My survey of soccer balls for sale in Hastings puts Pakistan’s market share in the town at 0% and not 85%...see the last weblog of May. The soccer balls in Lidls were made in Germany and Woolworths get theirs from China. Aren’t market surveys wonderful? While on the subject let me dispute the claim that David Beckham is the best crosser of a ball England has ever had. He’s good but Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney and Bobby Charlton could all cross a perfect ball into the goal area while moving at speed...and Finney and Charlton could do this from either wing.

England and Germany might meet up in the quarter finals if one wins and the other comes second in the group stages. Both goalkeepers play in the English Premier League and both expect plenty of goalkeeping errors in this World Cup. The special balls made for the tournament do strange things in the air…particularly in wet conditions. The old leather balls I grew up with were like cannonballs when wet and bear little resemblance to the beach balls of today. The state of the ball is becoming as crucial to soccer as it is to cricket. How long before a Football Commentator says: ’Chelsea will be taking the new ball in five minutes’. The World Cup started today and carries on for a month. But you’ll be hearing no more about it from me until England win the tournament or get knocked out.

Thinking about football brings back memories of my misspent youth at Christ’s Hospital. These include many fun-filled hours playing Asphalt Soccer...with a tennis ball. Ian Jones of Maine A was the best stopper of a tennis ball I ever saw and the rivalry between my house Barnes A and Maine A…two houses away…was always intense. They had Sutcliffe and Jones. We had Simpson and myself. We played at every opportunity and in all weathers.

Death has been on my mind a lot this week. First there was the discovery on Sunday that David Goodstein had died nine years ago. Then Susan e-mailed me the transcript of a talk she had given to the Jackson Historical Society about her uncle Jake May, who I remember wheezing away his final days chiselling away at a staircase in Susan’s Beacon Hill house at 26 Garden Street while I was dossing down on her sofa...and hiding from Linda Blitz.

With this week’s re-opening of my onboard office following the disruption of my electricity supply a new internet-free agenda was cobbled together that includes re-writing my will. The current version is too complicated as it incorporates verbatim the conditions in Connie’s will. Now enough work has been done between Vance Harris and Walker & Walker for me to regard everything as my property and to prepare a new will on this assumption.

My other concern is to ensure that my heirs can find my will when I drop off the twig. So I am thinking of depositing it with some official will-lodging service like a solicitor rather than trusting to my ability to keep it in a warm dry place for the next thirty years...a mean average of the 10 years of the biblical four score years & ten and the 50 years of the oldest man in England who celebrated his 110th birthday this week.

I was also thinking of including some funeral directions to make sure I get a Green Burial under the auspices of the Natural Death Centre founded by my colleague Nicholas Albery. But I am backing off this idea after the Daily Mail reprinted an article on green burials that first appeared in The Guardian. The thought of lying in Tawney’s Wood where John Papworth buried his wife Marcelle now seems more appealing so I will sound John out on the idea of turning his woodlands into a Fourth World Graveyard when I am in Purton in two weeks time.

Finally most of today was devoted to giving thanks for the life of Dr Catherine Elizabeth Hollman at the Parish Church of St Mary and St Peter in the Village of Pett. I last visited the place on foot in the winter of 2005 when I walked all the way from St Leonard’s to Rye for an article for Rye’s Own that has yet to be written up and published.

For many years Catherine was chairman of the Winchelsea Singers who were invited by the family to sing Mozart’s Ave Verum at her Memorial Service. As one of a select group of Journeymen Tenors in the county I was asked to swell the ranks which meant putting on a suit and tie for the occasion. What with the rehearsal beforehand and the reception afterwards at Pett Village Hall I found myself away from my cabin desk from 10.30 to 3.30.

A terrible shortage of money has recently hit Britain’s politicians. Their traditional sources of income have dried up overnight thanks to a change in the climate and investigations by the police. There is only one way they can survive this cruel downturn in their fortunes and that is for the Great British Public to rally round and dig deep for the pounds in their pockets to provide the funds so desperately needed to ensure power to the politicians and not the people.

£10,000 will buy a nice new tie and haircut; £250,000 will buy a new specially-equipped battle bus; £1,000,000 will buy a peak-time TV election broadcast and £2 million will buy a peerage. Please send donations to Party Funding Account at the Inland Revenue. Payments by PayPal should be made to gordonbrown@tendowningstreet.org.uk. Failure to pay on time could result in imprisonment or death. By order: Man of Straw; Leader of the House of Commons; Minister for Lords Reform and Advocate-General for State Funding of Political Parties.