The World Cup kicks off on Thursday.

What follows are some personal recollections of previous World Cups beginning (where else?) in 1966. Please note that this post is (a) quite long, and (b) written for my own amusement. I don’t expect anyone else to read it!

Sorry to hear that Bobby Tambling has died, aged 84, although, to be fair, that’s an age many of us would be happy to reach.

I suspect that few if any people reading this will have heard of him but he was one of the first professional footballers I was drawn to as a young boy.

Spent last week in Majorca (aka Mallorca).

It was our first visit to the island which might surprise some people because Majorca has been a popular holiday destination for Brits for decades, but perhaps that’s what put me off.

Arsenal yesterday celebrated the club’s first Premier League title since 2004. A parade in north London attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters, and good luck to them.

I remember going to watch a similar victory parade after Chelsea won the Premiership in 2005. I took my son, who was eleven at the time, and we waited patiently at Parsons Green in Fulham for the two open-top buses to arrive.

Does anyone genuinely enjoy a heatwave? Like most people I like sunshine and warm-ish weather but beyond that not so much.

In the UK a heatwave normally means three or more days during which the temperature exceeds the mid 20s (Celsius). Above 30 (and without air-con) it becomes uncomfortable. Hit 40, as it did on two or three days in 2022, and it’s a struggle.

Yesterday didn’t go entirely to plan.

At 11.10 I boarded a Thameslink train to London where I was scheduled to have a meeting followed by lunch with Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants.

The journey to Kings Cross or St Pancras normally takes an hour. However, 30 minutes into the journey (at 11.40) the train stopped at Arlesey, a small station north of Stevenage, where we were told someone had been hit by a train at Stevenage and there would be a delay.

Bit late to this but I am hugely enjoying Bob Shields’ very funny memoir, How Far Is The Nearest Pint?, published in 2006.

Bob was chief features writer for the Daily Record when he joined a Forest expeditionary force that travelled to Paris to meet our French counterparts on No Smoking Day 1999. The following year we invited him to a Forest event in London where we presented him with a Smoker-Friendly Journalist of the Year award.

Still on a football theme (sorry), you may be aware that Chelsea lost the FA Cup final 1-0 to Manchester City yesterday.

No surprise there. City were the favourites, although that didn’t stop Pep Guardiola’s team losing last year’s final to Crystal Palace. Also, Chelsea have a terrible record of late in domestic cup finals, having lost the last seven in which they have appeared.