Sweet Bird of Youth and Leyton Orient v Coventry

First the culture. A bit of Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth is playing at the Old Vic. This is a play to take a young person to. Just in order that they can see how quickly they will be past it, and how joyless the future is. The play centres on the relationship between an ageing movie star and the 29 year old gigolo she has picked up. He is the lad who everyone loved as a teenager, a young man with personality and good looks. But since then he has been trying to break through as a star, which he has failed to do because good looks and personality don't necessarily make you a star, and at 29 he is heading into last chance saloon. But his attempt to blackmail the has-been film star and impress his childhood sweetheart fails, and he misses the boat.

Perhaps the most likeable part of the play is the way the protagonists are each trying to exploit the other, the film star trying to buy the beauty of the young man she has picked up to cheer her from the (she thinks) disaster of her come-back film, while the youth is after her money and contacts. And the tragedy is that a mutual appreciation of their roles might have been to their benefit, but dependency is a poor basis for a relationship.

It is actually a rather sobering play, very well acted by Kim Catrall and her young male lead, Seth Numrich. It perhaps doesn't do to contemplate the sad fleeting quality of youth. It can so easily be wasted, and it always disappears in time. Just wished young people valued it more.

Its hard to find your team out of the Cup by mid-August. To be fair Coventry played pretty well at Orient and the £15 I paid was rewarded by plenty of entertainment - City took the lead, then went 2-1 down, then horrendously had our captain sent off, only for us to equalize with a classy Moussa goal. Then, miracle, we were awarded a penalty. At which point it all went wrong, penalty missed and then we conceded a last minute goal. Heartbreaking, but that's football.