I swung back up to the main town, passing through the Lifeboat Museum on the way and learning more than I ever thought I'd find out about the importance of big orange boats to save people trapped at sea. 

Penzance struck me as a very sweet place, though that could have just been the tourist in me. I also can't decide if calling your main thoroughfare "Market Jew Street" is complimentary, or somehow harking back to Shylock days. You know, those Jews, they're such little money-grubbing merchants and all, etc. etc. Anyway, I'm taking it as complimentary that there's actually an English street with the word "Jew" in it. 

Note English flag, at left. (The Cornish flag, by contrast, is a big white cross on a black field.)

I ended up in a pub at the outskirts of the MJS, and I never got the name, but it wasn't too packed and there was room for a single person to have a pint while watching the game on an oversized screen. There was a dog wandering around us; various people threw beer mats at him to see if he'd fetch, but with chips and food around he wasn't too interested. Someone brought in fish and chips from outside to eat and I discovered I was starving. A bearded, hatted man next to me who said his name was Roy ("but my friends call me Snowy") would jump up at any particularly good save by England's goalkeeper and shout, "Give that man a raise!" (Difference with America, Part 453b: We'd probably shout "He's finally earning his paycheck!")

I had a nice chat with a guy who reminded me of Tim from the UK version of "The Office." He'd lost his right leg to the knee in a car accident, and said he came from nine generations of Cornish locals. I told him to visit New York, get out a bit. "Too many people!" he insisted.

It occurred to me that while watching the match, sitting with the locals, I was in the midst of a pun. I was enjoying the World Cup with a bunch of Cornish Game Men.

I amuse me.

England lost, sadly, in penalty shots at the end. While the drama-queen histrionics during the game that went on any time someone got kicked or fouled in some way (it was such overacting, in the hopes of getting some kind of advantage from the referee that it was pathetic) were annoying (mostly by Portugal, I should note) I was touched by the display of emotion by players when England lost. Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup -- it doesn't matter: At home, the losers do not fall down on the pitch and weep openly. They either have more heart in the game here, or they're afraid to come home having lost. Not sure which.