Robn in the snow

Woke up this morning to find that it snowed last night. Of course that meant Robin made me jump out of bed and take him down to the garden (most robins like snow). So here he is. It's melting now, but don't tell Robin that...

KJ asked in the comments of the last post if High School sport is popular here, drawing crowds etc. Sadly not, I used to play for my school team and the crowd would usually consist of 2 or 3 pushy parents screaming at their kids for not doing well enough. We don't even get crowds for our sports teams at university/college level, whereas it seems in the US some college teams get crowds of 100,000! Crazy. Must be very odd being a superstar when you're 18 to 21, then coming down to earth with a bump when you leave college and get a humdrum job. However, we do have several hundred soccer teams who get paying crowds each week from your Manchester Uniteds getting 75,000 people to your Hitchin Towns, who play 7 or more division below, getting a couple of hundred.

If anyone had any more questions about UK culture, feel free to ask!

Back of the net!

Hello again. Here's a picture of Robin which I took at Hitchin Town FC this morning. I was up there at 8.30am helping them get the pitch ready for this afternoon's game (there's been an awful lot of rain, so they made a call for volunteers). Hopefully it looks like the game will go ahead now (after some stirling forking and sanding work from myself and a few others). Got to say, even though Hitchin are in the 7th tier of English football, I was still quite excited to be allowed on the pitch of a proper football team with a proper football ground!

Talking of football, did you folks over in the US hear that David Beckham is heading your way? Are people over there interested?

Robin by an old shoe shop sign

Here's a picture of Robin taken by an old shop sign in Hitchin, the town where we live. It's a lovely old sign, built into the wall as a mosaic, above the door of the shop.

Freeman, Hardy and Willis was a UK shoe shop chain set up in 1875 and named after three employees of the company. Their catchphrase was "Shoes For All The Family". I'm guessing this sign would date from the first few decades of the 1900s. In the early 1990s, there were 540 of them in the UK, but the chain collapsed in 1996 and is no more.

Still, at least this gorgeous sign remains and still looks in great condition.

Happy new year!

Hope you all have a top one.