Charlton 0 Southampton 0

Belying the score, a really enjoyable game. The first half was entirely Charlton's, with Jose Semedo running things in midfield and the new loanee Deon Burton doing an excellent job as a holding forward. But Kelvin Davis in the Southampton pulled off four superb saves.

Second half saw Southampton much better and Charlton curiously subdued and this time it was Weaver who had to keep the goals out.

As the game and the rain went on, the surface became almost unplayable, but there still plenty of action at both ends.

It's still too early to say if the team will recover from the Pardew trauma months. Clearly Phil Parkinson is his own man, making lots of changes from Pardew's last team, and there was a commitment about the players, particularly in the first half, that we haven't seen for a long time. Mood: cautiously optimistic

Corneille

Time to start the Corneille thread. Pierre Corneille, 1606 - 1684, was a classical French dramatist, a very close contemporary of the better known Jean Racine. Both lived and wrote in an age when Cardinal Richelieu was promoting a strong centralised state, when all aspects of culture had to support the idea of royal power. This manifested itself in some ways that seem more akin to Soviet cultural life in the 20th century: questions of form took on an ideological significance, and deviation from the prescribed rules of narrative or dramatic form could be seen as political opposition, and could be dangerous for the writer.

I studied Corneille many years ago at school, and hated him. It seemed to me he was a blind stooge of the imperial drive to power. But as time's gone on, I've begun to wonder if that was true, if it can be true. A blind stooge does not write powerful plays that are remembered and performed 300 years later. So my quest, which I began a couple of months ago, is to revisit his plays and examine if there is any trace of subversiveness in them. My happy initial report is that I think there is.

Why bother, though? A fair question. Corneille is unbelievably unpopular in Britain and I'll never sell this idea as a book. It's ages since I've taken part in any critical procedure and the terms of discourse may well have changed. Don't care. I feel this is getting back to what I really like doing, and if all that results is a website of discussion that a few people read and if maybe that leads our theatres to reconsider Corneille's plays, I'll be happy.

Re-entering the 20th century

Since yesterday, I've had a working toilet again, and today the whb is in place and usable and a bath is standing politely in line. Some of the plaster is still too wet to paint, and the floor is still bare concrete, but it's progress. Meanwhile in the living room, the walls are stripped and some undercoating has been done. There's a patch of replastering to be done, a bit smaller than I expected, and a rotten window bar that needs to be replaced. It all feels like it's getting better and after last week's depression I'm feeling much more cheerful.

But tired. Training, like yesterday, is always really knackering, because you're there for six hours leading a group of people, keeping up their interest levels or trying to calm them down. And it's physically demanding for a lazyguts like me to be on my feet for so long. So why did I wake up at 3am this morning only managing to send myself back into a hypnopompic state for half an hour before 7?

Inappropriate

Was in Guildford today, training mainly social workers, so inevitably the word 'inappropriate' came up and I had to write it on the flipchart. Oh the shame, I spelt it wrong. Anyway, at lunchtime the sandwich delivery service turned up in the carpark, playing an icecreamvan-like tune. The tune these caterers had chosen? La cucaracha. Now that's inappropriate.

Survivors

9:40 and there's still another 50 minutes of this to go. Ease up on the 'dramatic' music, ffs. Probably something else will be on at 10. Oh look, Julie Graham has the same tiles in her bathroom that I'll eventually have. This got me thinking, what would I be like if I were, or believed I was, the only surviving human? I think it would be a long time before I'd kill myself from loneliness; being a miserable git has advantages. There's the joke of how the last man left alive decides to kill himself and so climbs the stairs to the top floor of the Empire State Building/Canary Wharf/Millbank Tower and jumps off. Halfway down he hears a phone ringing. That would never happen to me. One: that phone is just a message saying how you can recover excess bank charges or can declare yourself insolvent using a little known piece of legislation. Two: climbing all those stairs? I'd maybe get to the second floor, sit down, have a bit of a rest and then decide to rummage in people's desks for some porn. Then, and only then, I'd consider tossing myself off.

Charlton 2 Sheffield United 5

It took seven minutes this time for Charlton to give away the first goal and for a while Charlton got back on level terms, but it was 1-3 at half time. The second half began disastrously, with an own-goal by Kelly Youga, and got worse. With more than half an hour to go, the score was 1-5. Pardew put the newboy Waghorn on, presumably with simple instructions - just go out there and score four goals, son. He did play a part in Charlton's second goal, and for a while a very unlikely comeback looked possible. The team began to play with a nothing-more-to-lose freedom and invention, but couldn't convert the chances. All in all it was a very open game with chances at both ends throughout the game - the score could easily have been 10-10. But it's a bad bad result, and even the fact that only a four goal deficit could free the team of their inhibitions, shows how badly motivated they are. Once again, the finger has to point at Pardew. Surely his time is running out. At time of writing I haven't seen any post-match comments. They'll be interesting.

Where's the catch?

Still slow progress in the bathroom, but tonight builder has left a message on my answerphone along these lines: your bathroom is going to look so good [when it's finished] that we really think your living room should be decorated too [because it's currently a filthy dingy tip] and so, get this, we'll do it for nothing, for nothing, materials and labour inc, before Christmas, all you have to do is clear the room and put up with a bit more disruption. I can see one catch - there's clearly going to be some plastering needed, maybe £500 worth - but apart from that I just don't get it. The living room is a filthy dingy tip, true, but how long has builder been a charity? I'm delaying phoning him back, while I try to figure this out.