After the visa kerfuffle of the Cup of Nations, getting to Poland should have been easy enough... if I were a competent individual, which I'm not. I had initially been booked to fly out on Thursday, but in February Swiss Air decided to change the flight. I was in Cameroon at the time and not entirely focused so I agreed without thinking to their suggested change. Only on Wednesday did I notice that was only due to land in Warsaw four hours before the opening game - and that with a 45-minute turnaround in Zurich that had all manner of potential to go wrong.
So I rebooked to a LOT flight on Thursday, departing at 17:20, or so I thought. My cab arrived at Heathrow at about twenty-five to three - plenty of time. Or it would have been had I not realised my laptop bag felt oddly light as I took it out of the boot. I checked inside: idiotically, I'd managed to leave the flat without my laptop. So I set off back home, thinking I still had enough time.
I was reckoning without the weather. Rain had begun to lash down. There was a crash on the M4. We crawled. We got past the accident and the driver, sensing my anxiety, speeded up. We skidded through a large puddle and he slowed down again. We ran into traffic in Chiswick and Hammersmith. A woman took an eternity about parking in a side street off the Fulham Palace Road. I got back to my flat at 15:25. I raced in, grabbed my laptop from the desk and raced back out again.
We flew back. No traffic round Baron's Court. A smooth route on the A4. And then, just when it seemed we might arrive at a little after four, we hit traffic five miles out of Heathrow - the rain, presumably, slowing things down. 16:05 became 16:10, 16:10 became 16:15.
And then a break, we spun left down the slip road and had a clear route in. I arrived at 16:25. I raced in, ran up to the desk - and saw that the flight didn't actually leave till 17:50. In the end, it was about half an hour late as well - a whole heap of tension for nothing; not to mention the wasted cash.
One of the beauties of the format of the Euros is that there is tension - for something - from the off. Group B is a classic Euros group: Germany and the Netherlands reprising their rivalry and facing a significant challenge to qualify from Denmark and Portugal.
It seems to have been forgotten that Denmark, who play the Netherlands today, won their qualifying group, finishing three points above Portugal. They have a balanced, settled side and, while they probably won't make it through, the 5.69/2 available for them to go through may be too long. Similarly Portugal look a little short at 2.427/5.
For all four sides, attack seems stronger than defence. Portugal scored 21 and conceded 12 in their eight games, making them the leakiest side to qualify. Denmark scored 15 and conceded six, they Dutch scored 37 and let in eight, while Germany scored 34 and conceded seven. Germany have looked shaky at the back recently, conceding three to Ukraine and five to Switzerland (albeit in a game in which none of their Bayern side played). Group B should, in theory be the group with the most goals 2.526/4
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Germany should beat a Portugal side that remains less than the sum of its parts and 2.186/5 seems reasonable value on them. The temptation, though, must be to lay the Netherlands against Denmark at 1.738/11. All sides can take time to get going - look at Spain at the World Cup, losing their first game to Switzerland - and the wobbly form of the Dutch was seen in their friendly defeat to Bulgaria 10 days ago (although they have subsequently beaten both Slovakia and Northern Ireland).