Is it a bee? Is it a plane? No, it’s a Vuvuzela.

For the past week millions of households across the UK, or even the world for that matter, could have been forgiven for thinking that a swarm of bees had nestled in the back of their TV sets while they watched the World Cup. This has consequently put a sting in the tail of the British public, who have found this incessant droning quite irritating, and made the competition not as entertaining as they’d hoped.

However, as we all discovered, it was not a giant frenzy of bees hidden inside the stadium, it was a mass of people playing an African horn called a vuvuzela. I mean, I had heard of them before the tournament started but did I think you’d be able to hear them right throughout the match?! No, is the answer. Neither did I think they’d cause so much controversy that a request was sent to FIFA to get them banned, although this was declined.

Most people can’t stand the noise, my mum and sister included, and it would be so easy to agree with them. I have to admit it’s not the most pleasant of sounds, and if you’re like me who aims to watch most of the matches, it threatens to make your viewing of the World Cup pretty tedious. It also gives my mum some ammunition to convince me that the Coronation Street theme tune would be much better to listen to in the evenings, however I’ve started to forget the vuvuzelas are even there.

I’m all for tradition as well, and if this is how South Africa expresses itself throughout football matches, then let them. This is the first World Cup on African soil, so we’re bound to experience something new and different during matches. Even though you may not be able to hear fans chanting throughout World Cup matches, I think the vuvuzela adds a new dimension to the atmosphere.

Anyway, what are us Brits complaining about?! Thousands of us have already bought the plastic version that has been exported over here, and are quite happy to test it out in our homes and on the streets. Even my good friend Lou magically found one lurking in her house, so who knows, you may also find a vuvuzela under your stairs or in your garden shed.

The vuvuzelas have also given us an opportunity to crack endless jokes at our own nations expense. After the game against Algeria, lots of quips surfaced, some of my favourites being, “That’s not vuvuzelas, that’s the grass snoring”; or, “That’s not vuvuzelas, that’s the sound of a whole nation booing”. So, the vuvuzelas in a sense have given us some comedic relief from England’s poor performances on the pitch.

It seems that slowly everyone is warming to the African horn, and hopefully this World Cup will be remembered for the right reasons on the field, and not just for that annoying noise that got on everyones nerves.

We’ve spent enough time blowing our own trumpets about England’s World Cup chances, so why not let Africa blow theirs?

British Tennis: Double-faulting or serving aces?

The state of British tennis has been widely and publicly criticised over the last decade or so, and since the retirement of Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman there has been an alarming lack of serious up and coming players, with the obvious exception of Andy Murray.

This apparent dearth of talent has been realised in recent Davis Cup ties, where Great Britain have been relegated to the third tier of the Davis Cup structure, Europe/Africa Zone Group 1, on the back of a 3-2 loss to Poland. Even though they have been seeded first in this group, they still failed to beat the unseeded Lithuania.

Andy Murray has also made himself ineligible to be selected for the team, citing a busy tournament schedule throughout the year as his reason. Although this means the British team doesn’t feature a player from the top 100, this should eventually give the other, much lower ranked, British players invaluable match practice on the Davis Cup stage.

Great Britain are also only represented by two male players in the draw for Wimbledon, both of which are from Scotland, meaning there is no Englishman for the first time in Wimbledon’s 133 year history. This has called Roger Draper’s position, as head of the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), into serious question. With tennis being one of the most commercial sports in the United Kingdom, behind only football, rugby and cricket, and valued at around £1.3 billion, we should surely have more talented players coming through the ranks.

Around half a million adults play tennis every week in the UK, and with this number bound to increase with Wimbledon starting next week, this number needs to translate down to the younger generation if Britain are going to have some bright prospects for the future. Wimbledon always provides great inspiration for children to take up tennis, and the ever growing presence of Andy Murray in the latter stages of the competition can only enhance that.

Of course, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, or any of the grand slams for that matter, would do the power of good for British tennis, but it is also the myth that tennis is only played by white middle class people that hinders the growth of the sport. While Roger Draper claims that tennis is played by people of a mixture of backgrounds and races, it seems that more is needed to be done to get a larger amount of children interested in tennis.

However with planned spending cuts set to hit tennis more than most sports it has to be questioned how much faith there is in the UK producing more Henmans and Murrays to contest future competitions. This will inevitably make the LTAs job harder to discover hidden talent.

On the other hand British girls are seemingly flourishing, with both Laura Robson and Heather Watson winning junior Grand Slams in 2008 and 2009 respectively. While players like Anne Keothavong and Elena Baltacha aren’t sending massive shockwaves throughout women’s tennis, this new crop of players should encourage younger girls, and hopefully boys, to take up the sport.

So while women’s tennis in the UK is making great strides, men’s tennis is in dire straits, and at present there is no sign that that will change. With Fred Perry being our last Grand Slam winner back in the 1930s, who knows when we’ll have our next Grand Slam winner? While Andy Murray seems to be hitting the right balls to win one of those four elusive Slams, let’s just hope there’s a talented crop of youngsters following him.