Tomorrow,those amongst us interested in football will be nervously biting our nails and calculating the permutations and combinations of win, lose or draw. Ah stuff it, let's just beat them Germans and save the mental arithmetic. A long lunch beckons. Kick off at 12:30pm.

I have resigned myself to owning a pink cast iron bath in perpetuity. While I was able to wrestle the old wardrobe into the skip, I didn't attempt the bath and someday my vertebrae will thank me. They didn't come and collect the skip today of course, (the skip owners I mean, not my vertebrae) despite it being the day for it and it being full and ready to collect and all. Oh well, it can grace the front yard for another day.

The painters we got in did a really terrible job. Really, really, terrible. They painted shut the windows that opened and they sealed one shut with some sort of filler. There's paint everywhere -- on the deck, the window panes,the plants. Unfortunately they're not wholly to blame. They had no equipment and I should have given them an old sheet or something to catch the splashes. And I should have torn strips off them and refused to pay them. I'm ducking responsibility by saying that it was all Sally's idea in the first place. She's annoyed and pissed off too.

I got my plane tickets today. I can now look at my Yen, match ticket and plane ticket and think that I may really be going. I know I keep going on about all this but it's quite exciting.

I have a quandary though. I have a little Canon IXUS, a Nikon F20 35mm and a teenchy digital spy camera. The IXUS is broken which is a pity coz it would be the ideal camera for this trip as it fits into my jeans pocket, has a zoom lens and takes decent pictures. The Nikon is too big to carry around and the L'Espion too crappy. I could gamble and try and pick up something in Japan on Monday night, but I must have a camera for Tuesday. It would kill me not to get pictures of being at the match. I did look at low end 35mm point and shoot cameras, but I can't justify spending the money. I'd like to pick up a cheap(er) digital camera while I'm out there, but I can't be certain I'll be able too. I'll have to find some sucker, er, kind soul, to lend me a point and shoot for the trip.

We opened a new (joint) bank account. Now we have to move all standing orders and mortgage repayments. Nightmare.