The illusion of happiness is a waterlogged pitch

Partick Thistle Football Club

It was with some trepidation I logged on to the BBC Sport web site to check out the football scores back in the 'old country'.  In the traditional New Year's Day round of matches the Jags had the never less than daunting task of hosting Celtic at Firhill.  The 'tic had not won their previous two matches - even worse they'd been sufficiently careless as to lose their last encounter - and a lifetime's experience (by which I mean approximately 47 years) tells me it is never, I mean 100% never a good idea to meet the Champions a week after they've had a bad day at the office.  They feel some overwhelming 'We Are The Champions' need to give their next opponents a monumentally painful going over.  

So it was with great relief, bordering on ecstatic joy, I read that the game had been postponed because the pitch of Maryhill's finest had become waterlogged, despite the best efforts of the home team's staff.  (References to ecstatic joy in the previous sentence may border on ironic overstatement ... but only just.)

Relatively speaking, therefore, New Year's Day turned out, as it happened - or more accurately as it didn't happen - a good day for the Harry Wraggs.  We didn't lose three points while the teams below us in the league were all soundly beaten, putting more distance between us and them than had been there on Friday - at least that's my not very sound theory.   

It will not last, of course.  A day of recokoning must come.  But for now, as the saying goes, I'll take any port in a storm.