September 15 (Wednesday): La Cerva. This morning is one of those days when you wake up ahead of time (ahead of the alarm clock) but realise this and remain thoroughly tired without managing in your attempt to get back to slumberland. I give Sara another peep on MSN this morning and eventually she responds, telling me that she is at work drunk. Bad girl and that’s all she wrote. Today is another sunny but chilly kind of day, probably my favourite kind.

I get into work and relief it is just me and Emma in the office, no noise, no distractions. Work is getting on top of me big style at moment, I am spending way too much time on podunk jobs and not actually doing to good a job on them either. Louise is back and looking fantastic again. For the past two days she has been up London on BPP courses and I wish I had been too. She tells me that I am too pessimistic about things (mainly exams and Phoebe). Probably.

After a bout of pounding stomach pains (aka the shits), the morning ends pretty much without incident. Just before lunchtime Ivan comes over and asks me if I have seen the travelling theme/fun park that is being constructed on Remembrance Avenue. Oh yes, that gang of pikeys and carneys are becoming the talk of the town. And the sad thing is, everyone is eating it up. It is almost like the Simpsons episode where they get a monorail.

In the evening we have football, a friendly against Birketts, as per usual. Tonight Ben is playing for us and we have a pretty decent team out it seems. When I arrive, Ben is already there 100% up for it. When we get inside it turns out that Kevin (now nicknamed “Magic� by Steve) Johnson has had to call/laugh it off, so including Ben there are only five of us tonight against Birket’s six. Ben shows much more enthusiasm than anybody else involved and when we soon fly into an unexpected 4-0 lead, unlike everyone else Ben is going “yes!� at every goal. Ben slots in at the back and doesn’t really move much and soon gets knackered by the pace. Still, we hold our own and it is a long while before we even concede a goal. Towards the end of the half I begin to let in stupid goals (and getting a shot in the bollocks in the process) but we go in at halftime leading 9-6. The second half begins/continues much as the first half ended and Ben slots in better at the back and is fairly solid. Meanwhile the rest of the team: Ivan, Jeremy and Andrew are all playing blinders and we are knocking a huge lead. At one point I make a save from Birket’s Hedgehog boy and the shot powered my arm against the metal goal post, hurting it like fuck (big bruise next morning). Eventually the game nears an end and it becomes apparent that I might make my personal target of going a game without letting in ten goals. We end the game winning 20-9. The win was a real boost/buzz and was our first win since 14 July.

After the game I find myself talking to Mike (Birkett’s goalkeeper) because he knows Ben from cricket and he also tells me that he was talking to Theo Paphitis at Ipswich on Sunday and he informs me that the Millwall v Ferencvaros game is actually on TV tomorrow night after all, it is on Bravo of all channels. Excellent!!!

Elevated, I actually manage to squeeze in a long overdue bath and fall asleep in my damp bathrobe, which may or may not cause me to get a bad back. The bad back either came from that or from crouching too much whilst playing in goal tonight. You decide.

np: Iggy Pop – Wild America (video mix)