Our Morecambe Shrimps gear finally arrived!  It shipped back on December 28 but I guess it had to clear customs.  I back Manchester United, but a while back we happened to catch a Morecambe Shrimps game - they don't play in the Premier League; they play in League Two which is like the fourth tier of English football, like AAAA baseball in the U.S.  And that's fairly recent, too - they got promoted in 2007 so that was their first time in the football league.

Anyway, Alan caught a game of theirs on Fox Soccer Plus and decided that he would back the mighty Shrimps, because they had "the least sporting name of any sporting club of any sport in existence".  He likes the cut of their jib.  Apparently Morecambe is famous for some kind of potted shrimp product, hence the name.  So I decided to spend a little Christmas money on some gear.  We each got a home jersey, I got a keychain and got Alan a coffee mug and lapel pin.  (Though he doesn't drink coffee, so I guess it's a tea mug...)

To give you an idea, the Morecambe Shrimps Football Club is so small, when our swag finally arrived, it was in a box hand-addressed in black Sharpie.  No computer address label or automated shipping here!  This has been a source of great amusement to Alan, even more so than having some Shrimps swag, because he's imagining the office workers at the football club wondered aloud and now has everyone in the village wondering, "What the hell?!?  Who in Conyers, Georgia, USA has even heard of the Shrimps, much less ordered all this gear???"

He said, "I can hear Nigel and Bertram talking down the pub, pondering, 'Didn't Margaret's cousin's son emigrate to the US?  Was it Georgia, though?', 'Well you know Dennis's daughter was dating an American bloke, maybe he likes the football...'" and so on.  He painted me this wonderful picture in words of an entire village with "WTH?" thought balloons over their heads, and our order being the topic of town gossip because it's such a tiny parish.  His description culminated with the image of some of the lads finally going to ask the old gaffer who lives down the lane who the heck had moved from there to Conyers, and the old gaffer slightly dislodging his cap as he scratched his head, deep in thought.

We're a Morecambe mystery.