Friday night turned into a spontaneous dinner with some outsiders in for the long haul. After arguing about the central tenet of the movie Contact and letting the booze take the reins of consciousness for a while, I bailed as I wanted to be able to get up at 7am to watch Ireland's opening match.

I duly did and met Sally coming to bed as I got up. Anna arose to watch with me and Paddy joined us about 20 minutes into it. There was slight hysteria mixed with a hangover and general too-early-in-the-morning-ness, and as kickoff approached I was sobbing a little. The match was the usual emotional roller coaster ride and all I want to say about it is that I'm happy with the result.

The rest of the day passed in a gentle fashion. The football was on as general background and once Paddy went for his afternoon nap, I settled down to watch some of it. I fell asleep sometime between Germany scoring the 7th and 8th goal against Saudi Arabia. I was awoken by an estate agent who had insisted on looking at the house and about whom I had forgotten completely. I roused Sally and let her deal with him while I tended to Paddy who had just woken up. More TV followed and later, bed.

Today we attempted a clear up. We have hired a skip to fill with the accumulated detritus of the last ten years and I duly (and dully) carted rocks, rubble, old paint cans, bits of carpet and rotten wood around, dumping it into the battered yellow receptacle. In our shed we have a large cast iron pink bath which over the years has filled with a large collection of empty wine, beer and spirit bottles. I loaded up the car a few times and visited the bottle bank. Sally wanted me to wear a disguise so that people wouldn't think that we drank that heavily.

Neither of us approached these tasks with anything resembling enthusiasm, but we have made a start. I don't know how we're going to get the bath into the skip though.

Gazza wasn't drunk I don't think. Or else he's on a three day bender.