Well done, Queen and England

Queenie, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

What a day!

Queen Elizabeth, at 80, and dressed in royal blue, officially opens the new Ascot. I remember seeing her mother, also Queen Elizabeth, at 80, at Windsor races, also dressed in royal blue. Must have been 1980 or so. Our present queen is doing a great job. Brilliant!

What a brilliant first day of Royal Ascot! Sunshine. Good horses. Great jockeys. A fairy tale win for a ex-broken-down horse from Australia, wnning the major sprint prize. Excellent BBC coverage. Even well backed favourites winning. Watch out for Nyarhini tomorrow (Wednesday) and, even more so, Ivy Creek and Dragon Dancer later in the week. And if it rains a bit, who knows? The Whistling Teal. What a feast!

And, England top their group in the World Cup and they avoid Germany in the next round, setting up a possible quarter final against Holland, of all countries in Gelsenkirchen on 1st July at 16.00!!!!! The 2-2 result was exactly the one we predicted in the school pool, to match the 4-0 we predicted yesterday, so we are making progress, finally! What a match that quarter final will be, if they both get there! And after that, maybe Brazil in the semi's, again, if Brazil make it that far.

In the meantime, those SWEDES, who were so very very very lucky to score against Paraguay in the LAST minute can pay for their luck by being thrashed by Germany on Saturday, setting Germany up with a quarter final - match of the tournament - against MIGHTY Argentina!!!!!

FIFA have chosen this photo for their website, and like the oranje gek in noord photo, it has been viewed so many times, already almost 1,000 times in 4 hours!