The First Vuvuzela in Darlington

The First Vuvuzela in Darlington

I was actually sitting on the toilet when I heard it.

At first, I imagined that my level of concentration had caused me to emit the kind of noise occasionally heard in football ground toilets (and no I don't mean 'They were effin' shite.')

But this wasn't the case.

If the World Cup wasn't happening, I'd probably not have recognised it. A plaintive, muted drone, a little like the mother in Charlie Brown, slowed down - but probably most closely resembling the noise made by the Ox in Kurtz' settlement in Apocalypse Now as it is beheaded in slow motion.

The first vuvuzela on my street.

Played disinterestedly by a middle-class child, the kind of curly-haired fop more interested in computer games than football, but the kind persuaded by the wall-to-wall hype to give England Town and David Rooney a look until he gets bored. Dad, a successful local businessman, has of course timed his holiday to perfection; and while his partner runs the office, has slipped over to SA for a few days - purchasing outside the Paraguay game, at a cost way-over-the-odds, said horn from a dreadlocked roadside seller. Probably his only encounter with an authentic South African on the trip.

Got to be, hasn't it?

Surely only the most-middle class of places has people who could afford to bring home a real vuvuzela? Well, up north at least - I would imagine Highbury and Stoke Newington rock to the sound as we speak.

My point is that the ubiquitous sound, heard live by me for the first time, surely captures a point in the zeitgeist - a point before next season when every scally is selling knockoff zelas with Michael Lampard's picture all over them.

A future point at which the sad trumpet has lost its novelty value, and is now simply an annoyance (if it wasn't already.) Imagine that 16-stone bald guy in front of you who yells 'ponce' at every player who doesn't actually kill to get to the ball, while spitting small pieces of pie into the air. Are you going to jauntily point your zela at his head when Cristiano Nani does a pony trick?

I thought not.

So rejoice, in a pre-zela world, where innocence - and relative social order - still pertains.