Breakfast the Three-Hundred-and Fourth

Cinnamon and raisin bagel with apricot jam.

Most likely this is the only time I will ever write anything about FIFA, but amongst all the hoohah about poppy-wearing, I have to say I really don't know what they're so fussed about. I've never held on to a poppy longer than five minutes.

In all likelihood, the players will lose their poppies before they make out of the changing room. The few that make is far as the pitch will almost certainly fall off there. And given we live in these dark days of pin-less poppies, there's little danger of them posing any risk of injury.

Not like in my school days when one ran the risk of impailment if one wasn't wary about where one flung one's poppy-adourned jumper: I must confess I once sat on one... Still, the encounter wasn't enough to make me scorn prickly poppies. I was bemoaning their loss the other day when my father told me that in his day poppies were attached with wire that you passed though your jumper etc and twisted to keep them in place. Now that is a cunning idea: limited risk of being scewered, and harder to lose.