A Yorkshire Christmas
Christmas Eve was spent collecting Ammonites on a cold, blustery but magnificently beautiful day on the Yorkshire coast. We found lots of these whirly fossils in the lower Jurassic of Ravenscar and the walk down and then back up the cliffs was refreshing and invigorating. This experience was topped off with a delicious cream tea at Raven Hall Hotel. It couldn’t have been any better. As the three of us trooped down the muddy path, I reflected on the many trips around Yorkshire fossil hunting I had done with my late Father. Not only did we hunt fossils but we explored the area in depth. Roman roads, ancient burial sites, viking villages. You name it, we did it. We even found a whole bunch of iron age pottery that we
Read More »European Football Trip
I awoke yesterday morning with just a twinge of rising excitement. Later in the day, we would be off on a 200km road trip to watch Hull City in their European debut. Sometimes, you do get the feeling that events conspire against you though on days like this one and yesterday turned out to be challenging….. At around noon, as we made final preparations to leave, the skies opened. It rained so hard, Brno streets flooded within 30 minutes. Really, I have never seen so much rain here in the 7-years I have lived in the Czech Republic. If it was raining like this in Zilina there would be no game at all we thought. A check of the internet held out hope. The rain was more or less north-south
Read More »The Big Adventure
I haven’t managed to take in a live Hull City game for several years unfortunately. The last game was an away game versus Leicester City that I decided on the spur of the moment to go to. At the time, my son Liam and I were visiting family in Hull and we were heading back down to London and the airport at Gatwick for Liam to fly home. We set off on the Saturday morning and in the back of my mind, I had a half a mind to jump off the M1 and go grab the game in Leicester. Of course, the M62 was a packed with traffic due to an accident and so by the time we got to the M1 I wasn’t at all sure that we
Read More »Of FA Cup Finals, Hull and Yorkshire
This last weekend, I and a good percentage of my fellow East Yorkshire compadres (not all as Rugby is still big in Hull and Hull KR played Hull FC that same day!) were either sat in the London sun at Wembley or, like me, huddled in front of the biggest TV we could find. Of course, none of us really entertained the idea that we could actually win the FA Cup but we all brimmed with pride and awe at the occasion none the less. But you also knew, as underdogs, we had nothing at all to lose and there is always the chance, no matter how slim, that on the day and for 90 minutes, Hull City could be the better team. Of course, 10 minutes after kick off
Read More »We Dared to Dream
Yesterday, we dared to dream Hoped to mark our spot in history Engraved our name in time Yesterday, we came out strong A shock really did look on It’s been more than a century Players have come and gone I even went to school with one Yesterday, we dared to dream And what a long wait it’s been The Tigers’ shone yesterday Just like that other rhyme Burning brightly under London skies And 10 minutes after kick off It looked as if we may pull it off In the end it wasn’t to be But the Tigers marked Their place in history Written indelibly We dared to dream!
Read More »Once a Century or so
It was a very big day yesterday. After 110 years, Hull City played in the FA Cup final for the first time. Its still incredible to me that The Tigers are in the Premier League and an FA Cup was simply the icing on an already desirable cake. I was pretty nervous. Arsenal are a team whose squad is worth many many more times that of Hull City. They are a big club and they play good football. Classy even. I had in the back of my mind a 3-0 or 4-0 drubbing to be honest particularly since Hull City hadn’t played so well the last few weeks. In the two games against Arsenal, we lost 5-0 on aggregate in the league. Imagine my surprise when within 8 minutes of
Read More »TGIF
It is Friday. It is the end of the working week and time to spend a couple of days engaged in activities other than work. For me and many of my home town peeps, this is a big weekend as Hull City play their first FA cup semi-final since 1930 with a real chance to get to a first ever FA Cup final. On Sunday at 5.07pm local time, I’ll be sat in the local sports bar, half liter in hand to watch that game. To be honest though, the weekend doesn’t mean an end to work. Nope – just a change in format. I finally have some time to get around to doing some household chores. The work never stops nor ends but the variety makes things interesting…. I
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