I've been blogging for 17 years today.
I'm often asked how is it that a blog about minigolf has the name the 'Ham and Egger Files'? The answer is that it didn't initially start out life as a minigolf blog.
The first post
I published my first post about how I planned to participate in as many obscure and minority sports as I could and see what would happen with the (limited amount of) sporting ability I had!
What is a Ham & Egger?
The term 'ham and egger' has connotations ranging from that of 'ordinary person' to that of 'loser'. The origin of the term comes from prize fighters whose modest skills wouldn’t let them win large purses. Therefore, the fighter or their manager - who received a percentage of any purses won - were never able to afford to eat better than ham and eggs.
Lots of blogs
Since that first post 17 years ago I have published more than 5,400 posts and received more than 3 million pageviews!
Admittedly, a large number of the blog posts have been about minigolf.
The Crazy World of Minigolf Tour
Our interest in minigolf and what would soon become our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour had actually begun on the 30th September 2006, but I didn't publish a post about the sport until the 29th January 2007 when I announced that I had joined the British Minigolf Association - a competition circuit I made my actual debut on in Southend-on-Sea on the 28th April 2007.
Since then we've visited 1,043 miniature golf courses. 996 of those have been in the British Isles, while 47 have been in overseas countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Spain (& Lanzarote, Canary Islands), Sweden and the USA.
When we began our travels there were around 600 courses in the UK. There are now more than 1,000, with new courses opening all the time.
Other sports & games are available
If you're wondering what happened to the quest to play lots of different sports, that has continued and I've participated in some very interesting events over the years!
