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A Brief History of Soccer

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Today’s post is in honor of tomorrow’s final of the 2006 World Cup! Now, I confess I’m not very “sporty”–I never could get into baseball, football, or basketball. But there ARE sports I enjoy, like tennis and ice skating, and, especially, soccer. This is not an easy sport to be a fan of in the US (unlike the rest of the world!), and I have only been able to catch a few games of the World Cup, thanks to kind friends with satellite TV. But tomorrow’s final is actually on network television, yay! France vs. Italy, or the hunky Zinedine Zidane (who I have a bit of a crush on) vs. the hunky Fabio Cannarvo. Who to cheer for???

So, I did a little looking into the history of soccer/football, and here are just a few of the factoids I discovered:

–A game involving kicking a ball into a net is known to have been around as early as the Han Dynasty in China (2nd or 3rd century BC); they also played a similar game in Kyoto, Japan around 611 AD
–The Greeks and Romans were also ardent footballers. In Rome in the early Olympics, there were up to 27 players on a team, and 2/3rds of them had to seek medical attention after a 50-minute game
–In Britain (today probably the epicenter of foottball!) in the 8th century, the tale of the first game in England involves the severed head of a defeated Danish prince
–In 1331, Edward III passed laws banning football (booo!)
–James I of Scotland in 1424 proclaimed “That na man play at the Fute-ball” (boooo to him, too!)
–Elizabeth I declared that soccer players should be “jailed for a week and obliged to do penance in church” ( would really really like to know what was going on in those Elizabethan matches)
–In 1815, Eton established a set of rules for the game that other schools and universities soon began to use. These were later standardised and a version known as the Cambridge Rules were adopted in 1848
–There soon sprang up two camps: the Rugby School, with rules allowing tripping, shin-kicking, and carrying the ball vs. the Cambridge Rules boys. On October 26, 1863, 11 clubs and schools sent representatives to a meeting at the Freemason’s Tavern to establish a single set of rules to which everyone could agree. (This created the Football Association). But, predictably, the Rugby School advocates walked out (no doubt after kicking some shins), and on December 8 the Football Association and Rugby Football split.
–In 1869, the provision to forbid any handling of the ball was passed, and the soccer/football we know now came into being

So, best of luck to all the players tomorrow! Vive la France, or Viva Italia. Whichever. 🙂

Birthday Ball

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At the Frampton household, we are preparing for my son’s seventh birthday party. Tomorrow, we will welcome six of his friends to our house for some party games, sandwiches, and ice cream cake (my son doesn’t like traditional cakes–they’re just “bread with frosting.”) Tomorrow night, the Spouse and I will be opening a bottle of wine. Related? You tell me.

Birthdays have been celebrated since the 1st century BCE, although the practice waned and was brought back during the sixteenth century (and some cultures still do not celebrate birthdays, but you can read all about that by following the birthday link).

As I was thinking about birthdays, I thought about Regency period books, and realized I hadn’t read about many birthday celebrations (besides the reigning monarch’s, but that’s a special case), although they must have existed. For the research wonks out there (Amanda? Diane? the rest of the Riskies? Anyone else?), what were the common birthday practices? Did people get presents? Was there cake? Pin the tail on the Prinny?

What birthday traditions do you like? If you were a Regency lady, how would you like to celebrate your special day?

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

So how literate are we?

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According to British librarians, here are the top 30 books you should read, and my results:
Favorites, would re-read any time.
Read a long time ago.
Read, found mediocre, and wonder why it’s here..
Yes, I keep meaning to read this and one day I will. Honest.
Anything else–no interest.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible (bits of. Very few of us have, unless we’ve been in prison, which I’m told is an excellent opportunity to read the whole thing. And I’d only count the King James version)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

What do you think of such lists? What do you think they prove, if anything? And how did you score?
Janet

“Roughing it”

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Last week, during flooding in my local area, I ended up living several days essentially on an island. I live up on a hill, but the main road at the bottom of the neighborhood was closed, the power was out a conserve-and-boil-water order was in effect. My children and I talked about earlier days when no one had electricity, TV, etc… I toyed with the notion of whether this was giving me a taste of Regency life, but quickly rejected it.

As we figured out ways to cook everything on a barbecue grill, I realized that in the Regency we would have had a wood, or more likely, coal-burning stove of some sort, as pictured here (the kitchen at Pickford’s House, Friar Gate, Derby, built after 1812). More importantly, I (or more likely, my cook-let’s keep it a proper Regency fantasy) would know how to use it. Instead of worrying about the food in the fridge and freezer spoiling, we’d have cellars or get fresh stuff from the home farm or local market.

As far as personal hygiene was concerned, in my Regency fantasy I’d have a nice avante-garde bathroom such as the ‘bamboo bathroom’ at Plas Tag in Wales. The bath includes a shower with its own coal-fired water supply. Of course, I’d also have the means and the servants to bathe daily, as Beau Brummell is supposed to have done.

Inconveniences aside, the most striking thing was the feeling of isolation. We had only the radio to keep us advised as to the situation. Up on out hill everything was almost surreally normal–kids played outside, I did some gardening, lots of people were out grilling. It was just very quiet with no one driving in and out. Without the visual images on TV or a storm of Internet news, it was hard to grasp the extent of the devastation in lower areas. As it turns out, we were very lucky compared to some. Fortunately, there were very few fatalities in our area, but many people’s houses and businesses have sustained serious damage.

Anyway, after a few days of isolation, we learned that a somewhat roundabout, country road way of getting out of our neighborhood had opened up. We were expecting houseguests coming from Chicago, but they called, telling us the western routes to our town were still closed, so we arranged to meet them further to the north. We ending up “roughing it” together in a Fairfield Inn, conveniently located close to a children’s museum, a zoo, restaurants and boasting a pool. What I enjoyed the most, though, were the hot showers and hot coffee each morning. The best thing was getting home to find the power back on ahead of NYSEG predictions, our pet fish still alive and only moderately unpleasant smells from the fridge.

So I’ll admit it. I’m a wimp, I like my modern comforts and my Regency fantasy has to include all the most up-to-date conveniences of the time. And many, many servants. 🙂

Hope all my Risky friends and guests are safe and reasonably dry!

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Golden Quill Best Historical Romance
www.elenagreene.com

Period Views of America

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In honor of the USA’s Independence Day, here are some of the funniest or most interesting period quotes I could find (mostly British) about the American Revolution:

Tom Paine, 1776: England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally origin.


Lady Sarah Lennox, 1776: In short, I think there is no deciding who is precisely wrong and who is precisely right. Only two things, I think, won’t bear dispute: 1st, that those who cause most lives to be lost are the worst people; secondly, that the Bostonians, being chiefly Presbyterians and from the north of Ireland, are daily proved to be very, very bad people, being quarrelsome, discontented, hypocritical, enthusiastical, lying people.

Tom Paine, 1776: The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on that head.

Lady Sarah Lennox, 1776: I grow a greater rebel every day upon principle.

British Colonel Allan Maclean, 1777: Washington this whole winter never had more than 7,000 men in the Jersies, where we had 16,000, yet we have been tossed and kicked about most amazingly, all our forage parties constantly attacked, and tho’ we generally beat them we lost a great many good men.


James Boswell, writing to Samuel Johnson, 1778: What do you say to Taxation no Tyranny, now, after Lord North’s declaration, or confession, or whatever else his conciliatory speech should be called? I never differed from you in politicks but upon two points,–the Middlesex Election, and the Taxation of the Americans by the British Houses of Representatives. There is a charm in the word Parliament, so I avoid it. As I am a steady and a warm Tory, I regret that the King does not see it to be better for him to receive constitutional supplies from his American subjects by the voice of their own assemblies, where his Royal Person is represented, than through the medium of his British subjects.

Samuel Johnson, 1778: I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.


William Cowper, 1783: On the other hand, the Americans, who, if they had contented themselves with a struggle for lawful liberty, would have deserved applause, seem to me to have incurred the guilt of parricide, by renouncing their parent, by making her ruin their favorite object, and by associating themselves with their worst enemy, for the accomplishment of their purpose.

So, what are your reactions? Do you find Lady Sarah Lennox’s prejudice against Presbyterians as bizarre as I do? How about Johnson’s loathing for all Americans? Do you agree with Paine that William the Conqueror gave the English monarchy a “very paltry rascally origin”?

Happy Fourth of July to our American readers!

Cara
Cara King — www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — Booksellers’ Best Finalist for Best Regency of 2005!