Sunday. Sunday starts with 8 o'clock mass. And the reason for the quote above is that I have returned via a very long winded route to what my grandmother called "high church". As a boy I went to a small church school on the South East London/Kent borders. Our church was the local Cof E which observed very Anglo Catholic traditions. Every Wednesday the priest visited and taught us incomprehensible things (to my very young mind anyway) like the catechism. Thirty years later and after periods punctuated by Sunday School (United Reform), agnosticism and apathy I returned to regular church going. I was confirmed in the C of E but then courtesy of my wife and children became a (non-communicant) regular at the local Roman Catholic Church. The desire to remain CofE whilst not giving up on catholic worship has taken me full circle to a church that could have been the one of my boyhood. Does this simply prove that the Jesuits were right as the earlier quote suggested. Or is something else at work? The reason for this blog I now realise is in part the search for an to answer that question. But for now 8 o'clock mass is a cornerstone of my life and I am eternally grateful for the peace and spiritual nourishment that it brings.
Nourishment of another kind sadly missing today. Rather than harvesting home-grown vegetables to go with the Sunday roast, heavy snow, sleet, hail and rain forced me to seek alternative forms of physical labour - the local gym to be precise. On the treadmill (they have little televisions) I watched England getting their customary pasting from Sehwag and Co; whilst burning off the excesses of the previous week. If our cricketers could only raise their game this would be a great "win, win": watching sport and getting fit.
On the Charlton fan pages this evening the talk is of only one thing - Pardew's replacement. In truth whilst I felt it was time for him to go I do feel sorry that things didn't work out for him and that after two years he lost his job. Yes, he was well paid and yes he probably doesn't go away empty handed but I doubt whether that was what he hoped for when he signed on the dotted line.
At the highest levels of professional sport the margins between success and failure are ridiculously thin. For Alan Pardew he may well reflect that two or three moments in a game or decisions on a particular team selection could have changed everything . Actually I hope he does think that because he may then see that he still has a lot to offer the game.
One of the posters tonight said that they have been supporting the team long enough to know a relegation team when they see one. I was there yesterday so I know what they mean. We may yet get the right person in and when we do, they may well start a revival. But in football there have to be losers as well as winners and the biggest challenge for us fans is to recognise that as with others before us - Wimbledon, Leeds and Leicester, for example - things can get worse before they get better.
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