Yesterday Italy won the 2006 World Cup in Berlin. Next week the whole team will be up for sale as Juventus & Co. are relegated after the match-fixing scandal engulfs Italy’s top clubs. You couldn’t make it up. The Penalty Shoot-Out was the best ever. Not one of the penalty takers failed to beat the goalkeeper…including the French player who failed to score. A millimetre lower and it would have been a Geoff Hurst Special…in off the underside of the bar.

The sensation of the five-week tournament was not the football but Zinedine Zidane retaliating to a wind-up from Marco Materazzi at the end of last night’s final with a full-on head-butt. Your mother and sister are whores seemed to be the gist of it…although The Guardian succeeded in persuading the world’s press that the offending word was terrorist. Oooh! Zidane was sent off of course. But it will be interesting to see what happens to Materazzi.

Wayne Rooney’s celebrity wife got herself sent home in disgrace for snorting cocaine…which is enough to make anyone stamp on their opponent’s private parts. So he got himself sent off too. In medieval times battles always began with an exchange of insults. John Cleese gives a good imitation of how it was done in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Australian cricketers are the best at this game…but nowadays it is seen as Best Practice in all sports. What matters is to win not lose…not how you play the game. The Aussies have toned it down a bit since microphones were installed in the stumps and pick up every word. Perhaps that is why they lost the Ashes in England last year.

We drove across the island to friends...and all agreed that the French deserved to win. How the two girls managed to talk the whole time without ever missing the important plays baffled the males of the species…multi-tasking in action. Anyway a fun evening…with cheese and wine to help it along. It was a cracker of a game too. And all praise to the German organisers and the Argentinean referee. I must do it again in four year’s time…when I’m 64…almost.

Yesterday morning I was up at crack ‘o dawn putting the final touches to the Shepherd on Climate project by posting Right Science and Blog ‘n Web. A hurried breakfast then the Orient Express to the Grand Hotel and my water taxi to Lusterö. As a final bold flourish my Climate Blog opens with the words: ‘I have now said everything I have to say about Global Warming for the time being. Address to send information about Climate Weaponry Programs is P.O. Box 36, Rye, Sussex TN31 7WP England. The modern way is to Blog ‘n Web the message. So here is the Shepherd on Climate website and the blog’s Declaration of Independence. The Hathaway Great Hedge of India Fund and the US Bill Gateway Project for Privatising the United Nations Organisation are not funding this Blog ‘n Web.’

Alan had a form-filling errand to attend to at the offices of the Swedish Tax Authorities so we took ourselves off to Norrtälje for the afternoon. We were braced for a long hot frustrating afternoon but found the place completely empty. Alan did his errand. So I did one too returning to Svedudden with a print-out from the Swedish Government computers telling Awl & Sundree that I was registered in Matteusförsamling in Stockholmskommun in Stockholmslän, was married on 2/8-69 and divorced on 28/1-85, lived in Sweden from 27/9-68 to 17/9-73 and returned for another Cultural Massage on 16/1-98 before departing for 48 Regent Street in Cambridge on 4/1-02. My whole life flashes before me as if through a glass darkly…and I thought I signed in at Bromma Kyrka where I was wed.

This Personbevis of mine…duly stamped and signed…is the first stage in my Residence Permit Application Process. The next step is more daunting. I must present myself and stand in line at the Migration Office on Pyramidvägen… 10-minutes walk from Solna Centrum. Worthy Oriental Gentlemen seeking admittance to the UK can guess what lies before me. How fortunate to have been denied the pleasure of visiting Her Majesty’s Immigration Office in Croydon.