World Cup Diary - South Africa 2010

Sunday 4 July

A day without football. Oh no. What can we do? Where can we go? Thankfully Cape Town is a pleasure to behold, and the constant backdrop of Table Mountain, even more stunning when lit up at night, though I think that was just for the World Cup, is something that can interest any observer.

After an afternoon on a restaurant balcony down by the waterfront we bumped into some locals who were to come within an ace of introducing us to Mick Jagger.



A daughter, 17, of the aforementioned South African family was invited to a party at the Rolling Stone's Six-star hotel, The One and Only Hotel in downtown Cape Town, so we tagged along in the vain hope of an invite.

Clearly Jagger felt there was nothing we had to offer that interested him, unlike the young female, so we had to make do with sitting at the hotel bar and mingling with mere mortals such as Clarence Seedorf, Miss South Africa 1997 and Paris Hilton.

As it turns out, the party that Jagger hosted was a fairly muted affair with just him, a handful of young girls, and some mineral water.

Much to our chagrin, the call never came to join him for some drinks so we took revenge.

"Excuse me," we said to the bar man. "Can we have two mojitos on room 807, please?"

"Sure," came the response.

"And plenty of Brown Sugar," we added.

After a brief discussion between some members of staff decided they needed a signature so we signed 'M.Jagger' and it was explained that our young step-daughters were up-stairs with the singer of hits such as 'Start Me Up' and 'Honky Tonk Women'. And then in a Jumping Jack Flash we got our cocktails with nothing more needed to be said.

A brief thought was given to ordering a 250 dollar bottle of Champaigne but we decided it wise to quit while we were ahead as You Can't Always Get What You Want.

It is not known as to Jagger's reaction when he had to check out only to find there were some erroneous goings on with his bill but rumours that he became a Street Fighting Man are apparently wide of the mark.

Monday 5 July, Tuesday 6 July, Wednesday 7 July and Thursday 8 July

After the shenanigans of the day before we ticked off a few tourist 'must-dos' - Cable car to the top of Table Mountain, took in the splendid views, and came back down. This was followed by boat trips and a visit to (Arjen) Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent a large period of his time in captivity.

We bagged some semi-final tickets and watched Holland scrape past Uruguay 3-2 to make it to the first World Cup final in 32 years.

Earlier on in the day we met Alan Shearer who told us he felt the Dutch would bottle it and Uruguay would make it into Sunday's final. When I told him that Fergie felt the Dutch would win he quipped "Well, what does he know?" Indeed.

On Thursday I booked my ticket to leave Cape Town via a 27 hour train journey to Johannesburg. Not the most comfortable way to get between the two cities, I know, but it was the most cost-effective.