Web viewOne is led by Lord Business ... the packing away for good of that historic warm-spirited football of the imagination, ... Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Some Summer Ideas

2014

Year 7 (2013-14) becoming Y8 (2014-15)

Paul’s Learning Enrichment Pack Y7 2014 1

Remember from last two years how helpful it was to work through some summer exercises. This is new version for this year but along the same lines.

First, read through the booklet. Please do what follows each piece whether that is typing in definitions, looking at hyperlinks, finding visual images etc. With each article, you should look up the highlighted words and define them and, when instructed, in the tables. In some cases, you are also again asked to find suitable visual images to help fix and explore the meaning in your mind. Do talk to your family and discuss the reading with them. There is plenty to chew on. Make sure that you try to complete the definition and image tables. You must complete this document as an electronic Word document and give it to me at the beginning of term. Please remember to SAVE as you go along. When you e-mail it, please make sure you label it as follows:

SURNAME FormSuarez 8M.

This makes it easier for us to save and look at. These booklets are then printed off at school and we use them in enrichment lessons and mock interviews.


First, read through the reviews of the Lego Movie and Despicable Me 2 and do the exercises. You will be asked to discuss this and the other passages/poems on your return in your English Enrichment Comprehension classes with the Head and others. Make sure that you have looked up the words you do not know ! There is no excuse for saying you cannot do this! Ask your friends; prod your family and ask the budgie. But, do not leave this blank or scrawled in biro/pencil and say in September, with tears in your eyes: ‘It is just like last year, in Year Six: OMG, I cannot believe it: Once again, we didn’t have a dictionary or Wi-Fi at any point in the summer and my dad’s office blew up and mum dropped her Mac in the sea when we were in St. Tropez & then I sprained my typing wrist water-skiing. Honestly, Paul! Why are you laughing?’ My uncle will back me up (and he is our family lawyer.) Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I suffered temporary paralysis of the hands in August too.’

Just do it! You will actually enjoy learning these new things! All the stuff is worth reading!

They can, because they think they can!’


Virgil


Review of Lego Movie Robbie Collin, Chief Film Critic The Telegraph

Andy Warhol would have been knocked sideways by The Lego Movie. The new animation from Warner Bros. takes art and commerce and clicks them together as naturally and satisfyingly as a pair of plastic bricks on their way to becoming a castle or spaceship. Never before have I felt less like a film was selling me a product, and then left the cinema more desperate to fill my house with the product it wasn’t selling.

That’s largely because The Lego Movie is swooningly in love with the Lego brick itself: its look, its feel, its clutchable there-ness. The film is computer-generated, but it looks like an old-fashioned stop-motion production. Individual bricks and figures come scratched, scuffed and smeared with fingerprints. The Lego world looks lived-in. No, even better: played-with.

And playfulness is the prevailing sprit. At ground level, The Lego Movie is an uproariously funny family adventure – a Star Wars-Matrix hybrid with jokes, that bound along with a kind of crazed, caffeinated energy. Dig down a little, though, and you realise that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film’s two-man writing and directing team, are telling a classic quest story precisely because those stories are so Lego-ish at heart.

Two sides in the Lego world are vying for supremacy. One is led by Lord Business (Will Ferrell), the ruler of Bricksburg, a bustling city where the cars and buildings are all assembled, and lives are lived, in line with the instructions. The other is made up of the Master Builders; visionaries and outlaws who see new, exciting ways to connect the blocks Lord Business would rather remain in place.

The security of order versus the thrill of working outside it: that’s the struggle at the heart of any number of classic adventure films, but it’s also a choice made by every seven-year-old who’s ever unwrapped a brand new Lego set. Do you follow the instructions, and end up with the model on the box? Or do you set the manual aside, click the pieces together at random, and see what chance produces?


This decision also faces Emmet (Chris Pratt), a Bricksburg builder whose life, when we first encounter it, is one never-ending routine. Wake up, exercise, work, eat, relax, sleep, repeat. He does this every day, in order, and fits in because of it. His favourite song is everyone’s favourite song: a pop track called ‘Everything Is Awesome’ that’s catchier than Velcro.

But unbeknownst to him, Emmet is also The Chosen: a saviour foretold in a prophesy by a Morgan Freeman-like sage – who is, brilliantly, voiced by Morgan Freeman. The hooded freedom-fighter Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) finds him and whisks him out of the city and into new, unexplored parts of the Lego universe, where they plot Lord Business’s downfall, with help from Wyldstyle’s celebrity boyfriend, Lego Batman (Will

Each dimension is home to a particular range of Lego kits, and the long-standing favourites like pirates, Wild West and space are where most of the action takes place. Less-successful Lego sub-brands, meanwhile, such as the unloved Fabuland and Galidor ranges, are hastily covered in a self-deprecating montage.

There are so many blink-and-miss-them moments to appreciate: in another wonderful detail, a 1980s-vintage spaceman character, voiced by Charlie Day, has a helmet that has snapped in exactly the place where all the 1980s Lego spacemen figures’ helmets used to snap.

Parents who themselves grew up with Lego in their toy-boxes will almost certainly feel the prickle of nostalgia, and a sweet, witty passage late in the film acknowledges that for fathers, in particular, a son or daughter’s plastic bricks can spirit them back to a childhood long-past.

Lord and Miller, both former sitcom writers, have arrived here via two unexpected hits: the 3D animation Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and their comic reboot of the teen police drama 21 Jump Street. Those films didn’t have to be particularly inventive or thoughtful or witty to turn a profit, but they were. The Lego Movie is too, but it reaches even further. For a shot of pure forward-leaping, backward-dreaming animated pleasure, pick brick.

**********************************************************************************


Now think about these words/phrases too!

knocked sideways satisfyingly swooningly in love clutchable Vying Supremacy. Bustling Visionaries Outlaws Security the manual Awesome’ Unbeknownst Foretold Prophesy Sage Whisks Dimension self-deprecating montage. vintage prickle nostalgia, inventive


Tricky WordTricky Phrase

Can you define it?

Maybe think of a synonym too!

Can you make another sentence with the word, thus showing that you REALLY know the meaning?

knocked sideways

satisfyingly

swooningly in love

clutchable

Vying verb

Word forms: vies, vying, vied1.(intransitive; followed by with or for) to contend for superiority or victory (with) or strive in competition (for)2.(transitive) (archaic) to offer, exchange, or display in rivalry

Paul K was vying in vain with Paul C in the marathon.

Supremacy.

Bustling verb

gerund or present participle: bustling

move in an energetic and busy manner.

"people clutching clipboards bustled about"

synonyms: rush, dash, scurry, scuttle, scamper, scramble, flutter, fuss; Morehurry, hasten, make haste, race, run, sprint, tear, shoot, charge, chase, career;


"people clutching clipboards bustled about"

•(of a place) be full of activity."the streets bustled with people"

Visionaries

Outlaws

Security

the manual

Awesome’

Unbeknownsthappening or existing without the knowledge of someone specified —usually used with to : Unbeknownst to us, rumors were flying!

Foretold

Prophesy

Sage

Whisks


Dimension

self-deprecatingmontage.

vintage

prickle Prickle noun: prickle; plural noun: prickles

1. a short pointed outgrowth on the bark or epidermis of a plant; a small thorn."the prickles of the gorse bushes".a small spine or pointed outgrowth on the skin of certain animals.a tingling sensation on a person's skin, typically caused by strong emotion." Bob felt a prickle of excitement"

synonyms:

tingle, tingling sensation, tingling, prickling sensation, chill, thrill, itching, creeping sensation, gooseflesh, goose pimples, pins and needles;

verb: prickle; 3rd person present: prickles; past tense: prickled; past participle: prickled; gerund or present participle: prickling

1. (of a part of the body) experience a tingling sensation, especially as a result of strong emotion."the sound made her skin prickle with horror"

synonyms: tingle, itch, have a creeping sensation, have goose pimples, have gooseflesh, have goosebumps, have pins and


needles

nostalgia,

inventive


Tricky WordTricky Phrase

Can you Google image/picture/cartoon which helps show the meaning of some key words?

knocked sideways

satisfyingly

swooningly in love

clutchable

Vying

Supremacy.

Bustling

Visionaries

Outlaws


Security

the manual

Awesome’

Unbeknownst

Foretold

Prophesy

Sage


Whisks

Dimension

self-deprecating

montage.

vintage

prickle

Nostalgia,

inventive


Read these three contrasting reviews of Despicable Me 2. Then, please do the exercises which follow.

Despicable Me 2 Review Tim Robey The Telegraph

The animated supervillain comedy from 2010, was an average flick with a neat enough premise. In Despicable Me 2, it’s gone. You see, Steve Carell’s bald, beaky hero, Gru, is now a reformed soul, occupied with round-the-clock childcare rather than dastardly plots to steal the moon and whatnot. The withdrawal of his evil motives is so complete that the movie’s very title feels like a misnomer – what we get this time is Grumpy Old Me at best, or Secretly Lovable Me, or Doting Me. And none of these “Me”s are very much fun.

It’s clear even from the advertising that Gru’s Minions – those knee-high yellow Tic-Tacs, on a poster near you wearing dungarees and goggles – are key to the commercial equation that got a sequel green-lit at all. So they swarm all over the place doing various child-pleasing routines in hard hats and beachwear, while Gru gets embroiled in an afterthought of a plot, involving a secret agent called Lucy (Kristen Wiig) who’s also, boringly enough, his love interest.

The one inspired idea here is what happens to the minions when they’re injected with serum by the film’s mystery baddie, and this is enough to give us at least a reel’s worth of anarchic pleasure. Not to give too much away, but the sound they emit after transformation has a pleasingly Chuck Jones-ish mad simplicity, and the animators, in a rare gesture towards adult wit, even throw in a smart little nod to the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Still, the movie is overconfident about the charm of these beings in their natural state, at least to an audience over three feet tall. There’s a complacency about it which makes the surrounding storytelling feel lazy and underpowered, like a low-energy episode of after-school telly. Lo and behold, these supporting players are getting a spin-off unto themselves next year – it’s called Minions – so perhaps this is best counted as a modest bridge to that promotion, an enabling movie to give them a leg up. Helpful Little Me.


Despicable Me 2 Review Mark Kermode The Observer

Funnier – and perhaps cuter – than its predecessor, this blockbuster animation finds jam-making adoptive parent Gru (Steve Carell) being reluctantly recruited by the Anti-Villain League to bring down a rival fiend. His mind, however, is elsewhere – on the growing pains of his young charges and the wily charms of a fellow agent (Kristen Wiig).

The real joy, however, is in the increased role of the goggle-eyed Minions, who outdo Ice Age's Scrat in the scene-stealing stakes. Voiced by the directors in babbling helium-fuelled goobledegook, these yellow weebles are comedy gold, their slapstick antics blending a simplicity of form with a complexity of expression rooted in the traditions of silent cinema. Having laughed my way through pretty much the entire film (including an ace end-credits sequence that will delight aspect ratio nerds), I left the cinema to the sound of a child announcing; "That was the best movie ever!"

Despicable Me 2 Review Peter Bradshaw The Guardian

Resilient in its daftness, reliable in its silliness, Despicable Me is on the threshold of franchise-status with this likable sequel. Steve Carell again voices Gru, the once-evil genius who has gone over to the side of light. He is recruited by the Anti-Villain League, led by a corpulent Englishman called Ramsbottom, voiced by Steve Coogan, but facially resembling a very pudgy James Fox.

Gru must go undercover to track down a bad guy who has stolen an entire research laboratory using an airborne magnet in order to get his hands on a serum that transforms nice creatures like bunnies into hideous killers. Gru is given an assistant, Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, who is smitten with Gru. Could romance be on the cards – along with this sensational return to the battle between good and evil, which Gru has now joined on the correct side? Nothing here to challenge anything from the Pixar golden age, but Despicable Me 2 is a sweet-natured family film.


Look again at these words? Can you really explain them?

Key Word Type in a definition

animated

average flick

premise.

reformed

dastardly

misnomer –

the commercial equation

Sequel

Swarm

embroiled in

inspiredanarchic pleasure.


overconfident

complacencyunderpowered,

modest

cuter –

blockbuster

reluctantly recruited

wily charms

scene-stealing

babbling

slapstick antics

Resilient

Daftness

on the threshold

Recruited


Corpulent

pudgy

transformshideous

smitten

sensational

sweet-natured


Key Word Give the Opposite Word/Antonym.

Give a sentence, using the opposite, to show you REALLY grasp the meaning fully.

reformed

dastardly

Sequel Prequel

embroiled in

inspired

overconfident

complacencymodest arrogant

cuter –

reluctantly recruited

Resilient

Daftness


Corpulent

pudgy

sweet-natured


Now look at these interestingly contrasting reviews/evaluations of the World Cup & Test Match.

Barnaby Ronay The Guardian

Thank you Brazil, and goodbye. It’s been … emotional. After 32 days, 64 matches, 171 goals, 182 yellow cards, 48,706 passes, 2,124 tackles, $4bn in revenue for Fifa, plus of course an unceasing spume of digital opinion, a tsunami of public weeping and a mountain of deep-fried cheese pasties, the 2014 World Cup has now left the building.

Quite a bit has happened along the way. A European nation has become world champion on Latin American soil for the first time. Germany joined Italy as Brazil’s nearest all-time World Cup challengers. Miroslav Klose has dethroned Ronaldo as

the most doggedly devastating goalscorer in World Cup history. And the World Cup’s hosts and holders have never been so soundly thrashed as Brazil and Spain were here, and this at a World Cup that still managed to produce the most classically old-school semi-final line up yet, a VVIP gathering of the oligarchical powers.

At the end of which, after a tournament that was eight years and $11bn in the making, those four weeks in summer can now begin the familiar process of separating out in the memory into a concatenation of enduringly vivid moments.

This was a World Cup of bold, rich flavours, a heavily sauced affair that was at times almost a little too pungent for its own good. Never have so many tears been shed by so many athletes in such stunning high definition close-up. Never has so much incident, outrage and media-fanned obiter dicta successfully intruded from the fringes. Above all it has been a deeply sensory, even rather sensual World Cup. Just as the global TV audience swooned over the action and the tournament’s heavily marketed poster boys – J-Rod, Leo, C-Ron, Louis van G – so travelling around Brazil’s cities and stadiums was a brilliantly engaging experience.


This was the first tournament South American fans have travelled to in such numbers on their own continent. In the days leading up to the final, the streets of Rio were duly thronged with sozzled and boisterous Argentinians, the same supporters who had removed their shirts and staged celebratory fraternal fist fights in the stands in São Paulo after the victory against Switzerland.

Even England’s own shortlived travelling support could be seen dancing through the wee hours next to the opera house in Manaus, all driven along by the basic late-night, outdoorsy warmth of Brazil itself, ideal host for a genuinely engaging World Cup in one of the sport’s grand old footballing heartlands. It might be best to savour this while we can. Russia is up next, followed by the irresolvable wrong turn that is Qatar 2022. The World Cup is going outside now. It may be gone for some time.

For the hackneyed footballing romantic it is even tempting to detect some basic infectious Brazilian quality – the air, the light, the memory of the poor old long-dead jogo finito – in the excitement of the early stages. Either way the first week of Brazil 2014 came slathering out of the traps in a furious real-time montage of goals and attacking play. Group stages just aren’t supposed to look like this, but here the players pressed and counter-attacked to the limits of their physical capacities from


the start. Holland’s 5-1 destruction of Spain will remain one of the great World Cup results. Germany thrashed a spooked and depleted Portugal in Salvador. France and Switzerland produced a breezy 5-2 romp, and overall by the end of the tournament’s first weekend the opening 14 matches had produced 44 goals.

It couldn’t last. It didn’t. The first 14 matches of the next phase brought just 31 goals, boosted by the isolated absurdity of Brazil’s annihilation in Belo Horizonte, as the best teams began to grind back down through the gears. By the end of the tournament the vogue for swift counter-attack had already begun to congeal into a wised-up retreat into deep-lying mutual counter-defence.

During Argentina’s semi-final with Holland, perhaps the most cautious match of the tournament, Alejandro Sabella’s team at times played a kind of 8-0-0-2, with Lionel Messi and Gonzalo Higuaín stationed miles from their retreating defence, lingering in the distance like fielders at long-on and long-off. And yet it would be wrong to say possession football went out of fashion at Brazil 2014: quite the opposite in fact, as the two teams who made the most passes contested the final. Similarly tiki-taka didn’t die – passing and keeping the ball will never go out of fashion – but instead


failed to turn up in the first place as the reigning champions played not just like a tired team, but like a listless, even rather bored one.

Instead the dominant style at this World Cup was a kind of jogo collectivo, the familiar high-speed hustle and closing down of space that defines elite European club football. Helped by an excellent ball in the Brazuca – no wobbly moments, no flailing frango-howlers here – and refereeing that let the game flow to a fault at times, the general standard was high.

Although there are always exceptions. England had arguably their worst ever World Cup, a tournament that lasted five competitive days and ended with Roy Hodgson’s quietly hopeful squad bottom of Group D having outscored only Cameroon, Iran and Honduras at Brazil 2014. There is a theory England were unlucky, that playing their first match in the great steaming saucepan that was the Arena Amazônia mortally wounded them ahead of Uruguay four days later. This is wishful thinking.

England were just not good enough, exposed by playing two teams at the group stage of the same calibre that more often eliminates them in the knockout rounds. The players were short on small details – a lack of concentration in defence and


precision in attack – but to blame the details is to avoid the great sweeping backstory of structural underachievement.

As Philip Larkin wrote in As Bad As A Mile …

“Watching the shied core

Striking the basket, skidding across the floor

Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm.”

Or in other words, the lads came up short – and will do the same again if nothing changes.

It was fairly clear what marked out the best teams at this World Cup. The more successful nations were those with coherent, productive domestic leagues, where the national association has a benevolent handle on how players are produced what


the style and structure is going to be. Costa Rica, Holland, Germany, Belgium and Argentina benefited from players produced by a coherent domestic system, rather than the chaotic short-termism of England or, as it turns out, Brazil.Indeed the only time the Premier League seemed tangibly present at this World Cup was when Luis Suárez bit Giorgio Chiellini in Natal, the familiar engines of drama and sentiment revved up and the English joined in the party, like teenagers at the disco leaping up at the end of the night when the DJ finally relents and puts some heavy metal on.

And what about the hosts anyway? In the end Brazil 2014 was both a PR disaster and a triumph, a shared sporting nightmare and a shared success; a triumph of stadium building fatally undermined by the spectacle of inadequate roads, housing and basic infrastructure that surrounded many of these high-spec space capsules.

Inside Brazil’s wet-paint mega-stadia the experience was slick enough, the staging spectacular, the relentless toadying, schmaltzified handshakes for peace, white doves of Blatter and all the rest of it familiarly inane. For this success no credit whatsoever must go to the spendthrift politicians and discredited organisers of Brazil 2014, but to the workers responsible for somehow sweating the whole thing into


place and to the army of local volunteers who brightened and eased and smoothed what delays and hitches – the vanishing staircase, the neurotic fear of adequate signage – did show through.

As for the host team there is a separate treatise to be written on that extraordinary semi-final meltdown, when Brazil’s players didn’t so much lay the ghost of Barbosa from 1950 as become entirely possessed by his vengeful spirit – We Are All Barbosa! – stumbling about the pitch like boggle-eyed zombies. And a sense this World Cup witnessed the long-anticipated death of “Brazil” itself, the packing away for good of that historic warm-spirited football of the imagination, long since concreted in beneath the layers of professionalism and physicality.

Brazil has been criticised for the homogeneity of the crowds inside its stadiums, something that was always going to be the case from the moment it became clear only 400,000 of 3.3m tickets would be made available to ordinary Brazilians at affordable prices. Otherwise the crowds were just what you get at large scale sporting beanos everywhere: a collection of rich people.


Talking of which, even Fifa managed to emerge from this World Cup relatively unscathed, albeit from a position of already being pretty heavily scathed in the first place. In an interesting twist this was, in a sense, the tournament at which footballing chicanery came home, the culture of opaque wheeler-dealering having been entrenched at Fifa in the first place by the discredited Brazilians João Havelange and Ricardo Teixeira.

Football’s governing body remains a source of head-scratching bewilderment whatever the successes of this gripping World Cup; a tournament that beneath its many layers of drama and obfuscation confirmed that for all the noisy excitements of club football there is a purity about the international game that remains its distinct and distinguishing feature.

***********************************************************************************************


You will ‘sort of know’ what the highlighted words mean. You will ‘kind of’, ‘like’ understand, especially in the context of the passage; and, if you watched the World Cup. But, be honest and where you really aren’t sure, look up the words. Maybe make up your own table and Google some images, cartoons or drawings which convey the meanings effectively. See the two superb cartoons below!



Enriching vocabulary/ useful phrase

Crisp definition Can you provide a sentence showing that you really know what this word/phrase means?

Revenue

Spume

tsunami

DethronedMan United were really dethroned this season.

Doggedly

devastating

Soundly

classically oligarchical

a concatenation


enduringly vivid My memories of the Recitation night are enduringly vivid because of the way everyone clapped us.

heavily sauced

Pungent The smell of my locker on the last day of term was pretty pungent

obiter dicta

Intruded

sensory,

sensual

Swooned

engaging

Continent

thronged

sozzled

Boisterous I was given a Sanction Sheet for being too boisterous in the lunch queue!


fraternal fist fights

Savour

Irresolvable

hackneyed

romantic

infectious Andrew’s humour is infectious

slathering As we went to lunch Dave slathered like a dog

montage Olly asked us to make up a montage for our art show.

physical capacities Paul’s physical capacities were not quite as impressive as his mental capacities.

spooked

Depleted

Annihilation


grind back

vogue for There seems to be a vogue for Huggies at my sister’s school.

congeal

Cautious

Lingering

Contested

listless, Reading these articles makes me listless, whatever the Head claims about them!

dominant style

jogo collective

Flailing

frango-howlers


Exceptions

wishful thinking Paul K is guilty of wishful thinking if he says Leeds will get promoted. next season

exposed

calibre

Eliminates

precision

Coherent

domestic leagues,

Benevolent

handle

Chaotic The airport at Heathrow is simply chaotic.

short-termism of

tangibly present


engines of drama

sentiment

revved up Gerry was revved up to do his holiday worked.

relents

fatally undermined

inadequate infrastructure

Slick

relentless toadying,

schmaltzified handshakes

Inane

Hitches

neurotic fear

Treatise


possessed by vengeful spirit

zombies. The teacher said we were acted like Zombies and needed to liven up the lesson.

long-anticipated

concreted in

Homogeneity

beanos

unscathed,

Scathed

Chicanery

Entrenched

discredited

headscratching bewilderment


Gripping

obfuscation I was unfairly accused of obfuscation when I tried to explain how I had managed to get to the front of the queue!


Discuss this article with someone you know. See if, together, you can fix the precise meaning of the highlighted words. Do you agree with the author? (I once taught him RS at Dulwich College. He was a really good sportsman and excellent at English!) If you don’t like football, maybe think about why millions, if not billions of people spend so much time on it. What would they do with the time if they weren’t watching or playing it? Is it a kind of fail-safe mechanism to channel human animal energies and impulses which are violent: or, is it genuinely the beautiful game?

?


Now Consider Simon Barnes. He is a brilliant journalist. He is an expert on birds as well sport and literature!

Simon Barnes The Times

The World Cup is but a pale imitation of its former self

Another World Cup, like a wounded snake, has dragged its slow length to a conclusion. Now it is time for assessment. And compared with — to take as a random example, the London Olympic Games of 2012 — it has been kind of OK. Nowhere and never was there any notion that these were the greatest days of our sporting lives. Barnes’s Law states that there is a strict hierarchy of the ways in which we enjoy sport, one that starts with partisanship at the bottom, has drama second and excellence at the very top. This World Cup was a disaster in terms of England partisanship and, for the most part, it was desperately short of excellence. It had to fall back on drama, and on this level alone it has been a qualified success.

Perhaps it is time for a Campaign for Real World Cups, for a return to those days when that heady period came along after a 47-month wait and brought one revelation of tactical or individual brilliance after another, day after day in which you could not believe that the planet could hold so much sporting splendour.

One day you would be marvelling at Gheorghe Hagi, “the Maradona of the Carpathians”, the next at Carlos Valderrama, “the peroxide Gullit”, two of the worst nicknames in sporting history. You’d watch the unrestrained, half-coached, half-improvised brilliance of the emerging African teams and swear that within ten years one would lift the World Cup.


You would be celebrating a South American goalkeeper with the nickname “El Loco” and rejoicing in the best one or two players in the world, players you saw once in a quadrennium. And, meanwhile, the England team were packed with stars, two or three of them would be potential world-beaters and when they fell agonisingly short they had at least given us all one hell of a ride. But now we are familiar with all the top players in all the top sides. We can watch them every week if we have the taste and the time for it. The one exception? England, who these days must line up with B-team players, bench-warmers and second choices; people who are not cock of the walk at their own clubs so are unlikely to boss the show at international level. Not that international level is higher than top club level these days, au contraire. It used to be said that international football was better because there were no weaknesses in any position; these days that’s true for the top clubs, not the top nations. Need a left back? Buy a couple, one from Brazil, one from Ivory Coast.

So when the World Cup comes around again, we have a competition second best to the annual Champions League in quality. For most players, international football is a chore, useful for the exposure, necessary for the CV, but hardly the high point of a career no matter what platitudes your commercial people told you to spout.The World Cup has become a month-long amateur night, an impromptu “make it up as you go along” lash-up, knowingly second best. When things go wrong, you don’t have to wait four years to put it right; you can do so in the next few weeks, as David Beckham did in 1998. The stakes, personal and corporate, have been drastically lowered.

This World Cup cannot contend with the London Olympics for partisanship or excellence, and apart from the Brazil semi-final it struggled to match it for drama. The World Cup is no longer a rival to the Games; it has fallen far behind. It offers just a single sport, a single sex and 170 fewer nations. It no longer even brings us the best of its own sport. The World Cup is becoming yesterday’s big thing, a competition that flickers into life for as long as there is partisanship to keep you interested — and for England that reached an all-time low before the first ball was kicked. It carries on because every four years we think we will have a Real World Cup once again. But we never do.

Snot cricket, to quote my learned colleague

The glory and wonder of James Anderson and his famous world-record last-wicket partnership with Joe Root has been the luckiest possible thing for Test cricket. The story has been so compelling that it has made us — almost — overlook the fact that cricket is increasingly played on pitches powered not by the desire for sporting excellence but the love of money.


People pay good money to watch sport, and they do so in the hope of revelling in (see main piece) such things as excellence, drama and partisanship. Cut off the possibility of excellence and you destroy sport. Once again Trent Bridge has provided a wicket of (to borrow an Athertonism used for a pitch elsewhere) rolled snot.

On the fourth day, only four wickets fell. In each first innings the No 11 made more than 50 — could you have damned a pitch more completely? Simon Wilde, in The Sunday Times, quoted Steve Birks, the Trent Bridge groundsman, saying last year: “As long as we get plenty of runs and it goes into the fourth day, me and the chief executive will be very happy.”

This wicket, it seems, was prepared in the same spirit. The spirit of the banker, the spirit of meanness, the spirit of cupidity, the spirit of contempt for those who pay the money, the spirit of business, the spirit of the person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I’d say it was time the ICC clamped down on such pitches, but can you imagine how far you would get if you tried to explain to their top men that sporting excellence is more important than money?


To fully understand why Simon Barnes is angry, you really need to be certain these words and phrases are clear in your minds.

Enriching vocabulary Write out the definitionsa pale imitation of its former self

assessment.

Random

Notion

Hierarchy

partisanship

qualified success.

heady

revelation

“the peroxide Gullit”,

half-improvised

quadrennium.


agonisingly

cock of the walk

au contraire.

chore,

platitudes

to spout.

impromptu “

corporate,

contend with

flickers into life

partisanship

compelling

revelling

damned


spirit of the banker

spirit of meanness,

spirit of contempt

the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Find out who said this even if it drives you crazy.

clamped down


Find a Really Good Picture , Cartoon or Image for these words/phrases.

a pale imitation of its former self

Random

Hierarchy


revelation

agonisingly

to spout.

corporate,

revelling

damned


spirit of meanness,

spirit of contempt


And we cannot forget Wimbledon!

Wimbledon Final Kevin Mitchell The Guardian

Desperation and pressure, those evil twins, gnawed away at Novak Djokovic’s spirit to lift the emotional Serb to his second Wimbledon triumph on a warm Sunday afternoon, a strangely mellow setting for such an elemental fight with the people’s champion, Roger Federer.

Those who cried with and for the loser, the most popular man in the history of the game, might spare a thought, too, for the winner because, had he lost a sometimes excruciating struggle, the psychological damage could have been significant.

Although he was a slight favourite (how often can a man with 17 majors start as an underdog at Wimbledon?), although he had five years on his opponent, although the sentiment was with Federer, reaching for an 18th slam title after a two-year drought, it was Djokovic who was carrying the greater burden.


If Federer had won, it would have been hailed as the crowning achievement of a glorious career. Losing hardly dented his aura or his legacy, especially as he went down fighting.

But for Djokovic, a sixth defeat in seven slam finals, to complete four in a row, was unthinkable. He simply could not allow it – even though no one was pulling for him. To lose – even to the man he later described as “a magnificent champion” – could have induced serious despond. Indeed he had said beforehand his inability to close out these big occasions was “wholly psychological”.

He was drained as few could remember after Andy Murray beat him in three sets in last year’s final. This was about personal redemption. So Djokovic deliberately put that pressure on himself, to give himself a frightening edge, and that potent mix of emotions most assuredly played with his mind at key moments in this match, which he won 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, holding off a heart-pumping comeback in the fourth set by Federer, when most reckoned his 32-year-old legs would be turning to jelly.

For all that victory rescued Djokovic from a slide towards self-doubt, he will celebrate a greater occasion on Thursday, when he marries Jelena Ristic at a secret location on an island off Montenegro.Very few players are among the 210 guests. While tennis obsesses Djokovic, it does not rule his life. Jelena is also expecting their first child in October. If those two events cannot put the champion’s tennis in perspective, nothing can – and there is every chance that, as with the man he beat on Sunday, the still smiling father of two sets of twins, domestic calm will bring order to his tennis as well.

“I would like to dedicate it to my future wife and our future baby,” Djokovic said on court. “I’m going to become a father soon and I’m still preparing for that. It’s a great joy in life.” But Sunday was a work day. Jelena was at home and he had for immediate company a man trying, metaphorically, to rip his head off.It was an imperfect contest, certainly, but brilliant for all that, dipping and soaring through three times as many winners as unforced errors. Djokovic made Federer run 4,096 metres, and he put in a mere 3,773 metres. At the end they might each have weighed half a stone less than when they started.Neither player was entirely comfortable in a ragged, nervy start, even though they had swapped many thousands of shots in their previous 34 encounters. While there can have been little they did not know about each other’s tennis, neither man could be certain, from shot to shot, what was coming next.

Nor, of course, could anyone else. The closeness of a final – the first here over five sets since Federer beat Andy Roddick in 2009 – ensured a sense of theatre from the first fault off Djokovic’s racket at 2.10pm to the final, weary Federer backhand that billowed the net three hours and 56 minutes later. It was an odd contest to read. Djokovic lost the first set in a tie-break, blowing chance after chance as Federer struggled to take points off his opponent’s serve. And it was the Federer serve that was to prove a revelation.


He has always been superb with ball in hand but here he raised his level yet again, adding 29 aces to the 69 he had gathered in the previous six matches. If he had managed a couple more, we might have been celebrating a Swiss victory. Djokovic, whose own serve Boris Becker has been working on since becoming his coach this year, did not click with anything like that potency but he made Federer suffer with the sheer strength and precision of his ground strokes, particularly his backhand down the line that often left his opponent embarrassingly rooted to the spot.

By the time Djokovic had established what against anyone else would have been a decent lead, two sets to one and 5-2, with his hands almost on the trophy, a certain sadness fell on the occasion. Would this be a wickedly one-sided ending? Not quite, it turned out.

Federer, drawing on every ounce of his pedigree, saved match point, broke and earned himself another shot at the prize. He prevailed again. After one break of service in three sets, five had arrived in the fourth and the congregation had not a clue who would go on to win.

Djokovic had taken two heavy tumbles and a couple of less serious falls, but his legs then went on him in the fifth – literally, as he required courtside massage to his calves. The finish promised to be ugly.

Djokovic held for 2-1 in the fifth but was limping. All of a sudden, as the ATP physio went to work on his right calf, the vivacity was with the older man. Federer was not just turning back the clock, he was Father Time, in charge of the rhythm of the exchanges now, looking younger by the second, reborn in his own golden image.

With seven Wimbledons to his name, Federer knew what he needed to do on the tricky, wearing grass at the end of tournament fortnight, but the tension got to him as well. Federer saved three break points at 3-4; but at 4-5 his serve finally let him down. Djokovic stretched his chest, steadied his arm and reckoned he could do this job. Just when it seemed the fifth set would go the full distance, Federer had finally cracked.

“I respect your career and everything you’ve done,” Djokovic told him immediately afterwards, “and thank you for letting me win today. After dropping the fourth set it wasn’t easy to regroup and find the energy to win the fifth. I don’t know how I did it.” He is probably right. And that is the wonder of it all.


Wimbledon Final The Guardian Kevin Mitchell The Guardian

Word Fill in a DefinitionDesperation

gnawed away

strangely mellow

elemental

excruciating

psychological damage

the sentiment

hailed

dented his aura

legacy,induced serious despond.

drained

personal redemption.

potent mix

assuredly

heart-pumping

self-doubt,

obsesses

in perspective,

domestic calm

dedicate it to

metaphorically,

imperfect


soaring

ragged,

a sense of theatre

billowed,

blowing revelation.

raised his level

Click

potency

precision

embarrassingly rootedhis pedigree,

prevailed

the congregation

the vivacity

tension

regroup


Word Fill in the opposite word/phrase antonym

Desperation

strangely mellow

excruciating

psychological damage

dented his aura

induced serious despond.

personal redemption.

self-doubt,

obsesses

in perspective,

metaphorically,

imperfect

ragged,

raised his level

clickpotency

precision

prevailed

the vivacity

tension


Please read the following poems and be ready to discuss them next term in our enrichment lessons.

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.''None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,Was my life also; I went hunting wildAfter the wildest beauty in the world,Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,But mocks the steady running of the hour,And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.For by my glee might many men have laughed,And of my weeping something had been left,Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,The pity of war, the pity war distilled.Now men will go content with what we spoiled,Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.Courage was mine, and I had mystery,Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:To miss the march of this retreating worldInto vain citadels that are not walled.


Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.I would have poured my spirit without stintBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.I knew you in this dark: for so you frownedYesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.Let us sleep now...'

Wilfred Owen

Please make sure that you look at the following You Tube extract.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06a7sspY3c


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06a7sspY3c

An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, 5My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, 10A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind 15In balance with this life, this death.

W B Yeats

Please look at these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLvHTDa1fkE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPuVbhv_bm4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPuVbhv_bm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLvHTDa1fkE

There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight –Ten to make and the match to win –A bumping pitch and a blinding light,An hour to play and the last man in.And it's not for the sake of the ribboned coat,Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote –'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'The sand of the Desert is sodden red –Red with the wreck of a square that broke; –The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel's dead,And the regiment's blind with dust and smoke.The river of death has brimmed its banks,And England's far, and Honour a name,But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'This is the world that year by year,While in her place the school is set,Every one of her sons must hear,And none that hears it dare forget.This they all with joyful mindBear through life like a torch in flame,And falling fling to the host behind –'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'

Henry Newbolt


The Soldier Rupert Brooke. IF I should die, think only this of me; That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5 Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10 Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. Please check these readings and song version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKEQO0gZUcQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBkje_VQxg

Did you really look up the words you did not know in the poems: if not, do so now!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBkje_VQxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKEQO0gZUcQ

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKGMozN0-IAn actor reads

A member of Pink Floyd Sings it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Osse7w9fs


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Osse7w9fs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKGMozN0-I

Some Logic & Reasoning Puzzles To Play With!

You do NOT have to provide answers on these sheets, but do attempt them for fun. See if your family can answer them! We will try some on your return! Joe B and I will run through them with you.

There are three switches downstairs. Each corresponds to one of the three light bulbs in the attic. You can turn the switches on and off and leave them in any position.

How would you identify which switch corresponds to which light bulb, if you are only allowed one trip upstairs?


‘Is truth merely jokes explained?’

Did you hear about the tribe that worshipped only the number ‘zero’?

Is Nothing sacred????

Ahhhghhhaghaa

MATHS PUZZLE:

Assume 9 is twice 5; how will you write 6 times 5 in the same system of notation?

FOUR DIGIT NUMBER:

What is the four-digit number in which the first digit is one-third the second, the third is the sum of the first and second, and the last is three times the second?


TEN MATCHES:

Remove six matches to make ten.

CIRCLES:

Using six contiguous straight lines, connect all of the sixteen circles shown below.

TWIN BROTHERS:

Suppose there are twin brothers; one who always tells the truth and one who always lies. What single yes/no question could you ask to either brother to figure out which one is which?


NINE NUMBERS:

Place the numbers 1 through 9 in the circles below, such that each side of the triangle adds up to 17.

THE PILOT'S SON:

A man and his son were traveling on a scheduled flight across the Atlantic. The man asked the flight attendant if his son could have a look inside the cockpit. The boy was allowed to do this and the pilot gladly explained about the plane and its controls. After the boy left, the pilot turned to the co-pilot and said to him, "That was my son." How could that be?

THREE BOXES:

There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?

Which box did you open and how can you be sure to label all boxes correctly? BOY or GIRL:

A boy and a girl are sitting on the porch. "I'm a boy," says the child with black hair. "I'm a girl," says the child with red hair. If at least one of them is lying, who is which?


THREE SPIES:

Three spies, suspected as double agents, speak as follows when questioned:

Albert: "Bertie is a mole."Bertie: "Cedric is a mole."Cedric: "Bertie is lying."

Assuming that moles lie, other agents tell the truth, and there is just one mole among the three, determine: 1.) Who is the mole? 2.) If, on the other hand there are two moles present, who are they?

RIVER CROSSING:

A man needs to cross a river in a canoe. With him, he has a bag of grain, a chicken, and a fox. He can only carry one of the three at a time. If he leaves the grain and the chicken, the chicken will eat the grain. If he takes the grain, the fox will eat the chicken. How does he successfully cross the river with his load?

12 MARBLES:

Given twelve marbles that are identical in size, shape, and color, determine which single marble is heavier in weight than the others. You are supplied with a balance and must conclude your determination in three weighings.

HOW OLD?:

If you add the age of a man to the age of his wife, the result is 91. He is now twice as old as she was when he was as old as she is now. How old is the man and his wife?

CUT THE CAKE:

How is it possible to cut a traditional circular cake into 8 equal size pieces, with only 3 cuts?BURNING ROPES:

A rope burns non-uniformly for exactly one hour. How do you measure 45 minutes, given two such ropes?

WHO DONE IT?:


Paul and Dana were working on the computer along with their friends Karl and Joe. Suddenly, I heard a crash and then lots of shouts. I rushed in to find out what was going on, finding the computer monitor on the ground, surrounded with broken glass! Karl and Dana spoke almost at the same time: Dana saying, "It wasn't me!"Karl saying, "It was Joe!"Paul yelled, "No, it was Karl!"With a pretty straight face Joe said, "Karl’s a liar." Only one of them was telling the truth, so who knocked over the monitor?

The Double Jeopardy Doors

You are trapped in a room with two doors. One leads to certain death and the other leads to freedom. You don't know which is which. There are two robots guarding the doors. They will let you choose one door but upon doing so you must go through it.

You can, however, ask one robot one question. The problem is one robot always tells the truth, the other always lies and you don't know which is which.

What is the question you ask?

The Frog

A frog is at the bottom of a 30 metre well. Each day he summons enough energy for one 3 metre leap up the well. Exhausted, he then hangs there for the rest of the day. At night, while he is asleep, he slips 2 meters backwards. How many days does it take him to escape from the well?

Note: Assume after the first leap that his hind legs are exactly three meters up the well. His hind legs must clear the well for him to escape.Surviving a Fall?

How could a baby fall out of a twenty-storey building onto the ground and live?

Finding the Culprit?

Acting on an anonymous phone call, the police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don't know what he looks like but they know his name is John and that he is inside the house. The police bust in on a carpenter, a lorry driver, a mechanic and a fireman all playing poker. Without hesitation or communication of any kind, they immediately arrest the fireman. How do they know they've got their man?

A Family Reunion?


At a family reunion were the following people: one grandfather, one grandmother, two fathers, two mothers, four children, three grandchildren, one brother, two sisters, two sons, two daughters, one father-in-law, one mother-in-law, and one daughter-in-law. But not as many people attended as it sounds. How many were there, and who were they?

The Riddler?

What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?

What goes around the world but stays in a corner?

Three people go fishing -- two fathers and two sons. How is this possible?


Documents

Web viewOne is led by Lord Business ... the packing away for good of that historic warm-spirited football of the imagination, ... Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?