Consistency: Birmingham 2 - 2 West Ham; 6 November

I was updated by text message on the progress of the West Ham game by my son, Jack, who was watching on-line in Brighton.  I was in a foreign country - Scotland - while this virtual world emcompassed me.  In addition, my other son, Joel, sent text messages (but much later as his text updates had to come through to his phone first) and I tried to log on to Sky Mobile on my iPhone with intermittent success. 

Why the anxiety?  I'd chosen to go to see Becky and her partner, Andrew, in Glasgow.  I knew part of me thought this was an opportunity to avoid the inevitable disappointment of another West Ham game.  But still, I couldn't not want to know what was happening. 

Following the team and wanting to know the score has been with me for over half a century.  My earliest memory is of Dad coming home from games and telling me the score and how we'd played (usually we were crap).  Then I remember the wireless that developed from Sports Report into bulletins during games and then, sometimes, even a live commentary.   There were the evening classified reports in the paper ('Star, News and Standard') that were always full of early match detail and brief final score updates to meet printing deadlines and be on the street corner by 6..

When television came along a new visual grammar of immediacy came in the shape of reporters actually at games that we couldn't see giving us breathless reports.  And to follow there were highlight programmes on BBC and ITV.  All, of these, of course, were on a Saturday evening, the day ordained for football until the Sky money bought its soul.

Many of these could be followed, if the team was away, while out Saturday afternoon shopping, on radios or televisions in shops.  And, as I can attest from working abroad in the 1970s, via the BBC World Service (by fading short wave at weird times of the day in the Middle and Far East).  Thousands of miles away, often late at night and listening alone, I still felt part of collective disappointment of West Ham fans (except when we won the 1975 cup final as I listened in Saudi Arabia and was inspired to teach my English class of Saudi Princes to sing "Bubbles").

But what I still can't break, is the desire to know, even when (especially when) I expect the news to be bad.

And to find out West Ham were 2-0 up, only to draw 2-2, was, in its way, almost predictable.  Really predictable would have been to lose (after all, we've managed that after leading 3-0 TWICE!).

So, still bottom of the league, another email from the Manager about how we played well and didn't deserve to lose and how we're determined to put this right for next Wednesday's game against West Brom (the only team whose name begins with a 'W' not in the bottom three).

Even the Controller has begun to sympathise with the predicament, so it must be bad.

West Ham, a bad season.  Consistency.