Two Weeks

Two weeks since I've gone and I feel like the tramp, picking dustbins in the alley.

"I want... uh... I want... that one! The shiny one, with the lid."

"Excellent choice, sir."

Two weeks is too long a gap between blog posts. But I've been getting my affairs in order. I've tried to be serious for the whole time, but have slipped occasionally. I did a funny dance a few days ago. I felt bad about it. It was really funny.

Since my last post, Lucy and I have painted a door and a ceiling, seen a heron, stopped watching two films because they were rubbish, and purchased three packets of gnocchi on a buy-two-get-the-third-bag-of-gnocchi-free deal at a popular orange supermarket.

I've also finished Catch-22, which I somehow managed to avoid reading until now. I don't really know what I think about it. It was initially quite funny, then quite wearying for a few hundred pages, but eventually worked its way back into my brain. I liked the serious bits best, because horrific war injuries are better than a relentless barrage of Abbot and Costello-style banter. All in all, it was pretty good. But maybe too long or something.

Speaking of maybe too long or something, I also finished watching season four of Arrested Development. I loved it. In the end.

It was a lot like Catch-22, structurewise, with a lot of repetition and revisiting events from various perspectives. It started off slow, but became really impressive. It's unusual for a programme's "reboot" to be so different and ambitious. It is to be commended, even if it's not always 100% successful. I'm going to watch it again to see all the stuff I missed.

But you're not interested in that. You want to know my opinion on the issue of the day.

And the issue of the day is Tomato & Basil.

It's a complicated debate. Both sides have their merits and... oh. "Soup." "Of the day."

I get it. Very funny.

Not as funny as the dance, but dot dot dot fullstop line break

***

Next season's Southampton Football Club kit was announced this morning. There has been a lot of talk on social networking and building sites about the new shirt.

In a break from tradition, we are no longer wearing stripes. Just like the many times in the past we have also broken with tradition. Breaking with tradition is something of a tradition at Southampton Football Club. Can we afford to forego our heritage by failing to break with tradition next season?

And what about the shorts?

I'm fairly indifferent about the kit. But I can see why it has caused some controversy:

As you can see, in addition to the stripe issue, the shirt (left) has abandoned the customary "sleeves and trunk" element, and has instead adopted some kind of new "holster" design. Sports scientists have claimed that this will increase mobility and will allow the children of the players to breathe.

The shorts (right), have been tweaked slightly, so that the previous - and quite popular - double leg-hole has been amalgamated into a single sealed sheath.

The club's crest has also been altered.

I think making a fuss about these changes is both futile and misguided. A football club's kit goes through many changes. We used to wear blue shorts, after all. Just because something is seen as "traditional", it doesn't mean that it can't be changed. New traditions are created every day. And broken with twice as often.

If we are to move forward as a successful club, to attract top players and pursue a European place in the next few years, we need to modernise. Also, green is a much more marketable colour in the lucrative Leprechaun community.