Fat Man

I apologise if anyone took my tip and opted for a 2-1 final score at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. This was a truly drab game, and although I thought City played well enough in patches, they just lacked the killer punch. A bit (stealing from my cousin Steve here) like the sad Ricky Hatton in the ring the night before, although both teams were slugged and pummelled into a weary submission here. Neither side showed a huge amount of commitment or quality in front of goal, and frustrating was the only word for it. I have to say that if there had been a less lenient referee, the match might have flared into something more closely resembling a contest. He let the game flow and could easily have got up to a couple of reds if he had come down harder early on - though for once I feel Mario was hard done by for his yellow. Not that I wish for a dirty match, just that we might have seen a bit more gusto if it had happened. I think also the anger of the detestable Chelsea fans towards their new manager must surely have had an effect on the home side. Anyway, the less said about this poor excuse for a game of football the better, and let's hope we see something different at the home of Rugby League on Wednesday night. I fear we may struggle again, but this time I think that a 2-1 to City scoreline might be the result this time.

Now, on to the next thing. I've mentioned it once already, and it becomes increasingly hard to ignore as time goes by. Yes, Christmas is just around the corner.

This year, operating the way I do in my personal life, is particularly tricky as the Big Day falls on a Tuesday. My place of employment is being typically anal and seeking to control everyone minutely, so it feels as if there is hardly any room to breathe. For a festival which lasts one - maybe two - days, Christmas causes an awful lot of heartache. Retailers are sweating their arses off hoping that folks will shell out ever-increasing amounts on the latest tat; families are frantic with worry about the presents, the cooking, the inevitable interaction with people they hardly ever see; sad milestones are marked with depression; even the telly isn't what it used to be, what with all the guff you can get on the internet and elsewhere all year round.

I have one simple proposal (and it has probably already been suggested by loads of people) which - though not a cure-all for the Yuletide disease - might do a little something to help. Why not follow the Easter pattern and make Christmas day the Friday after the last full moon in whenever (I'm sure the theological doctors could come up with something which meant it was always the second-to-last Friday of December) on some ridiculous religious calendar somewhere? Boxing Day could then fall on the Monday after it and we would get a four day weekend. You'd have to make sure that New Year's Eve was untouched of course, because I feel that people won't put up with moving that around, but surely it makes sense from all angles to have the Christmas event better managed? I mean, there is no real evidence to suggest that Jesus ever lived at all (old scraps of papyrus don't count for me) so why get hung up on the 'fact' that he was born on the 25th of December? In any case, the whole thing was hijacked from the pagan agricultural/astronomical festival, which was devised at a time when most people didn't have to get the tube into work five days a week. Just a thought.