I don't like hoo ha

These last few days I've been concerned that my lack of soft well-wishes
for the French football team in this World Cup (that is to say my inner bat cave of satisfaction that they didn't actually win in the recent match against Switzerland), is symptomatic of my failure to properly integrate into French society.

They seem like nice, strapping young men, why don't I want them to do well? I do live in France you know. Perhaps it's because I think they have already guzzled enough from the Cup of 1998. Now when they lose a football match the blow of losing is counterbalanced with the headline: `World Cup winners 1998, lose 10-0'. They are winners even when they lose.

The use of this qualifier `winners of 1998' is ubiquitous in France:

`Jacques Chirac, President of the World Cup Winners 1998',

Le Boulangerie de Violette - croissants made for and by the Winners of '98'.

I think 1998 has still got some life in it yet.

But I also think maybe my lack of support is just because I don't like hoo-ha. If they did win we would have months-upon-years of radios and newspapers splattered with victory, ticker-tape storms and a whole lot of hoo-ing and ha-ing which would smother the songs of birds and the quiet chatter of people exchanging ideas.

It was the same with the 2012 Olympic bid. I was secretly batting for London because I couldn't be bothered living with the hoo-ha if Paris was hosting the Olympics: the anticipatory highs followed by the post-games lows and mass city depression.

I've lived in an Olympic city before (Sydney 2000) so I know how it is. The communication channels are inundated with Olympic mania blocking out every other sound. This isn't to say that those two weeks in September 2000 where we dined on hot olympic pie smothered in olympic sauce and big jugs of olympic froth weren't more-than-fun.

On the other hand, distant hoo-ha, where I don't have to be at its core, is ok. There's a lot of hoo-ha in Australia at the moment about Australia winning its first World Cup match ever. Even though I didn't see the game so I can't engage in philosophical discussions about the ins and outs of the goals, I find myself just grasping on to any information I can so that I can text my Australian friends about it. No matter how banal, just the fact of keeping the conversation about the win going is enough for me. Text 1: "Did you know that when Australia won Jerry said he was so happy he could die?" Text response: "Ha ha really?". Pause. I need to say more but I didn't see the game or read anything about it, what about a re-phrase? Text 2: "Yeah, he said he was really happy. Happy enough to die."

Like the Olympics, the World Cup is a marker of time. Each four years I inevitably ask myself the question: Pinochiette, what were you doing last World Cup? Have you become a finer woman since this epoque?

Last World Cup - 2002 - I was blending with the sand on pale, empty beaches in the South of Italy. With my pallor and a big floppy sun hat, I fancied myself as quite the English lady. Entering bars for a cold drink I'd find men huddled around the television broadcasting the football, while women sat at tables watching from respectful distances. On the street sometimes I felt a bit like the woman in this photo by Ruth Orkin (a boyfriend gave me a print of this photo years ago and I remember wondering what his message to me was: women are slabs of meat surrounded by summer flies?)

But for the Final of the World Cup 2002 I'd left Italy and I was in Dublin, watching it in an Irish pub (although being in Ireland I guess it was just called a pub). More exciting then the Final was the day after the match when both French and I nearly got thrown in prison (or something) when French refused to pay for the hotel room (and wouldn't let me pay either) because there were crumbs on the carpet when we arrived and because, according to French `Paris is a more beautiful city than Dublin'.