Ian's blog

Ok, so let's recap up to this point, as - from today - this here thing is going up on the TalkSPORT website as well as in my little corner of the inter web.

So far;

- Myself and Her Majesty's press pack following England are staying at a hotel on Copacabana beach called the 'Lemmy'. No one as yet has been Killed By Death (in joke for headbangers only)

- I've done my Graham Taylor impression on our coach travels at least 10 times, and at the moment everyone still finds it funny.

Well, 'noise-gate', as detailed in yesterday's blog, was thankfully a one-off incident.

The guys in charge of us press boys & girls following England around Brazil gave me the use of their office on the 11th floor of our hotel to do my piece into Alan's breakfast show this morning, and with no one within earshot I was able to sneak back to my own room afterwards having disturbed nobody at all. Phew.

Noise-gate.

It's the first huge scandal of Brazil 2014 and I'm right at the centre of it - all because I work daft hours!

"We are flying down to RIOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" exclaimed esteemed football writer John Richardson in his best Bryan Ferry voice as we headed for Gate 26 at Miami Airport.

Much better reference than any of that 'Route One' Duran Duran nonsense.

Our last morning in Miami and precious little to report. 

The England squad landed in Rio around the time I was surfacing to speak to Sunday Scoreboard presenters Geoff Peters & Alvin Martin, so us journos with the specific task of following the Three Lions will be 24 hours behind them by the time we land in Brasil first thing Monday morning - and there'll be no slacking off once we've grabbed our luggage off the carousels (hopefully), as it'll be pretty much straight to England's training session and an opportunity to speak with one or two players at a special event in the afternoon. 

*Yes I've shortened the title - hoped it would make a snappy acronym...I was wrong!!!*

Well that was...different.

Golf tournaments regularly get suspended for electrical storms, but not usually football matches. At least not until today anyway.

Barry University sits in an unremarkable part of suburban Miami, flanked on all sides by one story condos and corrugated iron. But it looked pleasant enough in the strong morning sunshine as we arrived on campus to see a full England training session, rather than the 15-minute vignettes we've been allowed up to this point.

The sun is out.

I repeat - the sun is out and not obscured by any of those cloud thingies.

I could easily pass for a meteorologist in South Florida, actually. It appears to be almost impossible to give a fully accurate forecast for 12 hours ahead, never mind a 3 or 5 day summary. Sunshine wasn't on the menu necessarily, but I'm not complaining - really I'm not.

It's said that the cost of building & renovating the stadia in Brazil for the upcoming jamboree was an estimated *adopts Dr Evil voice*....$3bn.

Funnily enough, that figure was trotted out again last night as Jim, Laurie and myself stood outside the sprawling Marlins Arena, home to the Miami Marlins baseball team which, I discovered, because of bond schemes and the like have apparently resulted in a similar bottom line to the one quoted above. Frightening really, especially as the 2-time MLB champs (last time 2003) rarely sell out the 36,000 capacity indoor arena.

The rain finally abated late Monday afternoon - I'm sure you're thrilled skinny for me on that one.

And in even better news, the Comrex broadcast equipment which was still steadfastly on 'everybody out' mode for me was fixed in a matter of minutes by talkSPORT's freshly-arrived engineer Adam Reed - a miracle worker if ever there was one! That meant my interviews on Extra Time and Breakfast were finally in broadcast quality and my mind can focus on things other than...faulty dongles.

Stop sniggering at the back.