Unveiling

Tottenham 5 Charlton 1



There is a rather nice bit in one of E.F Benson's Lucia novels, where Georgie, usually the most patient of men, suddenly tires of Lucia prattling on (though of course he doesn't dare mention it) and wishes that he could treat her as if she were a parrot, i.e. throw a large piece of green baize over her. He imagines himself asking one of the servants to fetch Mrs Lucas's baize, and then covering her with it to shut her up.

When he was prepared to listen to her again, 'unveil', I think, would have been the word he would have used.

Another use of 'unveil' I recall, was, as a schoolboy, a Catholic one, in England, at Easter, when all the statues, holy pictures and crucifixes, which had been covered over with purple velvet during Passiontide, were joyously unveiled as the parish prepared to celebrate the Resurrection.

And then one read (by now I was at university) that Dame Sybil Thorndike was coming to unveil a plaque on the wall (or in the foyer) of our new University Theatre, and thus set it in motion, notwithstanding that it had been in use, featuring myself among others, for a couple of months anyway.

So I know what 'unveil' means: to remove a cover and reveal something prepared previously; a bit like those fifties TV cookery programmes, or Blue Peter with their 'here's one I made earlier' ethos.

But about five years ago, or maybe even more recently than that, I started to see references to clubs' new signings being 'unveiled', the one sticking in my mind most being when half of the city of Newcastle took the afternoon off to go and greet Michael Owen, whom I bizarrely imagined standing motionless in the centre circle at St. James's Park, shrouded in purple velvet, waiting for the covers to be whisked off at the tug of a drawstring by some local personality, to the rapture of those devoted fans, who, as we are constantly reminded, are massively keen on their club, as if this were somehow unusual.

Anyway, feeling glum after Les Reed had replaced one good player with one bad one, thus turning a 1-2 deficit which looked as though it could be pulled back, to a 1-5 reverse, I went in to the Centre as usual on Monday. Mush said he'd been on the point of asking me round to his place the night before as Spanish TV were showing all the Premiership goals,... "a high percentage of which were scored against Charlton", I finished for him before kicking him in the shins (not really).

Mush added that the BBC and all the other media had decided that Curbs was going to manage West Ham once Pardew got the boot, which they had, conveniently, also predicted. Remembering all the confident assertions about Charlton's next manager, all of which were wrong, a couple of weeks back, and in the early summer, I took no notice of this until later in the week when I read on the BBC that West Ham would be unveiling our beloved Great Man that afternoon. Again that weird image, this time of Curbs, draped in purple velvet, silent, still and awaiting the call, flashed through my mind, but this time the media had for once got it right. But at least Curbs did not jump ship for West Ham. They had been approaching him off and on for a long time, and the time is now right, in the sense that rightly or wrongly, and a lot think the latter, West Ham ditched Pardew after a 4-0 defeat.

So Curbs is unveiled, and Pardew is out of a job. Many think it would be fitting if he came to Charlton, as they think Les Reed is not up to things. Many wouldn't hear of this as Pardew is an ex-Palace player. And then anyway Les Reed signed a new contract to take him through to 2009.

I write this on Saturday morning, an increasingly frequent phenomenon; maybe I should change the blog name to Madrid Saturday Mornings, though it doesn't have the same ring to it. Charlton face Liverpool at 1245 GMT, a match which Lawro thinks Liverpool will win 3-0, and as he never usually predicts heavier losses than 2-0, things down Charlton way must look bad to him. But then, as en ex-Liverpool player (though not a Scouser as I have seen him described on Frankie's page - he's from the Preston area, like me), maybe he would say that. I am not going to sit here repeatedly pressing the F5 key on Livescore; I am going to do some of the weekend shopping before coming back for brunch and an afternoon's exam marking.

I close with slightly more personal news, in that as we approach both Christmas and the end of term, I am up to my eyes in reports, exam marking, Christmas cards and letters, and still fighting off the remnants of my cold, which has struck down most of my quiz team mates, too. Mush and I are all better now, but Antony has it really bad, and John isn't too good either. Sam seems OK, and Hugh too, I think, but it is a virulent one, all the same.

Without Antony, we narrowly defeated our old rivals and chums 112-111 in a low-key quiz last Monday, and we await Tuesday's charity do with eager anticipation, and a hoped-for clean bill of health.