I feel the Earth move

England was hit by an earthquake this week... England was mildly shaken by an earthquake this week... Small Earthquake in England, not many tea cups rattled. I asked four of my relatives, who all live about 100km from the epicentre (or Ground Zero, Lincolnshire, as I call it), whether the earth moved for them, and two said they slept through it. The others were shaken, but not stirred.

Having used up all the standard earthquake jokes and cliches in the first paragraph, let me tell you that Lincolnshire has a history of earthquakes. In 1185, the cathedral suffered structural damage, and had to be rebuilt. The rebuilt Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for over 200 years, until the central tower was destroyed in a storm.

Further earthquake news: the Saarland (memories of learning the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles for GCSE history come flooding back) was also hit by an earthquake a few days ago. This earthquake was due to mining subsidence. I think the human race should be given more credit for this kind of thing. Bacteria and plants got there first in changing the composition of the atmosphere, Dinosaurs lived ages, got fossilized and stomped around a lot, but we can cause significant earthquakes by digging out the earth from beneath our feet and waiting for the ground to fall, with only the loss of the odd chimney. I visited a mining museum near Essen last year, and the guide said that the Ruhr area had sunk by 30 metres over the last couple of centuries due to mining subsidence. I think this is a much greater achievement than a high building, and as a monument to human endeavour it is less prone to fires, storms and earthquakes.

Using the rather tenuous connection of Chile to earthquakes, here is the legendary Battle of Santiago from the 1962 world cup.

The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game.