Happy Lady, Happy House

3 things that caused me happiness yesterday:

Blues lost. Well actually, I'm not exactly ecstatic about that, but the performance was the kind of performance Eck has been promising us. In the first half of our crucial final game last season, we played superb, sharp, incisive football, using the midfield rather than just booting the ball up the field and giving it back to the opposition. We made Reading work hard to get the ball back and they struggled to cope. Once Reading applied a bit of pressure in the second half, we reverted to default hoofball mode and nearly paid the price.

So, I was a bit worried that against Manchester Utd, at old Trafford, we would just sit back and invite them to do their worst. We did, to a limited extent, but we also played through the midfield, passed it around quite nicely and created a few chances. French Frank played well in the centre of defence and all of the new signings looked to have a bit of quality about them. So, they made me happy. Blues lost, and made me happy. How often do you get to say that? The happy bit, not the lost bit.

I bought a new muffin tin, to do Yorkshire puddings in. A really heavy little bugger with six thingies. Turned out perfect Yorkies, and if that doesn't make a person happy, then that person has no happiness inside them.

The family walk. The Mrs likes a walk, preferably up a mountain, or around some beauty spot, many miles away. She will say, upon waking of a Sunday morning, let's go for a walk. Well, I am a bit of a stick in the mud and a bit of a misery guts and my Sunday preference is a read of the papers, a bit of dinner and and a watch of the sport; many hours of a watch of the sport actually. If I suggest a walk around the local park, I risk wrath.

Yesterday, aware that Blues were on the box, and kicking off early, I suggested 3 unlikely options and, very tentatively, a stroll around the local park, stressing that the characters who make a walk around that place unpleasant would all be still be gently snoring the previous evenings cans of cut price Stella off. Happily, the youngest nipper also expressed a preference for a walk around the local park, so I won, and it was a beautiful, peaceful walk, and the buggers have actually improved the area around the lake, so that it is genuinely quite beautiful.

Sod, it, while we are are being happy, let's have a 4th thing................the Mrs fixed a dripping tap, which actually gives two causes for happiness: the drip, drip, drip of the tap has gone and so has the drip, drip, drip of the Mrs complaining about it.

Joe Queenan on French gangster flicks: The message seems to be that no matter how dire the situation, no matter how intense the heat being generated by the police, a man should never stint on creature comforts, especially pyjamas.

Martin Kelner on the new ESPN coverage of football, also containing a dig at the annoying habit of Andy Gray on Sky to refer to everything in the present tense. Everyone does that now, have you noticed. "So I walk into a bar and the barman goes, what do you want" Drives me nuts, not nuts enough to affect my general happiness though.