The View from the Spaghetti Factory (proper redesign coming soon!)

I’m not sure how much you can credit genetics for your choice of leisure interest, but my obsession with football doesn’t strike me as being particularly unexpected. My grandad, Bill Burnikell, played professionally before WWII (for Lincoln City, Bradford and Aldershot) and later coached teams in Sweden, Chile and Sudan.

Enough general family history, though; this is one of those “isn’t it a small world?” musings. Up at my parents’ place, we’ve got a whole load of grandad-related artefacts, mostly relating to football and/or Sweden. One of them is an issue of “Match”, a Swedish football magazine, dating from 1961.

This particular issue is largely devoted to Degerfors IF, my grandad’s last club in Sweden, who were flying high (especially for a small-town team from Värmland) in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s top division. It’s great to see his picture in the squad list centrefold feature, but I was surprised to see a promising young player called Tord Grip… now best known as Sven-Göran Eriksson’s deputy at Lazio, England and Manchester City. A browse through the club’s chronology shows that Sven was also briefly a coach at Degerfors.

I’ve scanned a couple of pages so far; more to come soon…

Swedish “Match” magazine, 1961 on Flickr

Dear Father Christmas, please bring me bouncy rabbit mice. I have been very good all year. My regards to your wife and elves. Best wishes, Adrian.

Mysterious mammal caught on film (BBC)

I’ve seen *some* sort of jerboa in a zoo, and it seemed such a fantastic idea… mouse with rabbit ears that hops like a kangaroo! I’ve been through the Gobi desert, too, but I’m guessing jerboas aren’t particularly easy to spot from a train window.

German composer Stockhausen dies (BBC)