Daily Archives: July 9, 2006

Exeunt France, Zidane

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It’s over. But what madness overtook Zidane? Here is the moment as recorded in Rob Smyth’s Live Blog of the match.

109 mins: ZIDANE SENT OFF FOR STICKING THE HEED [sic] ON MATERAZZI!!

Oh. My. God. In his final professional match, Zidane had been sent off for a disgraceful headbutt on Materazzi. He just rammed his head into Materazzi’s chest; it was really firm and nasty. Horrible. Now that really is a headbutt. It was also completely off the ball and at first it seemed he’d got away with it, but after talking to his assistant – and possibly after an intervention from the fourth official – the referee was alerted to what happened, and sent Zidane off. He has always had a nasty streak, but this was just ridiculous. What on earth did Materazzi say to provoke that? Either way, it was a disgusting, nasty, blackly comic headbutt, delivered with a Hitchcokian suddenness, and it’s an unbelievable ending to Zidane’s lustrous career. It was a JFK moment and a GBH moment rolled into one oh-my-giddy-aunt moment. And he could still end up lifting the World Cup!

He didn’t. But it was such a terrible end to a great career. Mind you, one look at Mathias Breschler and Monika Fischer’s astonishing large-format portrait of Zidane would convince anyone that he’s not the kind of guy you’d like to meet on a dark night.

Now that’s it’s over (the tournament, that is), here’s the strangest thing of all. During the entire duration of the footyfest, which supposedly gathered the best footballers in the world into small patches of Germany, there was only one truly outstanding match — that between France and Brazil. I watched many of them with my laptop perched on my knee, and that was the only match which seriously diverted my attention from email, browsing, blogging and work.

Email candour

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I’ve been reading the leaked emails from Des Swayne, Dave Cameron’s parliamentary gopher, courtesy of the Sunday Times. The one I particularly like includes the following passage:

1. Transfer of HoL [House of Lords] reform to Jack Straw means that Teresa [May, the shadow Leader of the Commons] will speak for us: this is a sensitive issue and Teresa is neither liked nor trusted across the party. A tight rein will be necessary.

2. Nicholas Soames wants to talk to you about how to ‘stroke’ the peers. I have asked Louise for a slot.

What can this mean? Nicholas Soames is a preposterous voluptuary (and close friend of the Prince of Wales) who never fails to amuse. One of his estranged ex-girlfriends was once quoted (I think in Private Eye) as saying that making love to Soames was “like having a very large wardrobe fall on you — with the key sticking out”. He always reminds me of another celebrated voluptuary, Lord Castlerosse, who was similarly statuesque. The prospect of Dave and Soames massaging members of the House of Lords does not bear thinking about.

Political blogging in the UK

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Useful piece by Ned Temko in this morning’s Observer. Includes links to some of the most prominent blogs. One of them is by David Miliband, the teenage Cabinet minister (and the next Labour leader but one), who writes his own blog entries and claims to read the comments.

I also rather like the Blog maintained by Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor. I’m astonished that he can find the time to write one — his day job is one of the most punishing in the media business.

Iain Dale’s Diary is rather good too, though the reference in the name will escape most younger readers. (Mrs Dale’s Diary was an early, genteel BBC radio soap which ran during my childhood in the 1950s.) Maybe the reference escapes the author too: after all, his name is Iain Dale!

All systems go (on my Mac)

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This morning’s Observer column — about virtualisation…

At this point, dear reader, I know what you’re thinking. However fascinating this ‘virtual machine’ nonsense may be to geeks, it’s of no interest to normal human beings. You may feel as Mrs Dave Barry did when her husband, the Miami Herald humorist, took her for a spin in a Humvee and proudly explained that the vehicle could inflate and deflate its tyres while in motion. Why, she asked, would anyone want to do that?

So what’s the point of virtualisation? Simply that it provides a vivid illustration of the most disruptive attribute of digital technology – its capability to break the link between an application and a physical platform. Once upon a time, if you bought a PC it ran Windows, and if you bought a Mac it ran Apple’s operating system. But now Macs run Windows, and IBM ThinkPads – which have the same processor – can run OS X (though of course Apple is doing its best to head off that possibility). And Linux runs on everything.

This disconnection of application/ service from hardware is happening all over the place…