Love me, love my life
 
Some people are so jam-packed with love they are actually overflowing with it and this rampant sewer juice ends up all over your news feed like digital graffiti. Quotes like ‘I love me and love everything that I love to love’ and ‘Smile and the world will smile with you’ that they update you with sound like they are out of some horribly cheesy insurance advert and have the opposite effect on me. Can’t you just keep your happiness to yourself? It’s great if people are this happy but I can’t help thinking they have a deep, dark hole inside of their soul somewhere and the only way to plaster over the ghostly crack is to spout these fluffy and pointless phrases.

How great am I?

It’s an important question for a lot of people on Facebook. Luckily for us they have answered it in the form of a constant diarrhoea stream clugging up your news feed. “I am currently doing something much more fun than you in a place so close to heaven you can’t even imagine how fun it is and I’ll be doing it for ages and LOOK AT THE PHOTOS I AM TAGGED IN!”. I hate these people because they lie. You see, they are not doing what they say they are doing. You know why? Because it’s a blindingly obvious paradox that would send Stephen Hawking’s voice box into a spin. You are not doing this amazing thing you claim you are doing. You are on Facebook on your little phone telling everyone about that thing you proclaim yourself to be doing but are not doing because you are on your little phone telling everyone about that thing you proclaim yourself to be doing but are not doing because you are on your little phone telling everyone about that thing you proclaim yourself to be doing….well you get the smegging picture.

Conspiracy of a conspiracy

Symptoms of this Facebook profile include posting clips made by conspiracy nuts, updating their status with comments about UFO sightings and tagging themselves in photos with ghostly apparitions (maybe not so much the last one). This person acts as a conduit for every extremely extreme view on the Internet. While I agree that governments are generally run by fuckwits you wouldn’t trust to peel a potato the line has to be drawn somewhere. Otherwise you just end up sitting in your bedroom (probably in your parents house) with a tin foil hat and shouting at insects who invade your privacy. Actually maybe these people should be defriended and reported. They can then go off and start their own social network called OffmyfaceBook. If they want.

FaceTvbookTVFace?

Things are on the TV all the time. In fact, 24 hours a day if you have no life. So I would say the only thing worse than TV (and that really is saying something) is people commenting about what is happening on TV. On Facebook! “Celina was evicted out of Big Brother OMG.” Thanks for letting me know. “Jo and Will are the final two in America’s Got Talent lol.” Well that sounds super, you have just made my day. When I see these kind of status updates, I can’t really control that thought that neurons create in my brain that silently wonders, can’t you just go and get a fucking life? (said the person reading it)

On/Off/On/Off/Onish/Off/On/Offish

People were in relationships a long time before Facebook came along. They didn’t need to stamp it all over the Internet. It was obvious when, you know, you would just hang out and shit and then later, move in with each other and shit and then have a family and shit like that and then get old and shit (probably less control over shitting) and then die and shit. Nowadays it’s a different story for this Facebook lost soul:

“Gimpolina is in a relationship”  Wow, that’s amazing, so happy for you, say several commenters.

 ”Gimpolina is single”  Oh Gimpy, that’s so sad, are you okay, say the same several commenters.

“Gimpolina is in a relationship” Gimper, that’s great news, be happy okay, say the same dull commenters.

“Gimpolina is single” Oh G-dog, so sorry, you deserve better anyway, say the same twats who you start to wonder if they are attached to Gimpolina and whether they are all part of the same organism. Or is that just me?

Right, that’s it from me. Off to see if anyone random has friended me, poked me or invited me to play Farmville. No to all.

I realise people will have to make some noise when they eat. I don’t expect anyone to mime eating, particularly crunchy food. I wouldn’t expect you to suck crisps for example. But why oh why oh why do some people make so much noise when they eat that it gets to the point where it sounds like their teeth are conducting some sort of cuisine orchestra inside their mouth. To further the point why do they feel the need to share this performance to the general public by opening their mouth as wide as they can, as if they are a snake trying to consume a giraffe. I accept some people have medical conditions which prevent them from eating normally but for the rest you look like demented cows.

Some people add dramatic breathing noises when they are eating as well making it sound like they are having a final snack before suffocating to death. Unless you have just ran a four minute mile this is not necessary. For fucks sake you have been eating for years, you should have cracked it by now.

One incident springs to mind when this irrational reaction (and I do admit it’s irrational) nearly came to the fore. I was using a computer in a hostel when someone, who will remain nameless (mainly because I don’t know their name) sat down to use the computer next to me. So far, no problem. This person then unpeeled a banana. Not bothered, good on him for eating his five a day, still no problem. This person then started slurping, devouring, sucking, gnashing and attacking the banana as if it was prey desperately trying to run away. Massive problem. I just sat there looking at him for a few seconds wondering how the physical laws that have governed our Universe for 13.72 billion years could have somehow been twisted so that a banana could produce that much noise. Just like Craig David, I had to walk away. Couldn’t deal with it at all.

At least he wasn’t talking. People who eat and talk at you have a special place reserved in Hades, especially if a sample flies out of their mouth and on to your face. Unless you only have five seconds to live and you’re sorting your last will and testament while finishing off your favourite food, please don’t ever do this. Nothing is that urgent.
Something less annoying but more weird are people who take massive mouthfuls and before they have finished swallowing, gulp some beverage down their throat like some greedy pelican or as a friend calls it, cement-mixing. How busy is your life that you need to combine things like eating and drinking? You wouldn’t combine anything else like that to save time. You wouldn’t have a shave and brush your teeth at the same time probably because you would end up brushing your face and shaving your teeth.

All this talk of food has made me hungry.

The movie starts well enough with some arty shots of some of the characters moving at extreme slow motion but this is about as fast as the plot goes. As for the plot, it is roughly this. A planet found hiding behind the Sun (to be fair the director said he wasn’t interested in making a movie that was realistic in astrophysical terms) is on a collision course with Earth. But before that happens, we follow a couples wedding reception, organised by the bride’s sister and brother-in-law in a lavish setting in a mansion somewhere in the countryside. You can probably guess that there are complex relationships between the family; in particular the two sisters.

There are some funny parts, most often involving the father of the bride. My problem is that at 130 minutes long, not enough stuff actually happens to keep you interested. The lead character Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is clearly disturbed but no hint is ever given why. She just wanders around the mansion like she has been drugged, occasionally appearing at her own wedding reception to do something bizarre. The best example being when she is followed on to the golf course by an intern at her employer’s company (run by her new father-in-law) and for no real reason, proceeds to bonk him out on the green. Her husband finds out and predictably leaves the story at this point. She also has a piss on one of the golf holes, resigns from her advertising managerial position by launching an attack on her appalling boss/father-in-law and wanders off for a bath while people are waiting to cut the cake.

The film is split into two parts. After the above happens, part two starts to focus on Justine’s sister, Claire. The most laughter generated through the whole movie happened when part two was introduced and some guy in the cinema moaned ‘Oh no.’ A few people walked out at this point. I didn’t. I cant once something has started. The only movie I have ever stopped watching was Year One with Jack Black in as it felt like my brain was being molested by continuing to watch it.

Claire is more anxious about Melancholia crashing into Earth. Her husband, an amateur astronomer, assures her that the planet will pass by but will definitely miss. After about an ice age worrying, Claire finally decides to look on the In-ter-net and finds a website that describes how Melancholia will indeed crash into Earth after initially passing it. Only the director himself knows why she couldn’t just switch on the television at any point and watch a new bulletin. Presumably a life-ending event like a planet head-butting our own would make the news, even if it was at the lighter end of the news. But this is followed by even more suspense when Claire tries to print the document out but power is lost to the building. Oh no! She could have saved the world with that print out. She could have taken it to the president of whatever country they were in (never mentioned) or at the very least hand it in to the local constable/sheikh/warlord/sheriff.

But no, power is lost so they go outside to watch the planet miss. Or not miss. We just don’t know yet! Even though it’s kind of mentioned at the start of the movie. The director wanted to let us know it will actually hit so that we would not be distracted and could focus more on people urinating on golf courses. Now there is a deep message.

At some point during this snoozathon, Justine tells Claire that the planet will hit Earth and that the Earth deserves it because we are all nasty on Earth and that life will end and we will deserve it and that, apart from Earth, there is no life anywhere else in the Universe except from Earth. How do you know this, quizzes Claire, a fair question I thought. I just know, bored Justine. That’s sorted then. An answer straight from the book of Fundamentalist Christianity.

The planet does indeed pass Earth (sucking some of it’s atmosphere away in the process like a fat bully) and Claire breathes a difficult sigh of relief. The next morning, she finds her husband, John, tinkering about again with his telescope. He wanders off. She gets worried. She finds him in with the horses at their mansion. Either he has realised that Magnolia is coming back for another go or a horse bummed him to death. The second one probably would have been more interesting but no, it turns out Magnolia is on the rebound. Again, it isn’t explained how or why a planet larger than Earth can swing back towards Earth but you don’t need to know, you don’t want to get distracted away from Dunst’s boobies under the light of the new planet do you? It’s ART!

Claire runs about a bit like a lunatic before finally realising that you cant run away from a planet heading for your face. So the two sisters, together with Claire’s young son Leo head to the 19th hole on the golf course and build a little tepee out of sticks to protect them from the billions tons of force when Magnolia greets them. This was actually the best part of the movie, watching the planet grow larger and larger until they are all incinerated.

I do have a point though. I mentioned at the start I like arty movies that are emotionally deeper than Transformers or Avatar but I sometimes get the impression that there are some right snobby bastards who like this kind of movie and will defend it to the death. They search for meaning that just isn’t there and then when someone criticises it they look down on you as if you are too stupid to understand. I do kind of understand where the director was coming from in using the movie as a way of showing what depression can be like but any message, for me, is lost under an overwhelming weight of boredom and confusion.

It was the kind of movie where I was glad that they all died in the end.

You see as it turns out, watching people house hunt is a popular and trendy thing to do. Location Location Location seems to be the longest-running programme of this type. Its name suggests that location would be the key factor while hunting down your house. In fact it is such an important factor that it is repeated three times just in the title. It’s all about the LOCATION! You might find a nice house and that’s all well and good. But what is its location? Really? You moron!

Personally, I couldn’t dream up a more boring concept for a show. For me, you are just watching really boring people do something really boring. It’s up there with The Amazing Race in terms of whatsthefuckingpointery. If you haven’t managed to catch this sobwank of a programme by the way, don’t worry. Simply leave late for your holiday and rush to the airport as fast as you can while doing something utterly pointless on the way like making a giant paper aeroplane; it’s much the same thing. But I digress. I don’t know how they do it but on Location etc. they always find the dullest couples in the country. I’m sure they are nice, normal people but it’s hard to see the passion in someone when they are discussing faucet design or door knockers. How excited about things like that can you actually be?

The presenters on TriLocation are freaks as well. They act as if they are all on Class A substances while they are directing Mr and Mrs McBoring around the prospective houses. And oh the climax towards the end of the programme. They put an offer in for a house. Will they get it? Wont they? Will they explode with anticipation? Will I explode out of sheer boredom? It doesn’t matter really does it. Just buy a house if you want one, go to Ikea and buy a load of trendy shit from the Arseson and Boreson ranges and then go home and find a fucking hobby.

Also, something else came to my attention on the same channel as Locationx3. The Living channel (the irony) also has a program apparently called ‘I Own Britain’s Best Home’. But all I could see was that it was called ‘I Am The World’s Smuggest Prick’. If it was called, ‘I have a nice house’ or ‘My house is bigger than your average sized house’ I could have let it go. But no, I OWN Britain’s Best Home. Not even a question. No doubt. I have the best. Bow before my bestestness. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. I hope the council build a motorway through it, over it and under it and that some gypsies move on to your garden (which by association, is Britain’s best garden I assume).

This culture which seems to be obsessed with competition and being the best and having the biggest and buying the most expensive is out of control. I believe it’s all born out of insecurity with oneself. We all have our demons but some people are so unhappy with themselves that they only seem to derive satisfaction out of life by thinking they are better and richer than someone else. So they just buy lots of stuff not because they need or maybe even want it but so that they can say to someone else, ‘Hey, look at this expensive thing I own that you don’t. Good isn’t it?’

Just. Fuck. Off.

For some still unknown reason one of our lessons in the timetable was ‘unmanned’. From memory it was a music lesson sometime in the late afternoon and for whatever reason we never had a teacher. Whether the teacher was off teaching someone else or instead blatantly just didn’t give a treble cleffing fuck we were left unattended for up to an hour. At the start of the lesson the class would split into two random factions who would arm themselves with arsenals of stationery before upturning a couple of desks to create a rudimentary trench. And then, somewhat predictably, it was WAR! Elastic bands were the weapon of choice for the infantrymen (and women) on the frontline while heavy artillery would be unloading boxes of pens as rapidly as they could. Snipers armed with erasers were always watching out for anyone foolish enough to try and go over the top. Rockets, well rulers, were regularly dispatched from both sides until supplies were exhausted or until some daft twat threw a nuclear bomb (stapler) at the other side which would genuinely hurt someone. The victim was usually the one kid in the class who didn’t take part and would be sitting there patiently waiting for the teacher that never came like a civilian waiting to be liberated from the war zone. By this point a teacher from an adjacent classroom (or the UN as we call them) would have heard the noise and come into the classroom to negotiate a ceasefire (or bollock us, as was more usual). Unsurprisingly when we all left school not one of us could play an instrument but we could hit the shit out of a target ten metres away with an elastic band.

I really enjoyed art class. I always loved to draw and paint and had some really good teachers. The problem was that for a few years at secondary school we couldn’t afford proper desks. I know this sounds bizarre so let me explain. The desks were large pieces of wood balanced on two frames and they weren’t attached, as is traditional in desk design I believe, to each other. Which meant (and I’m not making this up) that you would have two pupils to a desk and when you were about to take your pencil off the paper you had to tell the person at the other end of the desk. Otherwise you would relieve the pressure and then be greeted at tremendous speed and force by your end of the desk, more often than not in the face area. It was like trying to draw on a seesaw. I don’t know if this was the school’s attempt to foster teamwork in art and design but I think its more likely that they just couldn’t afford proper desks. Eventually we got some more traditional desks (we must have won a grant or something) and chin injuries were dramatically reduced and our art flourished.

Early on at secondary school, I remember that we had lockers in the classroom with us as the desks themselves didn’t have any storage area. Which in a normal situation wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. But whenever a teacher and a pupil would have a disagreement in our classroom the pupil’s way of winning the argument was to push over one of the lockers. Hilariously enough the lockers were not conjoined together and in fact were just the right distance from each other to cause a domino effect, knocking over several of the lockers (I think the record was 4). The teacher couldn’t really do anything once the lockers had been set in motion unless he/she wanted to be crushed to death under a locker filled to the brim with unused textbooks. It was actually quite impressive to watch.

I also remember having a woodwork lesson at school. I think we were making a tent peg or something. At some point the teacher was talking to us all about tent peg making techniques. One of my classmates decided it was also a good time to talk to some of the other pupils. He was quickly dissuaded from this idea by a wooden board duster which flew past his ear by about 5nm. The teacher followed this up with the direct statement “Next time it wont miss.” You see the teacher was a big fan of archery and firing things at targets was one of his hobbies so everyone believed him. This time, the teacher won.

Some teachers are incapable of keeping control of a class. Especially if you are a softly-spoken Irish teacher trying to teach a room full of bored teenagers about religion. This was actually the class next door to us this time. Our teacher wasn’t there at the time (and no-one really fucked with him to be honest) so the kids next door were running riot. We could hear all this quite well as the room was only separated by a slider rather than a wall. Eventually our teacher turned up and heard the commotion next door so pulled back the slider. The pupils were still messing about but oddly there was no sight of the teacher. Our teacher roared (actually roared like a lion) and the pupils quickly stopped messing and everything went quiet. Well, almost everything. You could just make out a sort of low-level whimpering noise accompanied by some fevered scratching which seemed to be coming from the corner of the room. You see, in all the merriment the teacher had got carried away and had somehow managed to lock herself in the storage cupboard. The pupil who used this as an explanation, and who genuinely said it as if he 100% believed it, was never seen after that day.

I used to enjoy maths in school (not math, maths) but even the most dedicated maths teacher will admit it’s not the most exciting and experimental subject at school. So it is little surprise that the Humming Game™ was devised for this lesson. It would start while the teacher was talking us through erotic equations or Panathaikos Theorem or something and it would always begin at a really low level, maybe one or two kids at the back of the class just, well, humming. After a few minutes a few others from the same part of the room would join in. The thing with humming is that it can be difficult to ascertain who is humming and who is Chief Hummer when half of the class is doing it. Like a trooper, the teacher would carry on for a little while longer before kicking off. But kicking off on who? The hummers would just be sitting there looking like they were paying the same level of attention as the non-hummers. The game would usually end when the head of the year would come into the class with the hummers all stopping in tandem. If humming was a crime it would be impossible to trace really.

Seriously who would be a teacher. 10/10 to them for effort.

This being Everton, it couldn’t have been a straightforward, relaxing win. Indeed, despite dominating possession in the first period of the game Wolves were defending well and it was they who took the lead after 37 minutes.

Fellaini has just signed a new whopping contract worth a recession-busting £70k a week and he repaid the fans by clattering into a Wolves player on the edge of the box as he was going away from the goal. Although Barry ‘not biased at all’ Horne claimed it was not a penalty, I have to be honest and say Fellaini did clip him and the referee was always going to award a penalty. And despite Howard not having had a save to make in the first half his first task was to pick the ball out of his net after Stephen Hunt lashed the ball down the middle of his goal.

For fucks sake.

Up until that point we had controlled possession but apart from a couple of half chances for Louis ‘always scores on Twitter’ Saha we hadn’t really tested their keeper enough. And as is usually the way Wolves started coming out of their defensive shell after their goal and started to look more confident. Perhaps a bit too confident. A foul on Tim Cahill led to a free-kick just outside the box which Baines delivered and Phil Jagielka headed home to drag us back into the game a couple of minutes before half-time. It should also be noted that Jagielka is also playing with a hairline fracture in his toe at the moment and is only on the field thanks to pain-killing injections. You can question his distribution but not his commitment to lifting Everton away from the bottom end of the table.

The second half started in much the same vein as the first with Everton controlling possession and getting plenty of crosses into the box but every cross was either over-hit (Hibbert, Tony not the doctor from the Simpsons [although he would probably be more accurate]), under-hit (Royston ‘fuck defending’ Drenthe) or the cross would be good but Saha would be off the pitch updating Twitter. There was one cracking chance for Cahill on the 70 minute mark from about four yards out but he managed to hit the ball at a Wolves defender making a desperate last-ditch tackle and Hennessey managed to jump on the ball.

The game seemed to be heading to an unsatisfying conclusion when a Drenthe corner was floated into the box and Stephen Ward wrestled Saha to the ground. The referee pointed to the spot. In all honesty it was a soft penalty for Wolves to concede. Ward definitely took Saha down but it seems to happen at every corner. If referees are trying to make a stand against all the pushing and grappling that happens on set-pieces, I’m all for it but there has to be consistency.

While I was debating the morality of the awarded penalty, Leighton Baines ignored me and slotted the penalty home.

The last few minutes were naturally nail-biting with Wolves introducing the dangerous-looking Stephen Fletcher (I don’t mean criminal looking, I mean he looked like he might score against us). But thankfully we saw the game out and, crucially, got some much-needed points.

It was interesting to note that both of our goals came from set-pieces today. As boring and as repetitive as it sounds we really do look blunt going forward in open play. I know Moyes prefers to play one striker up front and have Cahill supporting but he hasn’t scored for nearly a year now (acknowledging the fact he has had some injuries). It wont change but I wouldn’t mind seeing Saha maybe brought back a little to play where Cahill is and start Velios for a few games. We cant penalty and corner kick our way through the whole season.

An away trip to Newcastle when they have made a strong start to the season looked unlikely to change this pattern. And so it seemed to be as they made much the stronger start and had us pinned back in our own half for the opening 10 minutes. That said, Seamus Coleman did have a half-chance from the right corner of the Newcastle penalty box but he dragged his shot wide. After that, it seemed inevitable that Newcastle would score sooner rather than later as they looked far more threatening going forward. Amazingly they didn’t have to do it themselves as one of our defenders scored for them. Johnny ‘I’m one of the best 10 defenders in the world me’ Heitinga met a decent cross from Danny Simpson but instead of twatting the ball into the stratosphere stuck a casual leg out and the ball bounced off the bottom of his boot and past the stranded Howard. I didn’t even bother tutting.

Saha and Osman both had decent chances to level after this early set back but it was Newcastle who would score again next to open up a two goal lead. A headed clearance by Rodwell could only fall to Ryan Taylor (a red shite fan, naturally) who lashed the ball in from outside the box over Howard’s desperate dive. It must be noted that while it was sweetly struck no-one from our team could be arsed closing him down.

Everton almost responded quickly when Saha finally managed a shot that didn’t sail wide or trickle harmlessly through to the goalkeeper but his shot came back off the inside of the post. With half-time beckoning Everton pulled a goal back when Rodwell powerfully headed home Drenthe’s curling corner.

That seemed to give us some impetus heading into the second half and were unlucky early on when Saha’s shot struck the outstretched hand of Dan ‘mostly shite’ Gosling. The referee didn’t see it and Newcastle got away with it. We went on to control possession in the second half but in truth never really recovered from a disastrous opening half an hour and didn’t really test their goalkeeper enough to justify a point in my opinion. It will be interesting to see how Newcastle United fare in their next few games against opponents near the top of the league.

For Everton there is an international break to, well I don’t really know. I just hope we can pick up some points starting against Wolves at home in a fortnight. I realise we have had some tough fixtures but 5 defeats in the last 6 games is horrendous form in any league. If we cant start to pick points up against other teams this could be a very, very long season.

Our record against Man Utd in the Premier League is, to put it bluntly, fucking awful. Only a small handful of wins pepper a long list of defeats and the occasional draw. Indeed one of the only away games I managed to get to was a 3-0 defeat at Old Trafford. They battered us and the game was memorable for two things. Some teenage pleb was singing songs about the Munich disaster before an older guy told him, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Sit down and shut up you stupid, ugly piece of shit.” I’ve never seen a person visibly shrink before my eyes. The other thing was at the end of the game, as the Everton fans trudged towards the exits, the away section speakers started booming out the Python classic, ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’ Funny and tragic at the same time.

Fast forward 10 years and things are much the same. Man Utd are still dominating the English game and Everton are still struggling to win anything with an annual transfer budget equating to the price of a Curly Wurly.

We actually didn’t start too badly with a couple of half-chances in the first few minutes. But as it’s become depressingly customary in October the opposition quickly gained a stranglehold on possession and territory and on the 20 minute mark took the lead. Evra found some space down the left side before crossing it in where Hernandez managed to lose his marker and score from 2 yards out.

I thought that might have been the start of domination by Man Utd but to be fair the rest of the half panned out pretty fairly. We were seriously unlucky when Baines had a free kick that smacked off the underside of the bar with De Gea stranded but apart from that we didn’t come close to testing the Man Utd goal even though we saw a fair bit of the ball.

Bilyaletdinov was hauled off a half-time for Barkley for reasons unclear (Injured? Just shite?). Barkley is very highly rated and rightly so but for some reason he couldn’t get into this game and every time I noticed him on the ball he was either going backwards or giving the ball away. But he is young and asking him to try and turn a game around against the champions is a bit of an ask for a 17 year old.

We did see plenty of the ball in the second half but as mentioned at the start, we just lacked that quality in the final third. More specifically, Saha was shooting like a person who hasn’t kicked a ball before. Every shot was straight at De Gea and weaker than Dutch lager when we did manage to get near their goal and the game played out in an all-too-familiar pattern.

I’m glad to see the back of that month. Defeats against Liverpool, Chelsea (twice) and Man Utd with only a win against Fulham keeping us out of the bottom three. I was slightly more encouraged with the way we passed the ball against Man United though and hopefully we carry this on for our next game against high-flying Newcastle United.

Watching it at home with a hangover, I didn’t really react after they scored. I just tutted and carried on watching it hoping for a miracle. I do wonder what it’s like supporting a team like Chelsea. Never really a big team until the inception of the Premier League (which is becoming a bit like the BC-AD turnover) they hovered between the top two divisions for a while in the 80s and were more famous for having psychotically violent fans than being a successful football team. A moderately successful late 90s and early 00s when they usually qualified for the Champions League raised their profile but even then they were almost going out of business with spiralling debts when Roman ‘fuck me I love money’ Abramovich decided he wanted a new toy. Since then they have won a few trophies and have the most expensive tickets in the Premier League. It makes me wonder if the fans who stuck with them when they were struggling can actually afford to go to the games anymore. Dum-de-dum.

After their first goal, Everton couldn’t really react in an attacking sense and Chelsea started applying further pressure. All we had to do was see it through to half-time with a 1-0 deficit and then we could reg…and then John ‘I’ll show you the training ground for ten grand’ Terry nodded the ball home after Tim Howard failed to gather the ball. 2-0 down and not much hope for the second half. It certainly wasn’t helping my hangover recovery.

Within 17 seconds of the second half starting, Leon Osman struck a rasping drive which bounced off the outside of the post. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitalise on any momentum that might have given us and Chelsea again started completely controlling the play. They got their reward after 60 minutes when Ramires managed to squeeze between our two centre-backs and bundle the ball home, injuring himself in the process. If I had any hope of a comeback at this point, it was quickly shot down much like Ashley Cole’s unofficial shooting range lessons he gives at Chelsea’s training ground. I went off to make some toast.

After sitting back down, I was soon sending spittles of toast across the room in rage when Moyes decided to bring Phil Neville on for Tim Cahill. Were we shoring up our defence to protect our 3 goal deficit? Fuck knows. The game was pretty much over as a contest with Chelsea content to keep hold of the ball and Everton struggling to get out of their own half. Velios was introduced for the largely ineffectual (but to be fair, unsupported) Saha and within 18 seconds had managed to stick a foot out at a low cross and direct the ball beyond Petr ‘my head still hurts’ Cech.

Surely the comeback couldn’t be on? Would we have enough time to mount an assault on Chelsea’s stubborn defence? Could we scramble a couple of jammy goals home and rescue and unlikely point? Could we enact one of the greatest comebacks in Everton’s history?

No.