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Where in the world can you hear about Cottagers, Gunners and Monkey Hangers all within a few minutes? Well, if you’re listening to a football (soccer) update from the United Kingdom, those are three team nicknames you might hear. Admittedly, there are a lot of teams over there with rather … well … boring nicknames. There are a lot of Blues, for instance, who wear home uniforms (or kit, as they call it in the United Kingdom) which are, yes, blue. The group of teams called...

I have to start this week with what may have been the most dangerous Blacktop Blockhead I have seen in some time. On Tuesday evening, I was driving on Victoria Street. I came to the lights at Seventh Avenue. It was red, so I stopped, as did the vehicle next to me. A few seconds later, the light turns green, and we both proceed. I can see the light at Sixth Avenue is red and is probably going to stay that way, so I start to ease off the gas well ahead of time. The vehicle beside me, however,...

  Sometimes, it’s the simple things people say that stay with you. When I got my first newspaper job (mumblety-mumble years ago) in High Prairie, Alberta, I went to a couple of meetings my first week. At one of the meetings, I talked to a couple of different people, but since it was just a social event kind of thing, I didn’t bother taking notes. A few days later, I was at the second meeting, and one of the same people from the first meeting came over to chat. I, of course, was drawing...

Yes, it’s spring in Prince George, despite the little bit of snow we got on Saturday. One easy way to tell the seasons have changed is to see the number of drivers being forced to do the pothole two-step on local streets. Just driving in a fairly limited area on the weekend, especially Sunday, I found a few spots that had nasty-looking holes. There were a couple in the eastbound lane of 18th Avenue, just past Ospika, as well as a couple on the entrance to the Exhibition Grounds off 18th...

  I sometimes wonder how many drivers realize there are two kinds of school zones. Actually, watching some Prince George drivers, I wonder if they know there is such a thing as a school zone of any type. Be that as it may, I noticed some years ago that there seemed to be two sorts of school zone signs. Some of them had the 30 km/h speed on them, some didn’t. So I checked with a couple of RCMP officers and was informed that yes, the two signs did represent different zones. In the case...

I listen to the radio a lot, especially early in the morning when I’m the only one in the office. I switch between a few different stations, depending on my mood, but one thing I always like is the occasional unintentional linking of songs in a set. I say “unintentional”, because at almost all commercial stations these days, the play lists are set by a computer, and the host has very little to do with what songs are being played on their show. I sometimes amuse myself (which isn’t hard to...

For a change, my health had good timing. I got a pretty bad cold just a couple of days before the Canada Winter Games ended, so I only had to make a few little adjustments to what I had figured on doing (like not going out to Tabor). And now, as I look back over the two weeks of the Games, I find myself remembering a few things that may have been a bit behind the scenes to most people. • I’m not going to put any money on it, but I suspect I was at more sports venues over the two weeks than...

As I write this, it’s Wednesday morning, the start of Day 6 of the 2015 Canada Winter Games, and I already feel like I’ve dealt with two weeks’ worth of stories. I can only imagine what I’ll feel like on March 2. I have talked to athletes from Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario for direct interviews, and chatted with coaches, team officials and event officials from across the country. I’ve been chased out of an officials’ trailer at long track speed skating and...

I did some thinking about my sporting past on Saturday. OK, maybe not my sporting past, but my past in relation to sports. I was at the final couple of games of the Trojan Wars boys basketball tournament at D.P. Todd, and while I spent most of my time following the games, I also spent some time following an area I was more familiar with: the scorers’ table. When I was at Prince George Secondary School, I started doing a lot of scorekeeping for basketball tournaments at the school. And when...

I went with my family to see Dralion at the CN Centre on Sunday afternoon. Wow. That’s about the only way to describe it. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t seen it, there’s no way I can express in words what happened on (and above) that stage for two hours. It’s unfortunate that this show is right near the end of Dralion’s run, since it means if you missed it, the only way to see it now is to hop a flight to Fairbanks or Anchorage in...