You know what they say? Keep up with your blessed blog or it'll keep up with you. There's been rotten stuff to deal with, such as my friend Hugo Dixon dying. We went around the world together: me writing twaddle, him photographing brilliantly. We went to the US a few times, we went to Australia, we went to Middlesbrough where one of the most unhelpful PRs I've even encountered (the competition remains fierce) tried to make us (ie me and Hugo) sleep together until I had a tantrum; we went to Siberia where we actually had to sleep together (he snored like a wind tunnel); we went to South Africa and we went to places I've forgotten. We had a ball, we had precisely no cross words and I'd always ask for him to accompany me. Now he's dead, via some wretched cancer, leaving a wife - God, he loved her - and children. Whether he's gone to a better place is immaterial, he'd rather be here. And he hated football with a passion.
There's been trivial stuff - it's all trivial compared to death but you know what I mean - like being hit at Wigan by a scary man shouting "stick that in your fucking programme" and there's been some good stuff too. Hey, it's all stuff. Anyway, it's Villa time, for the first time in, um, ages.
Departure time is civilised, the roads are clear, the weather's picked up and at the end of it all, there's wi-fi and people I know (and like). There's also some poor quality hackfood, albeit leavened by bags of sweets and nice-looking desserts which I forget to try. A few years ago, ie in Doug Ellis's time, the hackbox was the best seats in the house. It's not now: it's shoehorned into a corner and the seats are so constricting I spend most of the afternoon rubbing thighs with Ian Ridley and I wishing I'd left the coffee - not bad; not great - behind.
But the match, oh what of the match? Well, Villa isn't a happy ship and not just because their manager will never walk alone; James Collins was caught - not drinking says the report - in a restaurant a few minutes before Villa played Liverpool and there's an air of ennui about the place.
It's a frantic local derby, but the atmosphere's hardly sizzling. They were feeble in the first half against a West Bromwich Albion who're beginning to look the part, but once Villa fluke themselves ahead, they imitate Albion's pressing game and it transpires that while the hosts had no Plan A, the visitors had no Plan B. Villa win. Roberto Di Matteo is nonplussed and Gerard Houllier - a baffling appointment if ever there were - is even more owlishly odd than he was as Liverpool manager.
He won't talk about why he dropped Stephen Ireland and when I ask him what was different about the performance, I simply can't follow him. I can't have been alone. Randy Lerner may have many attributes, but I'd wager limited patience isn't one of them.

Playlist
The Yachts
Suffice To Say
Does he really say "what's a young yacht supposed to do?" halfway through? I do hope so. They deserved better than being forgotten. Then again don't we all? That Clare Maguire album's interesting by the way. Think Florence Welch singing Shirley Bassey.
ON THE YACHTS, RADAR ALBUM, 1979 (if you get the right edition)