ting for 

Especially when Southampton FC are live on worldwide tv this evening, so I have to go and hide in a corner until it`s all over.   Sad, I know, but that`s the way it is when you follow a football club that has the unhappy knack of turning a bright blue sky of optimism into a deluge of disappointment.  Surely, after four games unbeaten the Saints can see off struggling Aston Villa, currently recording four defeats on the spin and without £30million former Saints` striker Danny Ings?  Wake me up when it`s all over.

And it`s Friday 5th November - gunpowder, treason, plot and all that - so I expect I might be spending the evening comforting our golden retriever, Dudley, who dislikes fireworks as much as I dislike Manchester United.   I think I`ve mentioned before that I can`t understand why on earth we are `celebrating` a failed attempt to blow up Parliament when it would be so much more sensible to celebrate if the attempt had actually succeeded.

Especially after the antics in Parliament this week.  Boris and his cronies (or is it Mrs. Boris who`s in charge these days?) have been revealed in their true colours - again - and that`s something else that leads to despair because it tells me that there is not one political party in this country worth voting for any more.  I suppose there are some good MPs scattered around the House of Commons; my local MP (who cannot be named for legal reasons) knocked on my door the other day and asked me what I thought about things, so I told him.  I believe him to be one of the good guys, however and I`m sure there are others in other parties too but they do seem to be an endangered species. 

So the Tories have blown it; Labour did so a few years ago; the LibDems are anything but democratic; the Greens are irrelevant to the extent that they can`t decide who their leader is, so they have two of them and I can`t see my constituency putting up Plaid Cymru, DUP or SNP candidates in the next election. 

But putting all that to one side, as we are stuck with the Conservatives until the next election (which might be earlier than we think?) I hope that the latest debacle coming after so many since Boris was made PM might just encourage the party's `elder statesmen or statespeople` to produce an alternative who might actually display a penchant for leadership, statespersonship (I`m not going woke, honest) and a degree of integrity and honesty that is so badly needed in any country that calls itself a democracy.  Is there anybody out there?

Maybe I`ll feel better around 9.50 this evening when it`s all over. Told you I don`t like Friday evening kick-offs.