Photo: Andrew Heatherington/Eight by Eight

And so the winter gave way to spring, and the spring brought with it heartbreak but also a sense of renewal. And now the glorious spring is slowly but surely recessing, making way for the oppressive summer to come in, grab us by the collars and pound us all with a few good months’ worth of irresistible heat and humidity.

And the football — we mustn’t ever forget the football. How can you forget about the football when the magnificent, complicated, unforgiving gift to humanity known as the World Cup is so nearly upon us? We’ll be blogging about it regularly — or at least as often as we can, given the loads of fun we’ll most assuredly be having along the way — and bringing whatever insights we deem fit to this most welcoming space. We’ve already started with the first couple entries of our World Cup Diary — #WCD(!!!) — and there’ll (hopefully) be more to come as we work our way through the summer.

For now, let us also point you in the direction of a fairly decent piece of writing that’s been making its way around the web. It’s featured in the third and very special World Cup edition of NYC’s own Eight by Eight magazine, as well as online at The Guardian. I know, we’re still in disbelief. Check it out, enjoy, and know that it’s very much responsible for our meager output in recent months. After all, like the ’86 Argentina team, we are very much a one-man proposition.

– R.M.