WHAT IS THE HATVENT CALENDAR?
This is the third year of PompeyChicken's Hatvent Calendar! It's a bit like an online Advent Calendar.
It's been inspired by the Innocent Drinks company who have been putting little woolen hats on their bottles of smoothies as part of The Big Knit, in aid of the charity Age UK.
You may have seen them on sale in Sainsbury's. PompeyChicken's family has been drinking a lot of smoothies again this year and each hat continues to be a perfect fit!
Two year's ago the Hatvent Calendar made connections between each hat and Pompey.
Last year underneath each hat PompeyChicken unveiled a favourite Pompey video clip.
This year he's been looking through the bookshelves to identify some of his favourite football books. Quite a few have a link to Pompey but not all.
You can read more about the Big Knit, which has been running since 2003, by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
I hope you enjoy this year's Hatvent Calendar.
POMPEYCHICKEN'S HAT OF THE DAY
TODAY'S BOOK
This book is titled The Soccer Tribe, it was published in 1981 by Jonathan Cape, and it's by the zoologist Desmond Morris.
Although some of the pictures and illustrations are a little dated, it is over 30 years old afterall, it is an excellent book and still very much applicable to today's modern game exploring in great detail the tribal aspects of football.
It covers things that every football fan will be familar with but looked at in a very different way.
To give you a sense of what the book is about, in the introduction Morris writes: "...viewed objectively it [football] is one of the strangest patterns of human behaviour to be seen in the whole of modern society. With this in mind I decided to carry out my own investigation. It soon became clear that each...football club...was organised like a small tribe, complete with tribal territory, tribal elders, witch-doctors, heroes, camp-followers and other assorted tribesmen...I set about a systematic analysis of this strange and often savage 'Soccer Tribe'.
If you want to get a better understanding of what's happening around you on matchdays before during or after the game itself then this book will have an answer. From team formations to the classification of goal celebrations to different types of gamesmanship to describing different types of old and young fans - it's all here!
You can find out more about this book on Amazon here ==> The Soccer Tribe
LAST YEAR'S HAT
Click on the following link to see the hat and video from one year ago ==> Hatvent Calendar 4th December 2011
WHAT IS THE BIG KNIT?
To find out more about Innocent Smoothies and the Big Knit you can click on the following link ==> The Big Knit
BlueThruAndThru
