The great British summer of sport has already got into its faintly depressing, predictable groove. It's only the end of June and the England football team has been dumped out of a major football tournament, Andy Murray is wearing an unhappy look, and moaning about the Olympics has become a sport in itself.
There's at least two more months of this. Let's not get started on F1 racing cars screeching past Parliament, as the Government is being pressed to approve, with central London likely to resemble a scene from Wacky Races.
So much sport. Too much sport. But then so little of it at the same time.
A football match lasts 90 minutes. Yet the actual huff and puff is only part of it. There are endless hours of television and radio time devoted to gormless analysis, tiresome puns and a cavalier approach to grammar. And those are the trained broadcasters. If the interminable punditry wasn't enough, the advertising is worse still. Lithe athletes trying to sell you everything from expensive watches to cheap hamburgers and anti-blister plasters. Stuff you can't afford, should avoid and could do without. Sportsmen and women rattling a stick inside a swill bucket. Little sign of the Olympic ideal.
The mediocrity does cease temporarily, the sponsors and rent-a-quotes gracious enough to give way to a spot of sport from time to time. But by which time you're so utterly confused by the instant opinions, jingoism and forced excitement that it's like walking into a room and having no idea why you went in there. Ah yes, the England match.
We've done a pretty good job of remaining in a state of complete indifference until now. The football was remarkable. The patriotic fervour that is the hallmark of England's appearance at a tournament football was conspicuous by its absence. The dial turned up marginally as the national team strung together three serviceable performances. But defeat by Italy prompted little by way of hand wringing. In more hysterical times, tables in pub gardens would have been tipped over. In 2012, loss was met with a philosophical shrug. Perhaps we have grown up as a nation.
I like sport. Running, hitting things with sticks, jumping into sand. Pretty much the lot. But I don't know what it's for anymore, as it seems to have been hijacked by everyone and anyone.
Corporations cannot get enough – sport is like a fashion accessory to them. The right accoutrement can lend companies an appeal that they would otherwise find impossible to muster. It must work, though heaven knows why anyone would buy David Beckham-branded apparel, even though the former England skipper appears to be a good egg. It comes back to bite them. Sponsors couldn't ditch golfer Tiger Woods quickly enough once his philandering was exposed, and the acute embarrassment faced by taxpayer bailed-out RBS when it cancelled a £260,000 hospitality package at Wimbledon as millions couldn't get their money out of the bank was a study in fecklessness.
Sport is also reduced to a good knock-about for a bored media. Tennis star Andy Murray has my utmost sympathy. He is characterised as surly, lacking charisma and, worst of all, an England hater. All nonsense, of course, based chiefly on the witless questions and commentary from the media pack anxious for a Wimbledon "story".
At the moment, though, sport is serving as a welcome distraction from the remorseless gloom engulfing the world. Sport doesn't matter in a world where people die or get ill for no reason, or others live in poverty or in fear of losing their jobs. But, conversely, that's why it does matter. If there is no joy and light to offset the pain and the dark then what is the point of it all?
Already there have been moments of unmitigated splendour. Italy have advanced to the final of the Euros thanks primarily to the midfield gifts of Andrea Pirlo, whose right boot is the football equivalent of an Old Master's paintbrush. Meanwhile, two-time Wimbledon champion Rafael Nadal was knocked-out of the competition by Lukas Rosol, a player many times his opponent's inferior. While the underdog story was touching enough, Nadal's gracious interview in defeat was the mark of a true gentleman. The ideals are there, you just have to look for them.