Why do you always buy OK magazine and the tabloids on a DC10? Probably to make you feel less homesick.

In fact, and you may not believe this, there are several serious advantages to being on a Caribbean island in the middle of January. The best one is that you know the football scores six hours before the people back home do. It's true.

You, loyal reader, spent Saturday morning flogging up the M40 or trailing round Tesco. I spent it sitting under a lime green brolly quietly drinking a toast to the fact that we had just stuffed Kidderminster and made at least one Great, or at least rather portly, Dane exceedingly cross.

Back home, the one downside of watching a great away victory is the knowledge that you are faced with a four hour trek down the map before you can march into your local pub saying YESSS! in the way that only football supporters do.

Go to Grenada, on the other hand, and you have ten whole hours of triumphalism stretching out in front of you. Only trouble is, there are few people to be triumphant at in Grenada.

Triumphalism needs other people around. The first point of tying a blue and white scarf to the roof rack before pulling out of a northern football stadium car park is to depress the natives and the second is to allow you to drive into Brighton in the manner of Charles de Gaulle entering Paris in 1944: dusty, victorious and beflagged.

The finest example of this was in May 1983 when the entire population of Sayers Common stood on the A23 verge to watch Jimmy Melia's infantry stream back towards Brighton.

Only one thing for it. I knotted my scarf to the jeep's rollover bar and cruised around a bit. Most of the tourists I approached with the news of this great Midlands victory came from America and were unsure where England, let alone Brighton, actually was. They knew all about football, although not as we know it.

So I targeted the indigenous population. This was slightly more successful because at least they were aware of the beautiful game. That was the good side. The bad side was that they were aware only of Manchester United, what with Dwight Yorke being the Caribbean's most famous son.

Not counting the windsurf instructor from Hereford I bored senseless, the only real success I had was with a barman pouring rum punch in a straw-roofed tavern. He had just transferred from a similar position in Sydney where his last customer had been an inebriated man from Ringmer celebrating victory in Darlington. He was mildly curious, that's all, and I gave up and retreated to the beach.

For two blissful hours I watched the sun go down on a match involving 30 small boys and a coconut husk. I was told it finished 12-7, but this may just have been the sendings-off.

My reverie was interrupted by a call from home announcing that the Withdean pitch was in rolls in the car park and I needn't hurry back for Saturday.

But of course I did. I had to be on the spot when the Chesterfield, Orient and Cardiff results came in. You'll understand.