Mundial (1)

For my World Cup balcony barbecue on Saturday I made this Guatemalan ceviche. (Shrimp, juice of three limes, chopped onion, garlic and chillies, fresh coriander, dried oregano and plum tomatoes.) I skipped on the salsa inglesa (Worcestershire sauce) and you can't get chiltepes in the UK. Almost up to the standard of the one pictured here and all these in this Flickr slideshow.

The whole city went eerily quiet at 2pm. There didn't even seem to be any boats on the river when the game in Frankfurt kicked off.

Over in Guatemala V let off a faja of cuetes outside our house when England scored! She was elated with the win, although she did nominate Roque Santa Cruz mangazo of the match.

All of Guatemala's terrestrial channels show the games at the same time − the polite British notion that some people might want to watch something else just hasn't occurred to them. I shall be out there for the knock-out stages and am looking forward to the general silliness of it. There's a bloke with a substantial crib in our neighbourhood in Antigua who flies the flag of St George from a tall flagpole on his roof year-round.

The Argie commentators on the ESPN feed greeted the Paraguayan own-goal with their customary "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooo...ooooooooooooool". On the BBC Motty was rabitting on about some factlet his computer had just served him and was caught out when Beckham's free kick went straight in. (Earlier, he'd referred to the opposition as 'Uruguay' before a ball had been kicked. Even my father asked me whereabout exactly Paraguay can be found...and he used to live in Argentina!)

Mexico − my dark horses − got off to a great start, with two excellent goals in the second half against Iran. Portugal, rather like England, just wanted to break with recent history and actually win their first match, even if it meant grinding out a 1-0. The Argies looked annoyingly competent against the Ivorians, especially in the first half, but the Africans made a game of it late on. Shame about the Ticos on Friday, but they're not out of it yet.