I’m sitting on the sofa, half-watching the Super Bowl, which is an American Football game being played in New Orleans. It is the most watched television event of the year and lots of people get very excited about it. I don’t know much about American Football and other than watching England play football or rugby occasionally, or the Olympics last Summer, I don’t spend a lot of time watching sport on television at all. The most remarkable thing that has happened so far (as far as I can tell, anyway!) is that the power went out in the stadium for a while.
But lots of people get together to watch the match and if you look it up on Wikipedia, before they even explain what the Super Bowl is, they mention that people get together and eat lots of food! So, it seems it is an excuse for a party, which is no bad thing. Up and down the country there will be people shouting at the television, whilst drinking beer, eating chips (crisps) and, in Houston at any rate, a lot of meat.
How do I know this when I’m not at a Super Bowl party? I made the mistake of trying to go food shopping on Saturday afternoon. The shop just outside of the community is HEB (Here Everything’s Better or, as we like to think, Bigger!) and that’s where I went to pick up some things for dinner. I’ve never seen the place busier, not even in the run up to Christmas or Thanksgiving. People were pushing round trolleys filled with beer, chips and meat. The shelves of fresh meat where basically empty and as fast as the staff were filling the shelves, people were stripping them of food again!
I hadn’t really registered that it was Super Bowl weekend and as I wandered round I did begin to worry that there might have been a storm warning that I’d missed. It was a bit like trying to go grocery shopping on Christmas Eve in the UK, except that trolleys (shopping carts) were filled with beer, chips and meat instead of turkey and crackers! The main difference being that the shops weren’t closed today like they are in the UK on Christmas day. I can only imagine that the shops were just as busy today before the match (and the parties) started. Madness!
But I hope everyone had a good time. Well done to the Baltimore Ravens who have just won the match!
