You snooze, you don't necessarily lose!

So - this morning at one o'clock, La Rochelle was alive and kicking!

After a restful  90 minutes of sleep, my alarm clock woke me up at 00.30 am, and everything swung (slowly) into action. The half moon was only just rising, and all was quiet. Throughout the house not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse.

Well, that's not entirely true  because from the cottage next door there was the faint glow of lights, and the sound of cheering.....

Through the door of the cottage could be seen a large bucket of popcorn, and some very, very, American legs. At one o'clock in the morning - what could possibly have been going on?

We had all stumbled from the depths of sleep to sit in front of a television to watch a fellow called Joe Flacco - who will apparently get a  twenty million dollar contract on the basis of his performance this morning... Luck fellow - but the sad thing is, I don't think he even knows I exist!

Superbowl! Which takes place at one o'clock in the morning, our time - so we had very little chance of sleep. This year between the 'Baltimore Ravens' and the 'San Francisco 49ers', and played in somewhere called Noo Orlins, according to Jim and Sue. This is some of the early action - and having never watched a game before - it was mostly unintelligible to me. In fact at times I did not even know the commentators were speaking English! Still it was interesting - rather like rugby in a way - but played in motorbike helmets, while they wore well-padded rugby jerseys and ballet tights.

I think that we don't play 'American Football' in Africa because there is no way the folk here would get their "man vegetables" into those outfits!

Jim and Sue, 2 American guests, had made the journey from the hotel to the cottage in pitch darkness because that particular cottage is the only place that has a decoder with access to ESPN. Jim, having woken up in time for kick-off, spent most of the time fast asleep with the popcorn balanced on his lap, while Sue spent all of her time feeding the dogs and asking silly questions about scrimmage lines and end zones! Which I couldn't answer.

The Ravens won 34-31. Which was good, because when Jim woke up - he told me he was a Ravens supporter. Incredibly, though we watched from 1.00 am to 5.30 am - the total playing time was around 20 minutes.  Next year I think I will just watch the highlights package! In fact, the most animated action was between the coaches and officials when the lights went out for half an hour!