If there are any commas in the wrong place below then blame me. It was my magazine's Christmas party on Tuesday.

Wall to wall models, people supping champagne through straws. The crew from GQ wafting in stylishly late, swathed in cashmere and talkin' footie. Proof indeed that the beautiful game isn't yet old rock'n'roll.

The art director held court. Which Premiership player, he asked the group around him, played in derby games in three different cities? Hmm. After shouts of Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson and other journeymen, I come to the view that GQ might be an interesting place to work and offered Andrei Kanchelsis. That shuts them up. One of the lads tells me it must be hard being a girl liking football because, he assumed, I'd "only been into it for a couple of years". The straw may well be sticking out of his windpipe still.

Meanwhile my personal campaign to say nice things about Palace this Christmas is coming along quite well.

Mind you, it isn't easy, what with me being on that terrace when Gerry's leg got snapped at Selhurst Park, but help is arriving from unexpected places. An extremely close relative (ECR) had to get to Withdean from Preston Park on Saturday morning and, running late as usual, got on a bus. She asked the driver if he stopped at Withdean. Nope. But seeing her scarf he said he would for her. As she was getting off, he said he was going to the football after his shift finished. But to Selhurst Park. He was Palace you see, man and boy. He told her all about their latest signing and together they discussed how you can slip up in cup games.

They wished each other luck and off he went with his Patcham payload. Traditional prejudice tells me he should have sped past Withdean and made her walk from East Croydon. But he didn't. Hmm. Confusing.

And my confusion gets worse. Having been taken to Withdean by a nice Palace person my ECR set out to get some more signatures on her Falmer petition forms. This can be quite tricky as people make their way to their seats, raring to go and all hot-dogged up, so she approached the tail end of a long queue at the burger bar.

People signed away and everyone was happy. Except the burgermeister. He detached himself from his wheeled hut and complained to someone in authority. Excuse me? No one was being inconvenienced. His customers were happy, the queues unaffected.

Maybe he's less than confident about winning any future Falmer food concession. Perhaps he's a University of Brighton employee who doesn't want his arrangements for parking next to Falmer pond mucked up by some Albion traffic management scheme. Or a green councillor. I'd love to know but in the meantime give me a Palace-supporting bus driver any old day.

And talking of the weekend wellie-wearing classes, I read in The Argus that Councillor Pete West believes it is pointless having a long enquiry into the proposed boundaries of the South Downs National Park because, he says, everyone supports the proposals anyway. Assuming for a moment that he's right about the views of the public can we then take it that he is also in favour of having no enquiry into the Falmer Stadium proposals on the grounds that tens of thousands of local people have already voted in favour of them? I better ask my ECR to send him a Falmer petition form right away.