Its official World Cup fever has hit the Rockupandroll household. Not content with buying a St George’s flag mug for the England games the ever lovely Miss G and myself have started our own World Cup sweepstake. This is no ordinary sweepstake though, this is the sweepstake to end all sweepstakes.

Once we started this we realised that having only two people in a sweepstake with cash prizes kind of takes the edge of it seen as there are 30 other teams that we won’t have. So at the last moment we changed the rules and whatever team we pulled out we decided that whatever team we got we would have to throw ourselves wholeheartedly behind that team. This doesn’t just mean watching the games but we have to learn and sing their national anthem before the game, wear their colours and eat their traditional food on the day of the game. Now that’s what I call a sweepstake.

With a distinct lack of drama, no media interest whatsoever and a certain feeling of impending anti-climax we made the draw. Miss G drew out Australia and I pulled out Italy. Result, and with only a slight aroma of a fix in the air as Miss G spent many months travelling round Oz and I fell in love with Rome in March.

So now I’m an honorary blue, a proud member of the Italia tifosi and am going to stockpile pizza bases whilst learning the Il Canto degli Italiani, otherwise known as the national anthem to you and me.

Do not fear though dear blog readers you can be a part of this amazing, or at least slightly trivial and pointless, experience as there are still 30 teams left. If you want to have something to do other than biting your finger nails down the cuticles watching England during the World Cup, then join us. Email me your name to info@rockupandroll.com and I will draw your name out of the hat and allocate you a team to become superficially fanatical about. Go on you know you want to.