Eric Cantona, who can probably make a strong claim to being Manchester United’s finest ever player, once said, ‘I have never, and will never, find the difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the World Cup of 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud.’

I come from the land of Eyjafjallajökull. Let me say that again. Eyjafjallajökull, which means Island Mountain Glacier, is the volcano, or rather the location of the volcano, that disrupted air traffic for a few days in 2010.

The experiment in post-democracy that was the government of the technocrats in Italy ended in December when Silvio Berlusconi announced his intention to once again run for Parliament as leader of a right-wing coalition and withdrew his party’s confidence in Prime Minister Mario Monti.