Now then.

I watched the game yesterday at the Daycare Centre. It was broadcast in HD. HD? Whatever next? When I was a lad we had one channel in black and white. When football was shown, it was the cup final. One team always had to play in white shirts and black shorts, the other wore black shorts and white shirts. Television was originally broadcast from Crystal Palace; the place where we gained three of our four away points last week. How come that game wasn’t on the tele?

Today’s column is in memory of my great friend and lifelong Forest fan Eric Morecock. He passed away last Thursday at the age of 92 peacefully in bed with his twenty eight year old wife by his side; the lucky bastard.

I told you about my Portuguese Residential carer. Her name’s Romana and her husband who does the garden is called Romeo. They are an odd lot those Portuguese. Why on earth you would want to name your daughter after a 1970’s American Punk Rock band or your son after an effeminate Shakespearean character or a Police call sign is quite beyond me. Romeo seems to have been buying some seeds and equipment off the Internet. The greenhouse is all lit up with lights. Must be orchids growing in there.

Actually, I was lying about Eric Morecock. His wife was the same age as he was. Now you young men need to know that as you get older. Shenanigans with the wife gradually come to a complete stop. It starts when you have kids; they get in the way right through your forties. By the time they leave home, your equipment just does not work in the same way. I’d rather go shopping for comfortable grey slacks and slippers than get up to all that nonsense. It’s quite fortunate really because as you get older the women start to droop and look pretty minging really. I have looked at ‘Telegram from the Queen Babes’on the top shelf of my local newsagents and it’s pretty gruesome, it really is.

Our local paper this week continued a feature on Alf Riley who was celebrating his hundredth birthday. In utterly patronizing tones it said that Alf enjoyed borrowing audio books from his local library ‘when his busy schedule allows’. What busy schedule? What could be so important as to prevent him visiting that last bastion of the OAP, the local library; the place where you get free stuff. That’s another thing about getting old; the government expects you to live off about three pounds fifty a week. I wonder what constitutes Alf’s schedule: staring into space; sucking his gums; wandering very slowly round the room? When I reached a hundred I was asked what the secret of a long life was. I said twenty Woodbines a day, half a bottle of whiskey a night and masturbating three times a day.

And you know what? I was bloody lying.

I’ll see thee.