Yes alright, I may have gone slightly over the top yesterday. Here, as a counter balance, are some reasons to be cheerful.

1. Bristol City. Third in the Championship in our promotion season, we already have just about enough points not to be relegated. Oh ineffable joy, joy beyond all other joys. Lee Trundle says City's success is no shock. He should see the expression on our faces.
2. Cardiff lose Thompson card appeal. On Saturday, I saw quite the most vicious premeditated thuggery I've ever seen on a football pitch, as their striker Steve Thompson ran straight through our keeper, Adriano Basso. It was a foul by a Scot on a Brazilian, but that didn't stop the City fans from launching into a pro-English and anti-Welsh tirade. The BBC report describe him as 'lunging from behind' at Basso, but there was nothing homoerotic about the actual event, which was just brutal. Sometimes a red card really isn't enough.
3. Fabio Capello. See the nation rise from its moping couch as the despair ebbs away, to be replaced by a highly contingent suspension of disbelief, like a divorcee dragging herself out to a singles lounge bar on a Saturday night. We've been let down so often before, but maybe this time we won't get a lizard.
4. Virgin Media customers lost their broadband for a while. It didn't happen to me, because I wasn't able to move, so I wasn't with Virgin Media. Oh, the schadenfreude.
5. Christmas. The tedious bit before Christmas is nearly gone. On Christmas Day, I get fed by friends. On Boxing Day, I get fed again, by different friends. On the 30th, my sister feeds me. Three Christmas dinners, and I won't have to peel a sprout. Next year it's my turn again, but next year is next year.
6. Internet shopping. I never have to do my Christmas shopping in town again.
7. The Internet generally. What the hell did I used to do with myself?
8. Science. It still works, bitches.
9. Solstice. A couple of days, then the sun starts coming back. We've only done a third of the cold, but we've done half the dark. This is where we do actually have it worse than the Americans. At 51º 27` north, we're on the same latitude as Fort Rupert on the Hudson Bay, further north than Kiev. It gets dark at four o'clock now, ten o'clock in June. Ten o'clock here we come.

Am I forgiven now? Why not express your forgiveness by feeding me another Christmas dinner? I don't think three is quite enough.