I woke up in my own little beer-generated cloud of unknowing yesterday. After the effort involved in hauling my sorry self-poisoned ass across the living room to the computer (just to keep all of you happy, I might add) it rapidly became clear there was no way I was getting to the City game without a taxi. Fortunately, it turned up bang on time and dropped me outside the ground at 2:30, half an hour before kickoff.

Except - no! - this was the week kickoff had been put back to 5:20 instead. Bollocks. I could have had another couple of hours recovery time, and now I'm stood baffled and nauseous on North Street, with all this time to kill. But what really hurts is the embarrassment. Embarrassment firstly that I knew about the late start two weeks ago, and secondly that it took me three minutes to notice there was anything wrong.

Yes, that's how long I walked towards the stadium gates before I registered the absence of thousands of people, all dressed in red. The precise chain of thought went like this. Here's the sweetshop, I will buy sweets for the game. Now I'm in the shop, so I'll shuffle round the crowd of fans clockwise, like I do every Saturday, until I get to the counter. Hang on ...

Even if I was a Catholic, I wouldn't be the observing kind. Still, we played well, won 2-0, and then I went to a party and did the decadent thing again. Thanks to Dave, without whose guidance I would probably have got myself run over or something.

The cloud is back, of course, so I've really no idea if this makes any sense. Actually, I've probably just written 'And then I went and then I went and then I went' fifty seven times, and I bet I've just tailed off without a proper