The World Cup: The best teaching aid

Apart from that it’s fabulous.

The problem is the footie – I love it. It’s all a glorious distraction, the poetry of time and space – and a terrific teaching aid, especially for us inner city folk. Our much maligned multiculturalism can be celebrated. We can talk about subjects like economics, linguistics, politics, poetry and philosophy. We can festoon our walls with flags, charts and icons. We come from most of the 32 nations and follow proceedings at many cerebral levels. 

Geena likes Ronaldo, when he removes his shirt, Sabrina wants to cuddle Raheem Sterling, Bella loves Neymar’s dreamy eyes. I can drone on about reducing men to sex objects and Rhapsody agrees. Ronald Crumlin gives us an aficionado’s talk on triangles, transitions, tika taka, catenaccio, pressing, invisible number 9s, and various formations of 3-5-2, 4-3-3, and 4-2-1-3. It beats my lessons on the iambic pentameter – even Cordelia’s impressed.