Now watch this drive!

Welcome, cobbled reader, as this week we tell you a story of two different types of drive. Yes, the work on the driveway of the house we're renting here is finally complete, and what's more, the San Francisco 49ers have reached what is essentially the semi-finals for this year's Super Bowl. Y'see, they play in a sport that over here is called football, where the way you attack is through something called a 'drive' - see what I did there?

But first, the driveway. Cast your mind back to early 2020. In those heady days, long before we were all amateur virologists, there was a large redwood tree growing in the middle of our driveway, very close to the house. Sadly, the tree had to go: it had significantly damaged the existing concrete driveway, and I imagine before long it would have been damaging the house itself. I question the wisdom of building a house so close to such a fine natural specimen in the first place, but here there are oak trees and redwoods jutting out into the streets themselves, so when they built downtown Palo Alto they really didn't think much about that. There are few problems in this country that can't be solved with just a bit more concrete.

The tree has been down for the best part of a couple of years now, but the driveway hasn't been repaired. This isn't a big deal to us, as mostly we just let our neighbour use it. Anyway, in the last month or so our landlady has had the driveway entirely taken up and replaced by some rather natty block paving. It's been subject to the usual Californian rate of progress, but as of yesterday, it's complete, with these attractive large stones down one edge:

Alright, so on to the football. Football's a really odd game: it's another one of those sports where nothing happens for long periods of time, and much of the excitement seems to be about waiting for a relatively low probability event to happen (see also: baseball). When I pointed this out, Helen said something like, "So why didn't cricket catch on here then?". The lecture I handed out about every ball being different, and cricket (in the long form anyway) being all about the building of pressure and contest between bat and ball was somewhat waved away.

Anyway, the San Francisco 49ers (who, in an Easyjet-like definition of geography, actually play 40 miles outside of San Francisco, on the outskirts of San Jose) are on a streak of late-game wins. They won against the LA Rams in overtime to even make it to the playoffs, then squeaked past the Green Bay Packers with a late field goal last week when, with 10 minutes to go, it had looked like they were dead and buried. Watching this winter sport you get some impression of the extremes of weather in this sprawling land: up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last week's game was played in temperatures of -14 degrees centigrade (yes, really), and as the second half wore on, the snow fell harder and harder. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both sides had trouble catching and hanging on to the ball. Californians simply have no concept of preparing for the weather, so it was amusing to watch the 49ers players walking off their flight earlier in the week in relatively light clothing. It's perhaps no surprise that Green Bay have a 90% winning record against Californian teams at their home ground in January and February.

This weekend it's an all-Californian clash as the 49ers once again face the LA Rams. Over here this is considered a fierce local rivalry, but it seems pretty good natured - Southampton vs Portsmouth this definitely ain't. As I've observed before, nobody in the Bay Area cares that much about sport(s) unless there's a chance of winning something, so if they win I expect a lot of 49ers-related action in the next couple of weeks, and if they lose I imagine we'll be back to having the weather as a news story on Monday. As they sometimes say in these parts, Go Niners!