What’s the collective noun for maggots? A pack? A roost? A pride?

We had a visit from a herd of maggots this week, they’d congregated at the kitchen door. Most of them seemed to be dead or sluggish, which is appropriate given that they are literally slug-ish. 

Apart from the unseasonably warm weather, it’s hard to know where they came from, they weren’t near any food, there was no obvious source. It’s like they’d become separated from the rest of their troop as they migrated south for winter and were in desperate need of food and shelter. We swept them up, mopped the floor and they seemed to have gone. 

It was just another thing to do, another thing on an interminable list of jobs – in our house, there’s always something to sort, tidy up or throw out, something that needs replacing or fixing. On Friday we had a food delivery and they left a box behind that’s now in our hallway. When a job is done, there’s usually a little bit of it left over – a dish that won’t fit in the dishwasher, a box of flotsam and jetsam – birthday cards, sewing paraphernalia and pieces of paper which look important but have shopping lists written on them – stuff that doesn’t live anywhere that needs to be sorted out after we’ve done the sorting out. Jobs, jobs, jobs jobs, jobs.

Some people, you might be one, seem to be in complete control of their jobs, they wake up in their immaculate house, make a coffee in their tidy kitchen and contemplate their job (singular) for the day – building a rockery or stock rotating the baked bean shelf. The job is completed and all signs of disruption are tidied away, just in time to get the pilates mat from its designated place in the cupboard and head out for a lesson. 

I’m not good at engaging with a new season, it’s disrupted by holidays and takes a while to get to grips with all the new players. I’d momentarily tuned out of the commentary yesterday when Nathan Cooper screamed “Oh what a finish by Edwards.” and had to Google which team he played for. My daughter keeps conflating Greg Leigh into ‘Gregory’ and now so do I. I realised yesterday that the reason I’d got to grips with Stan Mills because his dad is Danny Mills who played for Liverpool and was married to a Hollyoaks actress. Apart from the fact that’s Danny Murphy.

The international break doesn’t help, particularly if it’s followed by an away game; any engagement gained from the opening games melts away and it’s back to square one. I’ve decided that the opening phase is really just post-pre-season and doesn’t matter. The season starts here.

My daughter asked me for a score prediction before the Fleetwood game, I thought about what I knew. I knew they’re in financial trouble, but otherwise, very little. I had to recall the more abstract Fleetwood-ness of Fleetwood – it’s far away, we never get a good result there, the Captain Pugwash theme – a reference so old even Nick Harris feels a bit young for it. 2-2, I said. 

She looked at me quizzically, ‘They’re 23^rd’, it’ll be 3-0’. I walked off confident that experience would prove me right.

I sat down surrounded by stuff-to-do that won’t get done, and listened to Radio Oxford. BAM! World class goal from Stan Mills that Danny Murphy would have been proud of. BAM! Billy Bodin with another. BAM! Edwards with a goal as good as Mills’, maybe better. A controlled, dominant, drama free display the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. Perhaps ever. It was so lacking in action, Jerome Sale and Nathan Cooper chatted like two dads watching their kids at Saturday morning football training. I was surprised they didn’t get onto whether there were enough charging points for it to be worth investing in an electric car.

Of course, Fleetwood are in serious trouble, if you were to put their predicament into a super-computer alongside our current situation, removing the Fleetwood-ness of them and the Oxford-ness of us, it would probably have predicted a 3-0 win. 

But that felt so alien, like living in a house that doesn’t have an overwhelming number of jobs to do. Liam Manning is systematically removing the drama from our existence. He’s unstacking the dishwasher when it finishes rather than waiting until there’s a pile of dirty plates teetering on the worktop. Behaviours, I think he calls it.

With the upcoming decision about our stadium, I’ve been thinking about our progress over the last few years and the accusations from Friends of Stratfield Brake that we’re in the hands of nefarious profiteers.

We’ve reached this position after years of careful investment; starting with the training ground, the matchday experience, the squad and the coaching and management team. It’s a gradual removal uncertainty becoming highly polished and professional in the process. A complete removal of the high-octane, slightly chaotic, fly-by-the-seat of your pants style of our previous existences. Those days were never not fun, but they were jarring when we fell short. If the council needed any indication that the club is in a good place, it’s the fact we went to Fleetwood at a time when we should win comfortably and actually did.

The challenge is now to sustain it, the idea that we might be able to keep this going for ten months seems very alien. But, we need to continue to remove risk, to not allow the jobs to pile up until they become unmanageable, to efficiently deal with any unexpected tribes of maggots appearing at the kitchen door. On the pitch, that means not getting too far ahead of ourselves, off it, it means a new stadium.