Hanging In(dent)

Bolton 1 Charlton 1


Charlton's new Assistant Manager Phil Parkinson

Wednesday night is when I have a free period, in which I am responsible for helping people out on computer-related matters, and last Wednesday evening I was struggling with Microsoft Word, trying to set up a hanging indent for a worksheet I was trying to update, and my friend Alison next to me was trying to remove boxes and lines from an old worksheet to make it look less cluttered.

I was taught how to do word processing on Word Perfect, which embeds all formatting codes so that you can set up and remove exactly what you want. Word does not let you do this, and it is one of life's enduring mysteries that Word is market leader where this kind of program is concerned. What is worse, someone at head office some years ago decided that Word would be standard, and all copies of Word Perfect were outlawed. I still use it at home, but if writing anything at the Centre, I have to struggle with Word. I failed to set up my hanging indents, and only partially managed to help Alison.

I then realised it was ten past nine, and so paid a quick visit to Livescore, and discovered that Bolton had taken the lead after 6 minutes. I exclaimed in annoyance, and Alison asked what was wrong. "My team are 1-0 down already", I said. Alison isn't that interested in football and asked me who my team are. I told her; she misheard and said "Chelsea?". "No", I said. And repeated the fair name of Charlton louder than before, thus attracting the attention of Senior Teacher Kevin, a nice guy from Edinburgh, working a few feet away from us.

And though Kevin and I have been amicably acquainted for about five years, he didn't know where my footballing sympathies lie either, and turns out to have friends in London who also support Charlton. So we had a little chat and he asked me if I thought we'd stay up, and I said I thought we would hang in there, a locution which I wouldn't normally employ, but I must have been influenced by my problems with Microsoft Word.

But the reason I think we can stay up is that we have a new manager of proven capability, and an assistant manager whose name was touted back in the summer after he had brought Colchester up to the second tier of English football for the first time in their existence. I would have been glad to have given Phil Parkinson a chance then, rather than Iain Dowie, and now we have him on board, anyway, and Pards too. And the Bolton result (I was able to rejoice at TEK's equaliser to both Alison and Kevin before we departed homewards at 9.20) kind of sums it up, as it was achieved without any of the new signings, and no Darren Bent or Herman Hreidarsson or Luke Young - in other words with the same players who were underperforming during the first half of the season.

So I think we can be cautiously optimistic.

However, I write this just as Charlton are kicking off in today's fixture at home to Chelsea, No one expects this to be of any use to Charlton at all, and the Guardian actually has a main story on the return of inspirational John Terry, so the script for today has already been written. As so often, as far as the media are concerned, Charlton are there just to make up the numbers. And yet, you never know.

Frankie, however, is dispirited because we still have no Bent; Young or Herman, and because the referee is the well-known Bolton fan, Mark Halsey, friend of Big Sam and all that that entails. He will be annoyed at Charlton nicking that point the other night, so what chance have we got? At least that is the gist of Frankie's argument.

Well, we'll know in just over an hour or so, and nothing is a dead cert in football, anyway, though I must admit the odds don't look favourable.