火燒之島

Football teams are extraordinarily inventive in the ways they find to cause their supporters sorrow. They lead at Wembley and then throw it away; they go to the top of the First Division and then stop dead; they draw the difficult games and lose the home replay; they beat Liverpool one week and lose to Scunthorpe the next; they seduce you, half-way through the season, into believing that they are promotion candidates and then go the other way……always, when you think you have anticipated the worst that can happen, they come up with something new.
--Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch: p127

There are certain idiosyncratic notions that you quietly come to accept when you live for a long time in Britain. One is that British summers used to be longer and sunnier. Another is that the England football team shouldn’t have any trouble with Norway. A third is the idea that Britain is a big place……
--Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island: p29

要開踢了，做好心理準備先。Come on, England!