I knew it would be a late one tonight what with England playing Switzerland, so didn't try to get up too early. And tamely decided not to go to the gym as it was the weekend and last time it was already pretty busy. So I decided to do a bit of shopping at Guanmart. Annoyingly the still haven't moved my mobile number to this summer's one so I have to read out last time's one but blimey if that's not a first world problem! Not to mention the beer I normally get has gone down from 9.90 to 8.90 kuai for 6 cans. A quid for half decent 3.3% beer!
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| 8.90 for six of the strongest local brews in the supermarket! |
Back home I realised Pingguo Haliao were playing at bottom-placed Jiangxi Lushan, but I couldn't find a stream online. The Wuming Weixin group seemed to suggest some people were watching it somewhere but I couldn't work out where so I went to Wuming bar and found it almost empty. On a Saturday night at nearly 9pm. Blimey. They were showing the game but I didn't really want to watch without an atmosphere. The bloke I was sitting with in the bar suggested pinging Zhuang Hua as he was his friend too, so I did and he got back to me saying he'd just opened a new bbq place but he wasn't there at the moment, but said he'd send a weizhi and indeed it was only a couple of minutes away.
So I ended up watching the match on the big screen in Wuming bar with a handful of people. I'd missed the first half but we'd had five shots on target and should have been well in the lead but it was still 0-0. Then finally in the 66th minute Bammou scored a neat left-footer and that ended up being the final score. So 3 points but we'll need to play much better than that to have a chance at getting promotion.
Zhang Hua pinged me on the final whistle to say he was back, and the bloke who worked at Wuming bar wouldn't let me pay for the two bottles of beer I'd consumed during the second half. So I went over to his new bbq place by the basketball courts to give him a big hug as we hadn't seen each other in...err...only four months or so. Some other bloke was there and we opened a beer before Leilei pinged me to say he was also nearby so he came by for a bite to eat.
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| Zhang Hua's new bbq place he only opened two weeks ago |
I was due to watch the England - Switzerland match with Li Kun at the usual place opposite our place but as I was here I decided to support Zhuang Hua's new place and pinged Li Kun to ask if it was ok to come here. Of course it was. So at 11.30 I excused myself and popped home to change into my 21 year-old England kit and also to charge up Jiuma's bike that Leilei had plugged in. When I got back there were were three tables put together and a good 12 people or so, and loads of goodies to eat. There was one bloke particularly eager to see me as we'd met a few years ago. He was wearing a City top and gave me a very drunken hug. Needless to say he didn't last the distance.
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| A friend from some time ago |
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| An excellent array of food even if the match wasn't so good |
There were the perfunctory photo shoots before Li Kun turned up at midnight as the match began, followed by his wife and younger daughter a bit later. Yes it was another poor affair from England but thanks to Saka we made it to extra time. I could have done without that, or the penalties, but at least we did well for once. Somehow I managed to watch some of the Holland - Türkiye match later, falling in and out of sleep as the former won, slightly unfortunately as the latter have been one of the better teams to watch.
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