September 18 (Saturday): Melfi. Good morning Britain. This morning I am up and in good spirits. I have mixed emotions with regards to last night but its good that it happened all the same, I guess in life when you get these opportunities you have to take them.

This morning Phoebe is taking her Advanced Audit retake, the exam that ACCA lost so I text her with good luck wishes and intentions.

Today is a slow burner, taking much too long to get going but it comes complete with an urgency to get into town; the urgency pathetically being to get to WH Smiths in time before they sell out of Only Fools And Horses DVDs. I know, I suck.

When I eventually tumble into town it is a very nice/beautiful morning, summer hasn’t quite evaded us yet. Mission is accomplished when I manage to get my DVD along with the Saturday papers. This morning I am feeling good, the world is my oyster. I stop by HMV and get retail therapy itches and snap up Fubar on DVD.

As I walk along Crouch Street back to my car I see Nina sat at the steps to the entrance of the old (now derelict) Odeon cinema. I go over and sit and talk with her. It turns out her Gran is ill again and she is about to get a lift from her brother to the hospital, so she is pretty down as per is usual sadly with Nina. We sit shooting the shit sitting on the steps of the old Odeon like a couple of pikeys until her brother and mum turn up. Ben shouts out and asks me if I want to go to the football today. I say yay, I am a fool. On my way back I pop into Swag Converter and get the itching finger again and wind up buying even more DVDs.

When I get back in, Bella hits me on MSN. I amuse her by telling her that I am still eating the balti mix from last night (which sadly, pretty much constitutes my meals/diet today).

Around 2pm my already busy day (ha ha) catches up on me and I fall asleep. I awaken to find a text from Phoebe with, what seems, half arsed gratitude but also Ben has been trying to call and get in touch. Just as I pick the phone up he calls again and tells me he will be around at 2.30.

I pull the flat together a bit for when Ben comes around. I take some bin bags out to the bins and see my uncle, my dad’s boss. Fucking hell he looks old. I semi want to speak to him but semi I don’t want.

Ben hits the hut on time and we head to Layer Road to see Colchester United play Milton Keynes Dons. After watching Millwall, going to Layer Road is now quite a comedown. And it is also £15 for a normal spod (such as myself) to get into the Barside, which against £23 for the Upper East at Millwall is a bit of a piss take. Such is life.

Today is a pretty interesting game, the MK Dons are a real freakshow of a football club. I know Stevo vehemently hates them to the pit of his stomach but I am surprised when Col U fans appear to be into them just as passionately. As count the Milton Keynes following (25 at first count and barely up to 50 by the game), the fans around me sing “fake team, shit fans�. As Ben says to me “MK Dons at home, you expect it’s a bit of a given�. The teams come out and the Barside really doesn’t fill too heavily, which is nice as it means you get a view and do not get uncomfortable. On the pitch, today both teams play fucking pathetically, the Col U strikeforce is lacklustre to say the least and likewise MK Dons manage to create opportunities but only manage to fluff them at every point. On the bench for Milton Keynes is ex-Ipswich midfielder Steve Palmer but otherwise they are a bunch of nobodies, pretty much youth team players from when they were the old club. Colchester’s team actually reads pretty good on paper but Bowry is out injured and Ben May begins on the bench, thus ends my interest in their players. Also Sam Stockley, the player I rate most at Col U, is also out injured. Ben tells me just what a star Karl Fagan has been this year and with him looking a little like Arsenal’s star player, the crowd sings out “Thierry Fagan�. More abuse gets hurled towards MK Dons in the form of “franchise scum� and “you’re just a shit town in Luton�. The game turns out to be a bit of a snorer. This is my first visit to Layer Road this year and the pitch looks fantastic but otherwise it doesn’t look overly great to me or any great improvement. Col U press hard but rarely seem to get anywhere and when Milton Keynes make their occasion breaks, they do look pretty dangerous a lot due to the apparent shakiness of Col U at the back. Just before halftime a semi inevitable occurs when MK take the lead. Even though Col U had had the majority of the half, MK had always looked good for the half to sneak something.

At halftime when the teams usually have a group of kids taking penalties against eachother, today it was just Col U, MK Dons could not muster enough kids to compete. The MK Dons are a strange phenomenon; you wonder where the fuck are they from? To some extent they look like people who have never been to football ever before in their lives and with it are far too enthusiastic and keen but as Ben rightly points out, if you’re going to support MK Dons you can hardly be half arsed about it because everyone is going to hate you. The game ends as the lacklustre Col U fail to get back into the game while MK Dons are equally as lacklustre, blowing two easy chances that I could/would probably even have put in. After the game, we spill out onto the streets and this is MK Dons first ever away win in the league and their newbie fans large it while we look at them and consider that they had best calm down before some rabid Col U fans get hold of them for acting like pricks in a foreign land. I step over with Ben as he books a seat on the coach to Walsall for a few weeks time and I see Steve Lamacq and what seems to be Mark Bagley from school (with long gay curly hair all of a sudden) chewing his ear off. Is this some weird alternate universe I have appeared in?

I get back in for five and am really hungry, so once the football traffic clears up, I head to the chip shop for a lazy dinner. BBC are repeating one of the latest Christmas episodes of Only Fools And Horses, so I watch some of that (like a chump).

Bored and lonely, I phone Mark up to see what he is up to. He has company down for the weekend and is about to do dinner but he tells me once he is done he will give me a call to hook up.

I begin watching Fubar and I really don’t get it initially. For a mockumentary, the characters are just too wild and unbelievable at first but when their old, now reformed buddy acts too old to hang out with them (under the thumb of his girlfriend) it suddenly rings home that this film can be kind of spot on. Still, the main two characters are anything but endearing, which I guess is part of the point. I stop watching the movie at 9pm as BBC2 are repeating the Peter Cook documentary from a few Christmases ago, which always will take priority.

Around 10pm Mark phones but I am too tired/knackered to go out, who goes out at 10pm? Even if it is a Saturday. Lazy Jase.

np: Superchunk – Throwing Things