You know what they say? Just do the best you can, all the time, then the sheer effort of that stops you thinking about the other stuff. Sometimes I wish that like some of my colleagues not a million miles from home, I had a pseudonym. Money would roll in, but surely quality would dip if you're doing two Sunday stories and a Monday on the same match. Then again, the agency guys do it all the time and they do it honestly. Then again (again), why should the quality drop if you're as good as you think you are? Then again (yet again), I once sat next to a hack who was reporting both from the game we were at and another one being played elsewhere simultaneously. Oh, I don't know.
What I do know though is that it's Stevenage again - I did a morning's non-ironic ironing to celebrate - and it's the FA Cup and, shiver me timbers, they're playing Reading. It's the sort of game where they might get something, but only if Reading are as sloppy in the fourth round as Newcastle were in the third. This, in turns, means it's one of those afternoon where there's adrenaline-pumping fun to be had if there's a shock, but only scrabbling for space if nature takes its natural course. Things have changed since my last visit. There's now a hackroom with vile-looking sandwiches and pleasant tea. There are desks, there are chairs to go with them and the atmosphere is still irreverent and life-affirmingly lovely. It's OK here, it really is.
Graham Westley's programme notes are as messianic as an Anthony Robbins pep talk. "There is a calm and eerie sense of focus in the players' eyes. A hunger, a steel, an authority, a knowing," he announces, presumably with a straight face. "I am thinking attack. I am thinking dominate. I am thinking victory." I am thinking delightfully bonkers. Afterwards he dresses like Robbie Williams's father, the one time I met him. Is that the world's least impressive namedrop? Probably, so let's move on.
Since every radio station in the land seems to be here (do they need to come quite so mob-handed?), I'm in the overspill bit behind their tiny hackbox and my laptop's on my knee. This is what the FA Cup's all about, hem hem. The wi-fi works and it's all very cosy, unless you want to, say, move your arms. There's Alex Montgomery and Paddy Barclay (neither of whom operate under a pseudonym as far as I know), so there's quality talk to be had and the tie's not bad either. I can just about type with one finger.
Unlike Newcastle, Reading take the sensible line, allowing Stevenage to exhaust themselves. Then they pounce and take the lead through the ever-excellent Mikele Leigertwood and it all looks set fair for progression. Ever doughty, Stevenage rally in the second half and for 10 heady minutes Darius Charles scores a terrific equaliser, they almost seize the day. But while Reading wobble, they're supremely focused and they don't fall. Moreover, for all Stevenage's daunting fitness regime, the minnows tire and Reading finish by far the strongest. Shane Long scores a neatly taken winner and it's move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here time. But there almost was.
Afterwards, Brian McDermott cuts an impressively modest figure and when I says "I love the FA Cup", he's clearly telling the truth. Westley talks 10 to the dozen - there are hints of Aidy Boothroyd's ceaseless optimism in there - but when I ask him if they'd been beaten by the better team and what he might have learned from the afternoon, he answers another, less interesting, question. But he answers it in great detail, and I would have been home in time for Wallander had the BBC not taken it off. Why didn't they tell me? Bah.