Do you believe?

BACK IN school there was this poem we did, the only one that lingers in memory, and it came to mind ahead of tomorrow’s World Cup quarter-final with France.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, describes a middle-aged man wrestling with his fears of unfulfilment. The central message is that you may only have one chance in life to do something exceptional, fluff it and you spend the rest of your unexceptional days gazing backwards musing on the might-have-beens.

There will be time for you and me. And time yet for a hundred visions and revisions. Before the taking of a toast and tea.