I am sitting at my desk and on either side of me at their own desks, are two of my colleagues. The unusual thing about it is that they are both wearing football shirts. I really hate missing a fashion moment so politely asked why they didn’t flick the Wear Your Football Shirt to Work Day memo past me. Turns out it was just a spontaneous response to the fact that England are playing their first warm-up game for the World Cup tonight against Mexico.
Ah, of course. How could I have missed it? This tournament has suddenly become The Big Thing, as if it has been waiting nervously in the wings for the last few months and then last week someone decided to push it out into the spotlight, centre stage, so it could work its magic on every advert, every big brand and every newspaper out there.
Even the team here at Oxfam is getting on board; we have just launched a campaign called Don’t Drop the Ball on Aid- using Keepy Uppies to raise awareness about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These goals were agreed on by world leaders many moons ago, targets that would save lives and smash poverty, but that are not looking likely to be met. It makes sense when you realise that football season pre-empts a massive summit on the MDGs in September where the videos of people doing Keepy Uppies will be shown to world leaders, revealing just how many people want them to keep their MDG promises.
So why not get in the spirit of things and go to www.dontdropaid.org where you can upload your own Keepy Uppy video. If you keep your eyes peeled you will see me up there doing about a million expert footy tricks that not even Beckham can do. (Whatever you do don’t mistake me for the lass that is overly chuffed with her one kick of a big giant globe.)
In the next couple of days we’ll be putting up a few more ideas for those of you who are really keen. Watch this space and get involved to make sure we turn this footy season in to a world changing one.