Article that only mentions snow about 50 times.

Friday night, when it did not snow but was very cold, I was in the village quiz. I only mention that as an excuse to put in print the fact that my team won – hooray! which was more than I can say for Saturday when my team lost. Close observers of this blog will know I refer here to Northampton Town Football Club.

We played Leicester – run away leaders of League 1 – but we played well against them and even took the lead. Now anyone who ever reads Reidski’s blog will have spotted that he hates people who criticise referees so I am not going to do that here. Oh no. Clearly Mr Mike Dean – a premiership referee slumming it at our place on Saturday afternoon knows far more about refereeing than any of us in the ground do – and so he should do – he gets paid a great deal of money to know the rules and apply them fairly. So anyway, what I learnt from him on Saturday is that when a foul is committed outside the penalty area a penalty is awarded. Funny – as I had always thought a foul had to be committed inside the penalty area for a penalty to be awarded – but Mr Dean is the expert. It was actually quite surreal. The foul in question was committed in front of 1300 noisy Leicester fans, but absolutely no one – no fan and no player – appealed for a penalty. But Mr Dean knew what he was doing and applied the rules as only he knew them to the letter. Penalty duly converted. (Just re –reading what I just wrote to ensure there is no hint of a criticism of the referee there....my relationship depends upon that!) I have no arguments with their second and winning goal which was a beauty. Leicester are dead certs for promotion. And if we don’t start picking up some more points very soon we are a good bet for the drop.

The other thing about Saturday afternoon was the – in my opinion – pathetic reaction of some of my fellow Cobbler fans to the discovery that – shock horror – there were Leicester fans sitting amongst us. I say – bloody big deal and who cares. And this from the idiot who called out ‘Come on Luton!’ when sitting in the middle of the Millwall fans – but we prefer to pretend that particular incident never really happened.

The Leicester fans weren’t there to cause trouble and it is all money for the club if the tickets got sold. I appeared to be in a minority with that opinion. Some of our oh so tough (irony employed there if anyone wasn’t sure) chased one such supporter out on to the pitch where he promptly got nicked by the local plod. As it later turned out he was in fact Tom Meighan, the lead singer with Kasabian described in
this article as a ‘gob on legs’ I suppose that is quite funny in retrospect.

Obviously there was no snow on Saturday or the match would have been postponed.

On Sunday I met up with Holly of this blog, and she is every bit as lovely as I knew she would be. Funny meeting up with another blogger for the first time but already knowing so very much about each other. It was just starting snowing when we met. She was heading for Norfolk – I am a bit worried she may be stuck in Norfolk longer than she had planned as I hear how East Anglia is knee deep in the cold white stuff.

Sunday night I went up to Nottingham to see Keane. Reidski hates Keane and would rather have slit his own throat than go and see this particular band, but I would walk back to Nottingham in the snow to see them again. (Better than driving in the stuff as I had to do last night which wasn't fun at all.) Great and uplifting gig and Holly who is going to see them soon (if the snow ever melts so she can escape from Norfolk) is in for a treat.

And so to today when snow has stopped play – or at least prevented me from getting down to London to see Reidski tonight. Our snow is disappointing – here and cold – but not enough of it to close schools (I love being the children’s champion and agreeing that the village school should be closed due to snow which as Chair of Governor’s I get to do, although sadly only when it actually – like- snows hard enough to justify that closure.) Reidski has a foot of snow in his garden and will be spending his day doing sod all being well and truly snowed in. On his own :-(