That is to say, signing up for this whole Kos thing was particularly bad timing on my part..
When I originally joined this site I had every intention of being fairly active - and I did post a few comments on several diaries.
However, shortly after I signed up the World Cup started. I have an English mother a Welsh father and various relatives from Ireland and Holland - so the World Cup Finals take on a meaning that I'm afraid not many of the fine Americans that participate on this site would truly understand.
We live, dream and eat football (soccer). It means literally everything to us - more important than sex, more sustaining than food, more life consuming than politics.
So you watch in hope, praying your team will lurch from one round to the next, literally going through withdrawal waiting for the next game.. trying to satisfy your need for a fix by watching the Brazilians, supporting the US or swearing at the Italians. Finally of course, unless your team are the French, Brazilians, Argentines or in this case, the Italians - eventually they lose and weeks of misery that the worst lovelorn heartache can never hope to achieve ensues.
You think I'm exaggerating.. not a chance. Witness the mindless jingoism of British tabloids, heaping blame and fury on our team's management (the head coach was Swedish - it's the first time I've seen right wing nutters go racist on the Swedes, it would almost be funny if it wasn't true), as well as the poor unfortunates that managed to knock them out of the competition.
Witness burning effigies of players accused of cheating, or failing to realise their potential hanging from dozens of the nation's soccer stadiums.
Witness the ranting of pundits slamming everything and everyone insight. Coaches that failed, players that flopped, pitches with grass that was too long or too dry.. you name it, it will be spat upon - God help those poor souls whose only crime was that they were married to or were fathered by the team itself.
So finally after several weeks of mourning I eventually felt I could face the political sections of news sites, and had enough energy returning to start contributing to this site.
It's slow going, small baby steps.. but eventually I will start reading and commenting on things that interest me besides the Almighty God of Football - PBUH.
Being British I have fairly strong opinions on issues on both sides of the Atlantic - opinionated I believe my wife calls it. I'm not a supporter of extremism on either side of the political spectrum, however in Europe we can't understand how the most sophisticated and possibly advanced nation in the world still doesn't understand that Global Warming is in fact real and that it's happening now - or how it's government can get away with spying on it's own population, starting wars for personal reasons (revenge for the assassination attempt on Dad perhaps?), the lies and the scandal, the cronyism - it doesn't make sense.
We accept that from our politicians because we know they're corrupt, and everything that issues from their mouths is false. But we expected better of the US.
We loved Clinton, he was excellent - a toking, sex addict in charge of nuclear weapons, bloody brilliant - absolutely top drawer, well done for voting him in (can we have him back please?). And we want more of that, not these namby pamby right wing nutters, who believe they were chosen by God to run the country whilst at the same time praying to God that anything they've done will eventually fix itself.
We may like to laugh when they say things like "Evolution is just a theory" (a scientific theory is something proven to be fact by many documented examples or experiments - so the irony of their choice of words is especially amusing) or that "Global Warming is still under debate" where? Arkansas? Because everywhere outside the US this hasn't been a debate for decades..
But we really do like you guys, no really we do! That is those of you that didn't fall for the pre-school colour coded terror alerts and put that moron back in office.
Anyway I guess I will finish by saying that now that International Football is over for a few months, and the regular season is about to ensue.. I will have the patience and the energy to contribute more than a few diary entries on subjects that "only interest myself" (to quote one of my commenters.. a fine fellow no doubt, whose opinion is valued and taken onboard).