Confessions of a football widow

I am a merry football widow. I don't just survive football tournaments - I capitalise.

While my lover is overwhelmed by his consuming passion for the England team and therefore oblivious to everything else, I do all the things I have problems getting away with normally. Wild, extravagant single-girl things.

This time, for example, I will shop. I shall hit Bond Street, and buy clothing with no obvious practical application. Shoes with heels so vertiginous, I will never be able to wear them for longer than ten minutes at a time. Shoes which are such a lurid shade of orange they won't coordinate with any outfit I own. A full-length, black sateen ballgown I've had my eye on for a while in Zara. Diamonds and Marni. The floors of our hall and bedroom will silt up with designer carrier bags, but my lover won't notice, because he will not be capable of leaving the sofa, or turning his head the necessary 90 degrees to get a squiz at the scene.

In addition to the shopping, I will travel everywhere by cab, safe in the knowledge that my lover won't notice the tell-tale throb of their engines as they pull up outside the flat. He will be too busy jumping up from the sofa with joy because of a goal, or slumping to his knees and hiding his face in abject misery because of a missed penalty, to be disapproving.

I will spend drunken evenings in the company of men I fancied at university. I will flirt with them with abandon, return home, tell my lover what I've been doing, and he'll respond with, 'That's nice, love? GO ON, OWEN!' I will feed his hideous, lovingly nurtured yucca plant Domestos, and disassemble the abdominiser he insists on keeping in one corner of the living room. I won't shave my legs. And when I've done all that, I will go shopping again. Come on, England!

World Cup? What World Cup?