Spent most of Friday trudging around homeware stores looking at toilets, baths, showers, sinks etc for the new rooms in our extension. NOT my idea of a good time!!! But these sorts of boring things have to be done when you're an adult. SIGH. Anyway, we've pretty much chosen all of the sanitary ware that well need -- on to the next dull, adult thing now...

Went to the pub with Kenny to watch England play Algeria later on Friday. A woeful game -- England were absolutely terrible!! Despite my accent, I'm Irish through and through, but when Ireland aren't involved in a major competition I like to support England (vaguely) in order to give myself a vested interest in it. A few months ago I thought they were going to do really well, but something's gone wrong inside the camp, I feel, and things are starting to fall apart. I think the manager has lost the confidence of the team and is trying to play safe and keep his "star" players happy rather than choose the players he most needs for individual game. A brave manager would have subsituted Gerard or Lampard last night, but instead he subbed Aaron Lennon, the only midfield player who looked like he might actually create something!! England to not qualify from their group?!? It's a very real possibility now...

Today I went with my Dad to walk through the Limerick Tunnel: http://www.limericktunnel.com/ It's a new tunnel under the river Shannon for road traffic, allowing people to bypass the city of Limerick. It's due to open soon, but today they let people walk through to check it out. It was really interesting, very well organised and manned, with a real party feel. Thousands of people were there when we arrived first thing in the morning, and I think everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. You tend to take things like major tunnels for granted most of the time when you're just driving through, but when you get to see them up close as we did today, and see firsthand all of the planning and work that has gone into them, they're really quite majestic feats of engineering. I never thought I'd be waxing lyrical about a tunnel here, but there you go -- you live and learn!!!

Back home I watched a couple of matches on TV -- the Denmark v Cameroon game was a real cracker, end-to-end stuff, a welcome respite after last night's dire game. I also answered around 40 fan letters while I was following the games!! Slowly but surely working my way through the massive pile which has built up over the last month or two. It sometimes takes me a while, but I always get there in the end!!!!