And the phrase of the day is "How much?!"

I took Miss Millicent into the BMW garage in Stockton today for her second service. Jesus, that was a painful experience. Not for the cost of the service; Millie is covered by Mini TLC so I get five years or 50,000 miles servicing for free, though at the rate I rack up miles that 50,000 doesn't look fantastically far away on the horizon. What caused the sharp intake of breath was the cost of the two new tyres she needed on the front wheels. £343! I almost said "Hold on, mate. I want two tyres, not twenty-two".

As bad as that is, it could have been even worse; I was initially quoted £195 each. I got them for the bargain price of £171.50 because they are currently price-matching and that's what Kwik-fit had them for. I suppose I should stop kvetching, really. I've needed new tyres for ages anyway and it's my own fault for buying a Cooper S in the first place and then having 17" wheels; the 16" version was £95. Plus the bloody things are low-profile run-flat models. I could have told the garage to shove it and gone to Kwik-fit to get the "cheap" £135 ones, except they weren't run-flat and the Cooper S has no spare wheel. OK, I know, I know. Poor, poor me that I can afford a Mini Cooper S (not it feels like it right now, mind). Wah wah wah. But still... three hundred and forty-three frickin quid for two measly tyres! I shudder to think what a service will cost when I have to start paying for it. And I've got to buy a new tax disc tomorrow, too, to add insult to injury.

Assassin-faced baby update

Excellent news! Shrek has accepted the suspension due for caressing Ben Haim's cheek (or United have given in and admitted they can't win on this) so he will be absent on Saturday. Let's hope we can take some advantage from it, although I'm counting on nothing; the absence of Van Nistelrooij and Saha doesn't seem to have had any noticeable effect on their recent form, judging by the way they've won seven of the last eight games and drawn the other.

Happy New Year from the FA

Well, well. It appears that FA has grown a pair and is about do us a New Year favour for once. Looks rather as though the assassin-faced baby may well be suspended for our game with United on Saturday. He's being done for violent conduct after his handbags-at-forty-paces incident with Tal Ben Haim in their Boxing Day game against Bolton and if found guilty - judgment to be delivered today - his suspension will start immediately. Which would be something of a bonus in light of our current injury list. Anything which might help ameliorate the effects of George Boateng's absence is extremely welcome.

Merry Christmas!

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar,
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh'!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh'!

— Franz X. Gruber, December 24, 1818

We are an uncle again!

As of 11:35 this morning my sister gave birth to a shiny new 8½lb baby girl. Currently she still has no name. No doubt this will be decided upon shortly.

Stupid o'clock in the morning defined

Being in the office at 5:15am on a Monday morning is as good a definition as any of what I usually refer to as stupid o'clock in the morning. And why am I here at this godforsaken hour, you might well ask? Because I knew I wasn't going to get to sleep any time soon so I figured I might as well get up and go into work where I can use a better computer. What? You didn't think I was going to do any work, surely?

At last something goes right this week

Middlesbrough 3-0 Partizan Belgrade

Well, that was all very satisfactory. It wasn't our best performance of the season, or even in Europe, but it was, with the aid of some comedy finishing from the Partizan forwards, enough to get the job done in a moderate degree of comfort.

I feared a repeat of the missed opportunity to win the group at Villarreal in the third game when I was crossing the Riverside car park and heard the much-loathed Me Mark Page announcing the team (though I hardly needed to be as close as 40 yards from the stadium, as I could probably have heard his irksome bellow had I stayed home in Reading). George Boateng's absence through injury already left a lack of physical presence in the middle of the park which worried me after the freedom the feeble Manchester City enjoyed last Monday night when George was suspended, so learning that both Viduka and Hasselbaink were rested in favour of Nemeth and the woefully ineffectual Job cannot have pleased any Boro fan, least of all any of the 4000+ of us who made the trip to Spain three weeks ago to see us outplayed by a Villarreal side we could have beaten at full strength.

However, I need not have worried and McClaren's decision was fully vindicated. We might have done better if the referee had sent off the Partizan forward Boya for his disgraceful elbow in the face of Colin Cooper like he should done. Instead Boya merely saw a yellow card and stayed on for the rest of the match to annoy the crowd with his presence and the defence with his height and speed. Anyway, the job was done and we won the group, which means Friday's draw for the round of 32 gives us one of the seven third-placed teams with home advantage in the second leg.

Personally I'd love to get one of the German teams. Alemania Aachen would be the easiest, being a second division team, but if Basel manage to beat Feyenoord by two clear goals, we could get Schalke 04, which would be fantastic. The Arena Auf Schalke is a massive dome stadium which holds 60,000 and is always full. We'd get loads of tickets and Schalke would bring a big contigent to the Riverside. And it would be very convenient for me. I could fly from Heathrow to Düsselfdorf and stay with Kay in Duisburg. The train is only about 20 minutes to Gelsenkirchen. Now there's a prospect to drool over. Won't happen, of course. With our luck we'll get Besiktas and have to go to Istanbul, always a welcoming place for the English fan. Or, God forbid, Zenit St. Petersburg. That'll be lovely in the middle of February, based on the -18˚C it was when I was in Leningrad (as it was then) in December 1987. I await the draw with great eagerness!

Good cop, bad cop... as played by Deutsche Bahn

Sometimes, things are just a disaster from start to finish and you end up resigning yourself that the whole thing is just a cluster fuck. Sometimes things start out badly but end up fine and you think, "well, that wasn't so bad". And sometimes things start out very well and you get lulled into a false sense of security so that when everything inevitably goes tits up, you're not at all prepared. This is one of those occasions.

For the first two or three days on this jaunt, everything went swimmingly, and when I'm home and, perhaps, less volcanically pissed off I'll go in to greater detail. Currently, however, I'm standing at a free Internet booth in Terminal 1 at Frankfurt Airport. Where I'd planned to be right now is at home, probably in the bath, possibly watching a DVD, but certainly relaxing. The reason I am, to my undiluted fury and disgust, still in Germany is that Deutsche Bahn managed to get the Inter City Express train I took from Duisburg this lunchtime, which was supposed to deposit me here at 13:41, nicely in time for my 14:55 flight back to Heathrow, stuck behind a broken-down train somewhere most of the way between Cologne and Limburg, which, to add insult to considerable injury, is but a short distance from Frankfurt Airport.

The resulting delay of two hours and 25 minutes caused me not only to miss the flight and to have to catch one which doesn't begin boarding until 20:45, but, most painfully, to have to buy another ticket, since the one I had didn't allow any changes, despite the Lufthansa ticket clerk's initial optimism that I could catch the 17:00 flight for a paltry thirty-five quid extra. Quite honestly, of all the things which could have gone wrong on this trip - online hotel reservation, e-ticket for the plane (which I never fully trust; I'm convinced one day I'm going to show up at an airport and have the airline deny the existence of my ticket), losing my passport, my wallet or my concert tickets, the band cancelling the show at the last minute* - absolutely the very last thing I would have expected was to get shafted by Deutsche Bahn, rightly legendary for the speed and accuracy of their trains. Whilst we were in one of several stationary positions, having gone backwards to cross lines in order to pass the dead train (which, I might add, we never did) the ticket stewards handed out claim forms for compensation due to the train being more than 60 minutes late. This is all very nice, since I'll get a voucher valid for a year, but somehow I don't see Deutsche Bahn compensating me for the two hundred and seventy-seven motherfucking Euros their broken-down train cost me to buy a new plane ticket. Bastards. I am not impressed.

* Oh wait, that happened too. Of course.

Leaping around like an oik

So just as I'm kind of getting this thing into a semblance of shape, I'm leaving the country. Not for long, though. I'm off to Germany tomorrow to spend three days leaping around like an oik. Going to see Rammstein tomorrow night at the Frankfurt Festhalle, followed by Die Toten Hosen at the Festhalle on Saturday night and then the Hosen again at the Dortmund Westfalenhalle on Monday night. Which should be excellent. I saw Rammstein on the opening night of the current tour at the Mannheim Maimarkthalle on November 1 and they were stunning, as usual. I've never seen the Hosen before and am looking forward to it tremendously as they're one of my favourite bands.

I'm staying Sunday and Monday in Duisburg with my mate Kay (that's pronounced to rhyme with "eye", not as in the girl's name). I haven't seen him for three years since the last time I was in Duisburg for work, so that should be good. We've plenty of catching up to do.

I'm flying back on Tuesday afternoon but not returning to work until Thursday as Boro's last UEFA Cup group game at home to Partizan Belgrade is on Wednesday night. This decides who wins the group, whether we finish first, second or third and therefore what sort of team we play in the third round in February. Beat Partizan and we finish top and get a third-placed team and home advantage. Lose and we finish third. A draw would put us either first or second, depending upon Villarreal's result against Aigaleo, probably second. Then we'd play one of the Champions League dropouts, which would be much tougher, even with home advantage. So, Mr. McClaren, a full strength team would be appropriate this time!