Another Saturday looms, and with it another game, and another new dawn of promotion hope. This time it’s Norwich, and, frankly if we can’t beat them, we really don’t deserve the Holy Grail. But even if we don’t make it this time around, haven’t we had a cracking season? Not always “fun” in the normal sense of the word, but always enjoyable.

My enjoyment of football is a bit like my enjoyment of wine – I’m no expert (I leave the expertise to Brendan, who trots out more than enough statistical and tactical analysis for both of us), but I know what I like, and I always enjoy the matchday experience, the pride, the passion, the banter. And, for the sake of the banter, I’m really hoping that St Delia of the Tinned Mince will grace us with her presence on Saturday. I have a bit of a love/hate thing for Delia Smith – I have several of her books, and her recipes are generally pretty foolproof and tasty (her carrot and Jerusalem artichoke soup has been a notable hit recently), but she really does come across as a rather unpleasant individual. Her recent book, “How to Cheat at Cooking”, has been a huge hit, but also the subject of massive condemnation by foodies for her promotion of convenience food and general “product placement” for her own gain.

It seems that nobody loathes her more than fans of Ipswich Town, the club she used to support before she became a major shareholder at Norwich, and she hit the headlines again a few years ago when, pissed as a fart, she harangued her own club’s fans over the PA for not being supportive enough -”Let’s be ‘aving ya!“, she slurred. (In the following weekend’s fixture at Chelsea, the home fans sang “We’ve got have Abramovich, you’ve got a drunken bitch“.)

I wonder what the Ashton Gate faithful have got lined up for her? I fancy a round of “There’s only one Gordon Ramsay“, followed by a rousing chorus of “You’re going down with the soufflée, down with the soufflée”. (Delia has said that she likes chants, “but I don’t sing the ones with swear words. I don’t think they are very nice” – so we’d better not do the one about where Delia can stick her flaky pastry…)

Talking of flaky, the less said about England’s performance against France last night the better. France’s penalty was the only goal, and if the BBC highlights really did show the best bits, the rest of it must have been drab indeed. Fabio Capello rather strangely declared himself “happy” with the performance – although of course, given that his post-match interview was in Italian, I wonder if what he really said was that he was sick as a parrot, and the interpreter just got it wrong.