Everton 3 Charlton 1
OK, OK. I know this is a bit late, but there are reasons. One of them is that I am still on holiday, and while in theory this ought to provide me with more time, in fact the reverse is true, as various long-promised projects (not exciting ones, just routine filing and opening about three months' worth of bank letters and the like) are undertaken.
Another reason is of course that the above score is quite a depressing one, coming so soon after Charlton ended the old year on a high note against West Ham. And I cannot even lay the blame on Lawro this time, as maybe our campaign has borne fruit, but I could not locate any predictions for this week's matches, and have so far not seen any for the coming weekend, either. If making predictions is tempting fate, then Frankie Valley (who forecast 1-2 after tipping West Ham to win in SE7 last Saturday) is partly to blame, and I am as well, for in an email to my old friend in whose house I spent the last night of my stay in England, and who is an Everton fan (or Evertonian, as they refer to themselves, as if it were a public school or something), I made a jocular reference to the upcoming match, the gist of which was that Charlton had beaten Sunderland recently too, and look what had happened to them in their next game (0-3 at Wigan). Not as outright as saying the final score would be 1-2, but enough for fate to be tempted, I think.
But, as you will doubtless have worked out for yourselves, the main reason for the delay has been finding a suitable title, as I have committed myself to using names of Christmas carols for all post headings until Twelfth Night. As Twelfth Night is either tomorrow or the night after (never sure about this one), this posting will most likely be the last one before then, as there is no quiz this week and Charlton's next game is against an in-form Sheffield Wednesday on 7 January, by which time it will be bad luck to leave Christmas cards and decorations on view, and I won't have to find any more ways of justifying my blog headings.
When I made the rash declaration that I would use carols during the twelve days of Christmas (good heavens, there's another!), I saw no problems ahead at all; there are about 200 carols, I reasoned, so there would be sure to be something suitable for all eventualities. And to make certain of this, I did a couple of Google searches, and discovered two things: one is that Americans think that All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth, Frosty the Snowman and Winter Wonderland are Christmas carols; the other is that of the traditional carols, there are in reality only about 30 or 40.
Having used In the Bleak Midwinter for Charlton's last defeat in the north west, I also realised that all the others either have joyous names, or names that don't signify much, like The Holly and the Ivy, which might do for taking one's god-daughter to a well-known theatrical restaurant in central London, but which can by no stretch of the imagination be used for a football result, so after the 1-3 defeat, here I was with a problem.
The thinking behind the name of this blog is that I mostly write it in the middle of the night after I get back from work during the week (I may remind you here that at the Centre we teach in the afternoons and evenings, not mornings), and of course that I live in Madrid. (Incidentally, there is an organisation called Madrid Nights, run by someone Mush knows, which organises stag weekends and the like for visiting Brits). So one solution would have been to call the wretched posting Silent Night and claim to be composing it at 4 a.m. on a night other than a Friday or a Saturday, which here in my neighbourhood tend to be quite the reverse of silent, but in fact I am typing this on Wednesday afternoon, and it is still light, and I'd like to get out for a walk and maybe a haircut before it gets dark, so I have finally gone for Once in Royal David's City.
My reasoning is this: Liverpool (where Everton come from) is a City. David is the name of Everton's manager, Mr. Moyes (Evertonians always refer to their club's manager as "Mister" whatever it might be, and this holds good even if the Evertonian in question is aged 75 and the manager is 12). Everton's shirts are Royal blue; and as for the Once, well this is the number of times Everton have beaten Charlton in the League since 2002, (meaning this one) so here's hoping it won't happen again for a similar length of time, if at all.
Closing on a slightly more serious football note, however, it does seem that Charlton are being very unlucky to face teams just when they are on a roll, I mean Everton had done nothing until last week, and now Wigan are crumbling. And I always said we should have played Liverpool at the end of August as we were meant to, since they were useless then, and look at them now.
So relegation-threatened Sheffield Wednesday would choose this week to record two wins in a row just prior to the Third Round of the Cup....