There are days when the bitter vinegar of life sloshes around in your heart like soiled underpants in a washing machine, and this is one of them. ‘What’ you ask yourself ‘is the point in carrying hope in your heart? Better to despair and be done with it’. What’s driven me to this point are the events in Paris just twelve hours before the time of writing, when the Irish soccer team lost its last chance to travel to South Africa next summer to attend the glamour and glory of the World Cup.