In every job that must be done...

I said a few days ago that I didn't intend to post about Euro 2004, due to me having no interest in football. Well, this isn't about football. Not really. At work, for the duration of the tournament, we have a series of games, quizzes and competitions, into which people were free to enter teams. Teams were then randomly allocated a European Country that made it through to the football finals. Teams can win prizes for winning these things and also on how well they decorate their area in the style or colours of their allocated country.

My team (for I am captain) got England. So we've had lots of fun putting together a shrine to godlike English people (eg Tom Baker, Richard Bacon, Thora Hird etc), collections of English Wit and Wisdom, and other things. It's been rather like being back at school where you put up displays on the walls. I also spent half an hour this lunchtime blowing up balloons (red and white). Tying knots in balloons is a skill I only learnt in recent years so it's nice to have opp to use it from time to time. I did blow one of them up slightly too much and it burst in my face which gave me (and those around me!) a bit of a fright!

We also have a daily quiz/challenge. Yesterday, the first team to name 10 famous people from their country would win. If you happen to be Latvia, this ain't so easy. If you're England, it would be extremely embarrassing to not win. Thankfully we did win. Yay! Today was a little harder. We were sent a list of 10 football related phrases (eg "Who ate all the pies", "The referee needs new glasses") which we had to translate into the language of our country. They had today though realised that this might be quite easy for the England team (ie us) so they instead made us translate into Portuguese. A couple of minutes with Google later, and we sent off the entry and... won again! We're great!

I won't be around for tomorrow morning's challenge sadly, as I have a meeting in another building. Hopefully the rest of the team will manage without me and make it three in a row (something the real England team are unlikely to do).

Football itself is still really dull though!