Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The Beautiful Game and Lunar Society in a Weekend

Whilst not ostensibly a fan of soccer now known as Association Football or The Beautiful Game as disgraced paedeophile Stuart Hall called it, I do like a good lunch especially if a family member is offering  it to me in an Executive Box  at The Ricoh Arena in Coventry. The lunch is followed by the entertainment of watching a match between Coventry City FC (formerly Singers FC after the bicycle company) and Fleetwood Town FC (the CODS) - this apparently is match in the first division which is now third tier.

I lead the Northern contingent to the birthday party and we stand under Jimmy Hill


The Ricoh Arena is properly meant for rugby football but Coventry City FC rent the facilities having sold off their former Main Road ground to build a Tesco supermarket.  A hotel is incorporated.

This is the "Executive box" - it's actually a converted hotel room (the bed is stuffed in the cupboard)

Confused by the rules I don't understand why there is line out with water spraying over the players in February?

Jimmy Hill appears again - no capacity crowd but nice blue seats - the stands long since disappeared along with coal mines and British industry.

Nice boots Fleetwood

After a while the bored goaly starts practicing silly walks

Three blokes wearing hi viz


The next day the NW team visited Lichfield.


The cathedral is approximately 1km long

View from the house of Erasmus Darwin

Early disguised mobile phone mast.


Across the green from the cathedral we visited the former house and now  museum of Physician Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802).  He was the grandfather of Charles. He was short fat and ugly and produced 14 children with 3 different ladies. Amongst other things he invented a speaking machine and proper coupled steering for horse drawn carriages (before the German Ackerman system) . He was a founder member of the Lunar Society.  I have plans to investigate Erasmus further.


TTFN!

8 comments:

  1. With all the philandering of Erasmus it doesn't come as a surprise that grandson Charles got interested in evolution and such ;-)

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  2. Yes, imagine if Erasmus had been handsom evolution might not have been invented!

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  3. Now whenever I see sports teams I'll be thinking they are all doing silly walks. Good reference.

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  4. Great photos as always Nikos and thanks for the education about Darwin. I was originally a Midlander. However, I went to a school which played rugby so it was probably inevitable that we ended up in NZ!!

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    1. The rugby crowd arrived on Sunday along with the beer tanker!

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  5. Perhaps this water spraying is something like a baptismal (eine Not-Taufe ?), or someone thinks the lawn is not slippery enough ?
    I had no idea about Erasmus Ackermann, and do not know the local Saint Jimmy Hill, sorry.

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    1. I hope that my humble blog provides a little incite to British eccentricity, after all that clown Cameron can't have all the lime light?

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