Boom, boom, out go the lights...

I've been waking up...

...to the flashing Christmas lights hanging out the front. Sad to see them go tomorrow, and back to the alarm. They should be up from when the clocks change, to, er...when the clocks change. Back. Whatever it is we do to them when we play about twice a year.

Why would I be bothering with all that?

I made a light smoked fish stew yesterday...

BLISS: Thank you, I really enjoyed that.

ME: Good.

BLISS: What was in it?

ME: Smoked cod. Onion, garlic, celery, mushrooms, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, that home made vegetable stock, crème fraiche...

BLISS: Just 'smoked cod' would have done.

Like, way too much detail, dude.

Why would she need to know all that stuff? One has people do that cooking malarkey for one, doesn’t one? Remembering my place, I went and put the kettle on.

Veteran artist / strong album day today

Started with Jimmy Cliff while making breakfast this morning. Springsteen yesterday. Neil Young has made a thing of beauty with Psychedelic Pill, Bobby Womack is back. Albeit with Alzheimers. So for him it's not back but the first time. Leonard Cohen, topping the lot at 78, made a great 2012 album. That's 78 years old, not some retro 78 r.p.m. Bakelite medium the record was issued on.

Jimmy Cliff's Rebirth includes a dazzling cover of The Guns of Brixton, a song that includes the “His game is called survivin', At the end of The Harder They Come...” line. I don't think the critics raved about the Neil Young album. They're young. Songs over ten minutes test their attention span past it's limit. I'm fine. I'm old enough to remember buying petrol when it wasn't compulsory to come away with a plastic beaker of latte.

FA Cup third round today

Starting wit the early kick off. The Albion v The Toon at the Tampax. Poyet v Pardew, Brighton against a Newcastle side ravaged by injury and enforced absence. Could be worth a couple of quid on BHA.

No doubt JB, top Geordie man and Brighton season ticket holder will be there, and I hope he enjoys the game, though I can't see his guys getting the result he'll be wanting.

Later on it's United (West Ham United) v The Scum. I want West Ham to win. I want them to kick massive lumps out of United, and I want to pop the cork of a bottle of bubbly (appropriate, for West Ham) as Ferguson has a sideline heart attack and goes off to the mortuary...

...where the undertaker is a Gooner and buries the miserable, nasty, mealy-mouthed, ill-tempered, overly revered git in Arsenal kit. The gold one we won the league in at their place. For an open casket cry-by of their fans. Who've come over specially from Japan and up from the home counties.

That's what I'm hoping for.

Comment in the Guardian...

...about Tom Daley's Splash! that saves me making one:

“If ITV dumbs down any further they'll be asking celebrities to do finger painting with their own poo.”