The journey back to Cyprus was interesting. Despite warnings about full body scans being introduced at Heathrow and a good half hour spent choosing appropriate underwear at the crack of dawn, just in case, I was disappointed to find that I was not scanned at all. Why did I bother, I obviously don’t look like a terrorist? I could have stayed in bed another half an hour.

Five hours later, landing at Larnaca airport, I was heartened to see that you could be mistaken for thinking you were back in the UK, it has become so green with all the rain. The fact that it was only a couple of degrees warmer than London was disappointing when the whole point of being in Cyprus is warmth and sunshine. But the good news is that with all the rain the water cuts are over. Thank god, it was so uncivilised running out of water. And anyone with young boys knows that they don’t need any more excuses never to wash.

I was reassured to see that in my absence life on the island continued pretty much as usual. The UN Secretary General came and went. Talat upset everyone by meeting Ban Ki-moon in his ‘presidential palace’ rather than his ‘residence’. Downer upset everyone even more and is now officially the scapegoat. Christofias is also pretty unpopular and the government coalition is threatening to fall apart. So basically, a bit of excitement on the political front but no progress on the talks. It makes you wonder, does anyone actually want a solution?

Where there has been progress is on the smoking issue. A friend called yesterday to let me know they he had found a coffee shop in Nicosia that is now outrageously defying the smoking ban. That is good news. Soon there will be sunshine again and Cyprus may be forced to give up the hideous smoking ban fiasco all together and normal life will resume.

And talking of scapegoats, I see that poor old JT has been sacked as England football captain and replaced by Rio Ferdinand. OK, so he had an affair with his team-mate’s ex, tried to shut everyone up about it and clearly makes shed loads of money every week, perhaps more than many people make in a lifetime. So what? Is it about his morals or his money or about not really wanting to win anything? He is good at what he does and was committed to the captaincy. Now we have Rio.

Rio might turn out to be an even better scapegoat when we don’t win, yet again, if it is morals we are concerned with. When he wasn’t at Euro 2000, he was in Ayia Napa with a few other footballers, drinking and filming each other having sex. This we know because a Sunday paper got hold of the footage. He is currently serving a four-match ban for violent conduct on the pitch, after elbowing a Hull player the other week and the Daily Mail has called him a ‘boozer, love cheat and drug-test dodger’. It all bodes well for an interesting world cup for the media.

I can only conclude that there is something deep in the English psyche that really doesn’t want to win the world cup even though we say we do. (Maybe we have more in common with the Cypriots than we think.) The strange thing is that some of us fans really do want to win. But half the population clearly just enjoys the ritual of not winning and we need our scapegoats to explain why. They are shaping up nicely everywhere……