In a future age when we really get to know what makes us humans tick we will learn why we like to collect things and complete lists with an unexplainedly huge sense of achievement, totally disproportionate to the task.
It may be more of a British trait …indeed much as I often see suitably anoraked men and boys collecting train numbers on Peterborough station or at London Kings Cross (with it’s bizarrely numbered Platform 0)
I can’t say I have noticed the same outside Penn station in New York.
Maybe you can’t get the anoraks in the US…and we all know the rule …no anorak=no trainspotting.
In the UK we also have men religiously trying to visit every football (soccer) ground in the league. It’s no great hardship I am told doing the ones at the top, such as West Ham at the former Olympic stadium,
the Emirates home of Arsenal, or Manchester United”s Old Trafford but standing in the rain at Raith Rovers or Queen of the South on a wet Saturday in November requires a stamina last seen in Robert the Bruce. The frustration as well with the bottom league clubs is that you make a gargantuan effort to visit some of the more obscure lower league grounds to get the last ones on the list and you tick them off…. Only for them to be relegated out of the league and you then get another far flung obscure ground to visit as a new non league club is promoted and joins.
So I have a far better idea for how these collectors should spend their time……and this is one that never changes and is truly cast in stone.
The UK has a unique range of cheeses and these are very geographically defined. Cheddar coming from the town of cheddar, Stilton from the village of Stilton…and so on. No relegation risk here. There will always be Gloucester, Lancashire , Wensleydale and quite a few more ready for a visit, sampling and ticking off the list of ’20 famous British cheeses’.
And of course…No specialist clothing required!
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