriksson picked them. Should have seen it earlier.