This excitement, however, was short-lived once the ticket prices had been noted, and the cost of the tickets for the Eurostar train had caused a fainting fit. Strange how the prices just went up like that for the days around the game. At this stage it was not necessary to waste time checking prices for accommodation. The plan had effectively been still born.

Life takes over, one gets over disappointments and I arranged with an English friend, to go to the Tate Modern for an inaugural modern classical concert on the Friday of the England vs SA game and hopefully a quick dash into the nearest pub to watch the game before heading home via different trains, living in different parts of Sussex. The premiere of Alvin Curran’s Maritime Rites concert was billed to be weird and wonderful.

The day’s festivities were kicked off by a visit to the awesome Turner collection at the Tate Britain, some of the huge sea paintings putting us into a nautical mood for the concert. A quick hop onto one of the many Thames ferries got us to the Tate Modern. As we chugged along we saw the barge in the Thames with a grand piano perched on it, some seats for more musicians and loudspeakers, bobbing quite strongly in the wind. I had visions of the pianist getting sea sick.

Then there was a smallish tent in front of the gallery building itself with some more musicians also attached to mikes and a vast array of speakers. Added to this was the orchestra in the form of a fair number of volunteer musicians who were going to stand on the Millennium Bridge when performing their contribution to the whole.

It had been publicised as a piece of music that would reflect and interpret the noises of the sea. It did that, with a cacophony of squeals, screams, steel scraping, sea gulls squawking, dolphin whistles and fog horn sounds. All of these weird sounds were performed on the standard classical musical instruments. It was quite something.

The wind was fairly chilly though by the time the music started, autumn having arrived, and it was just too cold to stay around waiting for the piece de resistance which was going to be the bells of St Paul’s cathedral on the other side of the Thames, adding their bit to the maritime music. True surround sound.

Crossing the river via the bridge with crowded musicians was not an option we realized when we found ourselves stuck in the packed unmoving queue. So we headed over to the next bridge and walked across on our quest to find a pub with TV screens that would be showing the rugby game. It was a good thing we gave ourselves more time for this task.

Going to the pub in England has changed slightly since the introduction of non-smoking laws. Now everybody is outside on pavements and roads and it is quite difficult to push ones way through the crowds, especially the post work drinking masses. After fighting our way through several of these crowds with not one of the pubs showing any signs of TV screens I spotted a South African rugby jersey in the road.

With a tackle helped on by desperation, I grabbed the jersey and asked the person in it, where they were going to watch the game. Must have looked quite strange to non rugby fans. Several more jerseys materialised and we were invited to follow them as one of the group worked in the area and knew his way around. We did find the pub with screens, even with one being slightly larger than the standard TV size.

One has to remember that this is the England game. However, the pub staff informed us, waiting till after we had ordered our first drink of course, that they would show the game, but were expecting a DJ at 8.00pm and the party would start then, unless an overwhelming request for the sound for the game would be forthcoming. We finished our drink and headed out into the night to find a pub where one could hear the commentators.

Close to a large station, we felt would be better so we headed off to Cannon Street station and were lucky to find a pub with TV screens. The game had just started and we tried to find some space to watch. Besides the fact that the sound could not be heard at all above the rowdy crowd, the TV set up also regularly lost signal and the picture fragmented into lovely little blocks and lines every few minutes or so.

That wasn’t the only bit of strangeness though. I was the only South African supporter. We had parted company with the bodies in Springbok jerseys a while back. By half time it had become fairly obvious that there was no redeeming the English team, the only question remaining whether they would actually score any points at all, and I decided home time might be a good idea before I got thrown out of the pub for loud patriotic noises of the wrong kind and lost an English friend.

When I sms’d the final score, which family in SA sent through to me, the reply back from my English friend was: never mind, we’ll get better. Stoic, stiff upper lip, the English have. For their sakes, lets hope they don’t have to wait too long for their team to get better. For the sport mad English, the football team isn’t sparkling either and their cricket team would have little hope without its South African born star. Aaah it’s good to remember the South African homeland every now and then.

Anja Merret lives in Brighton, UK, having moved across from South Africa just over a year ago. She now looks after the business interests of her daughter who is a Flash Developer and Accessibility expert. She started a blog at the beginning of the year under the heading of chatting to my generation. Although she is chatting to the baby boomer generation, she sometimes feels that all generations have the same issues to face, they just don't have hearing aids or walking sticks! One of her pet peeves is the war in Iraq and in fact anything that causes innocent people to get hurt. But she also loves tech stuff, although only as an amateur. She considers herself a Silver Surfer Gadget Geek. She is even considering queuing for an iPhone in the UK later on in the year. But her daughter has offered, so she will only be taking hot food to the Brighton Geeks waiting in line. Her musings may be found on http://www.anjamerret.com Her observations on personal power and self-development may be found on http://www.pinkblocks.com