Superbowl-cum-Croquet Party

Jeremy’s house and extensive garden, located just outside Thousand Oaks, played host to a Superbowl party with a twist yesterday. Guests where treated to the normal delights of delicious food and beverages but where also invited to place an illicit wager on the game and to join in on a round of croquet. Of course, as with the ‘football’, the Americans always have to do things a little differently. Not satisfied with the traditional Association Rules they ‘remodel’ the game to their own requirements. The once genteel sport, popular among Ladies, now becomes a veritable war - complete with viscous club-like mallets. The simple rectangular layout of the UK game becomes a bizarre double-diamond with two pegs! Not only that but the dainty ‘taking croquet’ that one is allowed in the UK version after making a ‘roquet’ (hitting another player’s ball) becomes a foot-smashing, mallet destroying death sentence for the other player because you are actually allowed to put your foot on your ball while you whack it against the other players - crazyfish.

Meanwhile, some people on TV stood around waiting for commercials to come back on whilst some of their friends occasionally ran into each other. Some people in stripey outfits didn’t seem very happy as they kept losing their dusters whilst practising their semaphore and whistling routines. Some very old people came on halfway through and moaned about not being satisfied. Slate has a good summary of the under-age-beer-touting-mostly-unamusing superbowl adverts.