EVEN WOOPI CAN'T ESCAPE LATEST CRAZE AS BOY BANISHED TO BACK PADDOCK

 David Moase reveals this dose of World Cup fever.....is not music to anyone's ears.

July 15: WE'RE all very happy here in our house this week - we have enjoyed a major breakthrough. Well, ‘happy' and ‘enjoyed' may not be the best words to describe our feelings, as you will soon gather.

The breakthrough is that after a number of years of trying we've finally managed to get our 13-year-old son interested in playing a musical instrument.

Well, ‘musical' may not be the best work either, as you will soon gather.

By now, I bet you're guessing he's taken up the drums - if only! If only it were the piano, the guitar, the clarinet, the trumpet, even the double bass.

No, the instrument our boy has finally taken to with a passion - the VUVUZELA! Yes, the vuvuzela, that plastic tube of torture that has driven people crazy around the world for the past month.

As the FIFA World cup now passes into memory, the lasting reminder will not be the slick passing of the champions Spain, not the hard tackling that marked the final, not the early eliminations of favourites Brazil and Argentina, not the rollercoaster fortunes of the Socceroos - it will be the soundtrack to the tournament in South Africa.

The constant buzzing made by thousands of vuvuzelas throughout each game, sounding like a swarm of a million angry wasps, will be what we remember most.

And not just because it was such a prominent part of the four weeks of football in Africa but because, as much as we wish, vuvuzelas will not go away.

They are destined to become as much a part of big-time sport as the Mexican wave, that product of the 1986 World Cup finals that took over stadiums throughout the world and gave everyone the chance to stretch their legs and boo those in the members' section at the same time when they didn't join in the fun.

Don't believe me? Well, consider this.

English writers returning from their country's dismal World Cup campaign reported the remarkable scene at Heathrow airport's immigration hall of thousands of supporters making their way home with one, two or three vuvuzelas sticking out of their carry-on bags.

Or while watching last week's bizarre LeBron James television special when he announced which NBA franchise he would join, I noticed the reporter in New York's Times Square was standing in front of a group of men selling - vuvuzelas.

Or in a small house in Woolgoolga (Woopi as our town is known on the NSW north coast), or in the middle of the neighbouring paddock where he is banished, where a 13-year-old does his best impression of a ship's fog horn on one of three vuvuzelas purchased for not much on eBay and makes plans to drive everyone crazy at the school athletics carnival.

At NRL and AFL games, at Wallabies test matches, as this summer's Ashes series - the smart money is on the drone of vuvuzelas becoming louder and louder (and the people selling ear plugs becoming richer and richer).