Un Año en el Infierno

Sheffield United 2 Charlton 1
Charlton 1 Blackburn R. 0

Radostin Kishishev celebrates Talal El Kharkhouri's winner against Blackburn

The title, literally translating as 'One (or A) Year in Hell', was part of one of the questions I forgot to use in Monday night's quiz. As I mentioned the other day, I was doing half of the quiz-mastering, under our new arrangement whereby two people perform each week, on a kind of rotation basis. This rotation is quite planetary, in that certain satellites recur every two or three weeks, and then people like me, or Mush, appear approximately every six months, and our old friends David and Luis of the Old Farts turn up just once a year, like Santa, around Christmas, when they do the traditional Charity Quiz (book your seats now, for 19 December).

[I know 19 December is a Tuesday, but our team is being very kindly accommodated by the other quiz guys and gals, as the 18th is the date of the Centre's annual Christmas bash, an event which no one wishes to forgo.]

And as I also mentioned in my last, I have been suffering from what my diary for last year indicates is my annual winter cold and cough. Monday dawned bright, clear and awful for me, as despite my resting up at home all weekend, my chest was still tight and my nose runny. I did not want to leave my bed; I had a long and difficult day at the Centre, Monday, for various reasons, being my worst teaching day. But usually one knows that a jolly evening at the quiz awaits at the end of it all.

But I considered everything; I could phone the Centre and quite truthfully say I was unwell, but then how would my lovely little 4 Juniors get their grammar and vocab test, for which they would have been diligently swotting all weekend, as I had the original here at home, where I had been revising it? They wouldn't want to spend another week worrying about the thing, so I couldn't leave them in the lurch, and then if I pulled out of the quiz, Alex or Tony, two of the inner planets, would be forced to spend a working day trying to put together some questions.

Of course I could send my questions to someone and ask them to be read out, but that would not be too satisfactory either; if you ask questions, you have to defend them against the customary barracking that emanates from the Old Farts, the rest of us being too polite, and also modify them if you realise that no one has any idea of what you are asking them. So no, not really.

There was nothing for it but to go through with it. My classes went well, the walk to the Centre made me feel a bit better, the Juniors finished their test in record time, and got good marks, and don't have to worry, and I got through my final class, with a slight temperature and a bit of tightness in my chest accruing by the end.

Then Mush announced that he was going home as he felt awful; in fact he felt much like I did. But I had decided to go ahead, there was nothing for it, and I rounded up John and Antony and we got a cab to the pub.

Once my fellow inquisitor Alex arrived, I begged to be allowed to be first on as I wasn't sure if the voice would hold out, and I started in.

It is not my purpose to give a minute description of the whole thing, but after a quick general round featuring questions, or answers which contained the letter Z, I went into a round solely about football.

And it was a disaster; my friends will rush forward here and declare that this is not so, but they are very kind and polite, and the more I look at this round, the more I wonder what possessed me. I asked a Liverpool question, knowing that there were a couple of fans in the room, but I did not ask anything about the glorious times these two boys have enjoyed while watching Liverpool; I asked how many years the club had spent in Division 2 in the fifties and sixties, to remind them that it has not all been life at the top. Of course they didn't know, and neither did anyone else (8, from 1954-62). They didn't know because one of them wasn't even born till 1974, and the other about ten years earlier, maybe. And anyway they weren't interested. I asked other questions which a 1974-born Manchester United fan couldn't answer either, though it only concerned the number of post-war managers they have had.

Then I looked at my list of questions and realised there were only 9, not 10. This was appalling, and I could have sworn etcetera... I hastily decided on asking which of the three promoted clubs in the Premiership had never been there before, and that was that, and I moved on to my other rounds, which do not concern us here.

It was only much later that I realised that question 10 had been there all along, attached to question 9, and with its number removed, by the mysterious gremlin which controls Microsoft Word, the worst word-processing program I have ever used, which by virtue of corporate dictat, is the only one available at the Centre.

The question was "About which Spanish football club was the book Un Año en el Infierno written, and why did it prove to be a bit of a misnomer?" The answer is Atlético de Madrid, and their seasons outside the Spanish top divison. The book title is a misnomer as Atlético Madrid spent more than just one year outside the top flight before securing their return. And if I had asked it, it would have upset my team-mate Hugh, a very keen supporter of Atleti, and who, oddly for an English guy, does not support any other club, anywhere.

So why was I, when I looked back, filling up my quiz round on football with the kinds of things people would prefer to ignore? And of course it was quite obvious when I thought about it some more. It is that my beloved Charlton seem to be heading for Un Año en el Infierno themselves, and my choice of questions was being subconsciously influenced by this.

The other bloggers and commentators had nothing to say after the disastrous performance at Sheffield United, except that we might as well get used to being one division lower down next season, and by no means certain to bounce back out of it like last time, There were no excuses; I used the word 'abysmal' to head my piece about the Reading game; this was worse, apparently.

I spent Tuesday evening in a merrier mood with some of my colleagues. Wednesday, 6 December is Constitution Day in Spain, and a national holiday; Friday, 8 December is the Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception; and for many people all over Spain, Thursday, 7 December is a 'puente', or 'bridge', where two proper holidays are made into something better, and attached to a weekend, by just turning an inconvenient day into a 'bridge'.

This year the Centre decided we would get the lot, i.e. even my Saturday-working colleagues will have the day free, and so Tuesday was a bit of a party night, and it was enlivened by the transmission on the Centre's local bar's TV screen, of the Barcelona game, which almost all of us wanted Barcelona to win.

I will have to deal with this phenomenon another time, but briefly, most Brits in Madrid prefer Barcelona to Real Madrid, as dyed-in-the-wool Madrid fans, of whom we meet very many, are just so awful. Their Barcelona equivalents probably are, too, and I imagine our British colleagues living up there will favour Madrid on the same principle, but anyway, if Barcelona are playing, then usually we want them to win.

We happily watched them do this, and qualify, had a couple or five beers, wished those friends of ours who were Britain-bound bon voyage, and I happily wandered out into the rain and got a taxi home.

On arrival, I logged on to see the other Champions' League results, and it was not until that moment that I remembered Charlton's home game against Blackburn. Denial or what?

I had no time to worry about the score, for the joyous news was already appearing in front of me. And a quick scan of the usual suspects indicated that the win was deserved, too.

So what now? Is this the turn-round we have been waiting for? (And against my hated Blackburn, too) Or are we still bound for our own Año en el Infierno?

I do not know, but at least I feel happier about things. And I don't have to return to work till next Monday, either.