Soccer: Sun shines on England

What a way to spend the weekend.

The temperatures rising towards the 90s, the beaches are only half full, the roads are clear and what do 31 million of us choose to do? Pull the curtains and put ourselves through the torture of watching the national side play a winter game in their traditional halting style.

After months of build-up and weeks of flag-brandishing fervour, the nationwide psychosis of optimism finally got the therapy of a game.

It was won, thanks not to any England player's boot, but to the wayward and momentarily forgetful head of a Paraguayan defender who scored the only goal.

Thus, three points; but in so nervy a fashion that many of the home spectators must wonder if they can take much more of this.

A watching Wayne Rooney did not look impressed.

Still, at least England fans in Germany kept out of trouble.

That dubious honour went to, of all unlikely places, London's Canary Wharf, where 200 fans were caught up in a mass brawl.

So ended a day of madness, of barely suppressed hysteria, and of perhaps the saner half of the nation going to considerable lengths to avoid anything that involved the aggressive use of metatarsals.

And yet it had dawned so full of warm hope.

It was going to be a scorcher, and Britain was up early, ready to stock up for the tantalising hours ahead.

Tesco could hardly believe their luck, licking their not insignificant corporate chops at the thought, so they told us, of selling 15 million barbecues, 54 million lollies and five million cases of beer over the World Cup period.

At Bluewater shopping centre in Kent people were queuing outside M&S before 9am and it continued that way until, with an hour to go before kick-off, customers began to evacuate the country's shops.

Spokeswoman Jane Sell said: "One o'clock was like a trigger for the car parks to start to empty.

You saw lots of men saying 'I've got to get out of here'."It was a morning, too, for putting out even more flags.

Up in Croxteth, Merseyside, Wayne Rooney's 74-year-old grandmother, Pat Morrey, was putting the finishing touches to the 22 England flags decking her terrace home.

But the nation's men were not so relaxed.

In mid-morning came a report that more than half of English men were exhibiting the symptoms of PMT (pre-match tension): moodiness, sleeplessness and low sex drive.

Many of their partners may disagree that these symptoms are necessarily tied to an impending football match.

But not every man was biting his nails.

In London's Oxford Street, with just 15 minutes to go before kick-off, Stewart Thompson reported: "I was in a sports shop and everything was normal.

I went to pay for my stuff, and when I turned back round, the shop had completely emptied out.

It was 1.45 and the whole place was deserted.

There were no queues at the checkout in Sainsbury's either.

It's mad."Indeed.

For a few hours yesterday, on high streets like Newcastle's, tumbleweed would not have looked out of place, blowing past shops largely empty of customers.

The Hour was approaching.

Before screens in parks, halls, clubs, pubs, and homes sat millions who were about to put their faith in a team that has turned disappointing their fans into a recognisable art form.

The whistle blew.

A nation held its good luck charms, its novelty World Cup drinking glasses, and its breath.

Over in Frankfurt, an estimated 40,000 England fans let out a roar.

Some were in the match stadium, but nigh on 10,000 watched the game on giant screens erected on stilts in the middle of the River Main.

After just four minutes, a Beckham free-kick was deflected into the net for what seemed then like the first of quite a few goals.

The thousands of England fans crammed along Frankfurt's river banks let out a triumphant cheer and began jumping up and down.

Back home, there would be some who would have been aware of this excitement only by accident.

Some were taking advantage of the clearish roads to celebrate World Naked Bike Ride Day in Manchester, York and other places.

And in Canterbury, where the city's second annual gay pride event found a goodly number who preferred country and western to the BBC's resident footie enthusiast, John Motson.

The temperature was touching 30C (86F), which made London even hotter than Madrid, where Beckham normally performs.

But he and his colleagues were not performing, not really.

They were winning, but by such a slender margin that every Paraguayan attack (and there were increasing amounts of them) induced handkerchieves-in-mouths moments for England fans.

Some England supporters' stress levels were being clinically measured.

The Loughborough University Sports Science and Medical School had attached probes to some of the replica-shirt-wearing classes and were logging their heart rates.

No seizures were reported, and none are expected, at least at the group stage.

Back in Frankfurt, among the riverside fans was Mark Toner.

As Michael Owen was substituted, he said: "England fans only usually get violent when they start losing and that's hardly going to happen today, is it?"That may have been true of Germany, but at Canary Wharf, usually the haunt of braces-wearing forex dealers, a sunny afternoon in front of a giant screen was about to turn ugly.

Around 200 of the 6,000 people there were caught up in a mass brawl.

The screen was turned off, but no arrests were made.

Trouble, too, at a screen in Liverpool.

Where are the Frankfurt police when you need them?The end of the agony was now only seconds away.

A final Paraguay attack, a fumbled clearance - the pressure lasted until the moment when England fans heard that sweetest sound: the referee's whistle at the end of a nervy win.

Additional reporting by Ruth Elkins in Frankfurt and Martin Hodgson in London

- INDEPENDENT