Mountain Labours - Brings Forth Mouse

I write in the aftermath of the England team's first two games in the World Cup. Both were weary travesties which make it fairly certain that after their next outing, on Wednesday, the lads will be limping home.
What makes it so annoying  is the sense of anticlimax, after a commercial buildup so vast and overhyped that many people must have have been expecting something along the lines of the second coming of Christ.  Every shop has been piled high with souvenir tat - cheap St George's flags, facepaints, and the dreaded vuvuzela. I have no doubt that most of this junk is made in China. Even worse has been the buildup on Sky Sports, which has run commercials that Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud of.
Vast, phantom lions roaring in the clouds above the white cliffs of Dover no less, while Wayne Rooney, our brothel-creeping striker, has been depicted much as French artists used to depict Napoleon.

Roll on Wednesday, when Slovenia will doubtless send England home and put us all out of our misery.