Savile Rogue

I know Christmas is over and due to the VAT hike and recession and all, everyone's on a tight budget (me included), but I have to share something with you.

Especially if you live with a football fanatic - or two - or three - like I do.

You know how usually football scarves are made out of nasty acrylic and feel everything but comfortable and warm?

Well, there's a company called Savile Rogue, which sells ones made out of cashmere. (You have no idea how revolutionary this is) They come in all the major league colours and look very much like the real thing. So much so, that they are even good enough for the Englishman and allowed to adorn his, the most sensitive of necks.

Even the box looks nice

This picture doesn't really do justice to the softness of the scarf.

On top of it all, the tags look like old-fashioned football cards...this company knows their market.

Since the Englishman's also quite sensitive about not looking like a football thug, he loves the smart air (a la Roberto Mancini below) which wearing this scarf gives him, while at the same time being able to show his support for his beloved Tottenham Hotspur.

I'm not sure Signor Mancini's scarf is from Saville Rogue, but it certainly looks very much like one of theirs. 

My smart football man about town

This is me not talking about football...

Strangely I seemed to be the one most upset in our family about the calamity that happened last night with the England world cup football team. Of course watching it we were all tense. After the disallowed goal son couldn't sit still and had to go and watch the game in the solitude of the kitchen. I was told to stop shouting at the telly. During the second half an eerie silence descended onto our TV room.

Husband later said, 'You know I'm not that upset. The Man United fans have always cared more about their team than England, and now I know how they feel.'

I felt cheated: I'd had great difficulty in engaging with the World Cup this year but finally after the last England group game I got hooked. (Perhaps due to that goal by the Spurs striker above) Of course I thoroughly enjoyed watching the wall to wall football all the time but I also wanted England to do well. With such good squad and manager, on paper, surely we should do well? Besides, I had no-one else to cheer: Finns had got nowhere near qualifying and even the Swedes failed to reach South Africa.

Jason Isaacs, otherwise known as Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter when asked one BBC1's Breakfast Show about the football said, 'I'm supporting Spain, Liverpool-on-sea, anyway.'

So there we have it, if the English care more about the club football, and the players obviously do, how an earth can we expect the national team even want to do well?

Is English football the victim of its own success? We have world leading club football but cannot put together an English team worth its oranges at half time.

And if you didn't already know it, we all root for Spurs and cannot wait for the next season, especially as we hopefully will have a much shorter journey to watch the games at White Hart Lane.