Authors Electric

  Photo to accompany Lionesses' letter to the  candidates for PM, asking for better opportunities   for girls football The football Lionesses who caught our hearts as well as winning the European Cup were clear that they were a fortunate generation, building on the stubbornness of those who’d gone before. Interviewees referred to the players of the c20th who’d given their own money and time, as well as their hearts and skills, to the game they loved.  Not everyone was prepared to gloss over past rejections. The clubs who’d refused to host their games because ‘no one’s interested in women’s football,’ weren’t going to be forgiven and forgotten, as the team packed Wembley Stadium with a record 87,192 attendance and won the first major competition for England since 1966. Former player turned presenter, Alex Scott, said, ‘Let’s just remind ourselves as well, back in 2018, we were begging people to host in their stadiums a women’s game for this Euros. So many people ...

Recently my elder son Oscar got stuck on a piece of homework. He moaned, ‘Our teacher wants us to write out a list of homophones and I can only think of one.’ His mum went over to help him and found that he’d written, at the top of his sheet of paper, ‘Nigel Farage’. She frowned a moment before exploding into giggles. ‘No, darling,’ she explained, ‘he’s a homo phobe .’ True. Oscar has from time to time struggled with the demands of English lessons. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised, when they often involve the taxonomy of words into nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjectives, which even my wife (who is far better read than I am) admits to muddling up. But what has puzzled me is that Oscar has to date shown little or no interest in reading. We’re told that we must read to our children, that we must fill our houses with books and let children discover this wonderful world… mate, you’d sprain an ankle on all the books in my house, I have to be bullied and kicked into rememberin...