Day 201: Everton master BATE

Today's soundtrack: Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan

Ok, I know, it's childish and not particularly clever - especially when you know that 'BATE' is actually pronounced 'bar-tay'.

But who could possibly resist? It's a headline writer's dream.

And it's also the truth - a makeshift Everton team (ten - ten! - first teamers unavailable) came back from a goal down to beat the Belorussians in a very wet and windy stadium somewhere in Minsk, I think.

How makeshift? Well, Tony Hibbert - 5' 8" in his stockinged feet - was playing at centre-back for the first time. That's how makeshift. And - bless the lad - he played out of his skin as well.

As did the whole team really. We nearly took the lead when a wickedly curling shot from Diniyar Bilyaletdinov hit the post with their goalkeeper stranded, only to fall behind to a phenomenal goal - their man must have been all of thirty yards out when he hit an unstoppable shot into the top corner.

So 1-0 down, and on the ropes. We rallied, and probably played the better football, without ever really threatening. Second half, and we began to surrender possession to the Belorussians, and it began to look like 'one of those nights'. But then - a free kick out to the left floated long by Leighton Baines, to a ludicrously unmarked Fellaini, who headed down and across goal into the far corner. 1-1, and game on - although I'd have settled for that to be honest.

Eight minutes later, and our man Bily played a hopeful ball

forward to Tim Cahill, who I have to say looked yards offside. Sliding in, he scooped the ball up and over the keeper into the net. Design or accident? Well, if he meant it, it was an absolutely masterful lob. But he didn't, surely. He just got underneath it.

Anyway, no matter. He was clearly offside, wasn't he. Wasn't he? Not according to the officials, he wasn't! And replays would suggest he did spring the offside trap very cleverly. Canoe-style celebrations - apparently in remembrance of the Samoan tsunami victims rather than the monsoon-like conditions the game was being played in.

So - typical Everton - having got our noses in front, it was backs to the wall with some desperate defending to play the game out. A couple of scares, but that was it - 2-1 away from home, five wins on the trot and - even better - AEK beat Benfica to cement our position at the top of the group.

A good night's work, Blues.

Earlier today, it was out to the shops for food and stuff - and to pick up something for Son No 2's birthday next week. Not Nineteen Forever, young man, as someone once said! Picked up what I needed in HMV - and also picked up a box set of all ABBA's nine albums for fifteen quid. Couldn't leave it there.

It was also eMusic download day today, so I spent most of the morning (most of the day, actually) downloading and feeding CDs into iTunes. Pick of the eMusic downloads - the Speed Caravan album was finally available (Kalishnik Love) so that was first in the queue. I blogged about these back in July, in one of my Glastonbury updates, and have been waiting for the album ever since. The new Cribs album (featuring Johnny Marr) was also there, as was the 'Monsters of Folk' album. With some Black Crowes and a new album by flavour of the month 'Girl', it was a very successful day.

Just got to find time to listen to it all now.

And while on the subject of listening, a plug for Son No 2's radio show on Huddersfield's student radio. 6-8pm on Thursdays, 'Good Music for People Who Like Bad Music' [EDIT: see The Boy's comments below. I did know the Modest Mouse reference, of course - just too lazy to look up the title and quoted from (faulty) memory. I'm old, you know.] It's available on the web, but is password protected so you won't be able to listen unfortunately. I had a password, but still couldn't get on the site for some reason so will be picking up a download file next week.

But it will be good, I promise you.

I'm typing this today into Google Chrome, Google's new browser. After many years, I have fallen out of love with Firefox, my usual browser of choice, but which seems to have become slower and more buggy in recent months. So far, Chrome does seem to be a lot quicker and doesn't 'hang' on me the same way Firefox has been doing for a while, particularly when iTunes is on in the background.

And in the background we currently have Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of the greatest blues guitarists (of any colour) to surface in the last thirty years or so. Sadly no longer with us, Stevie progressed from being another Hendrix wannabe to one of the more original and tasteful guitarists around, more interested in feel and emotion than technical widdlery.

There's plenty of clips of Stevie on YouTube doing Hendrix and Stevie Wonder covers - but here he is with the old blues classic, 'The Sky is Crying'. Wonderful stuff.