Mind your language

“IT being the weekend and all,” purred the commander-in-chief down the blower, “we’d like another of your Letter from Germany yokes, preferably with a stamp attached this time as proof that you’re actually out there and not, as some of us suspect, watching it all in a pub in Kinnegad, only ever putting down your drink in order to file another massive mileage claim.”

Ah yes, he knows me well.

And, you know, today I really did plan to write a thoughtful and erudite piece about Germany and the Germans, treating of politics and culture as well as sport, alluding to the strikingly benign sense of national pride and unity which has been generated by their team’s success in this World Cup, and liberally sprinkling the whole thing with some putative Houlihanesque descriptive flourishes — lyrical stuff, as seen from the window of a passing train, about the way the Rhine insinuates itself between lushly forested slopes, with every other bend in the great waterway offering up the breathtaking sight of an ancient castle surmounting a soaring peak. Begob, I was going to be on such a roll, that I’m pretty confident I would have gotten the word ‘zeitgeist’ in there somewhere too.