Life continues to be somewhat upside down for your average Leyton Orient supporter at this point in time.

How unusual and splendid it was last week turning the clocks back in the knowledge that we could actually enjoy an extra hour of our team being top of the league.

And now we enter November, a month we usually look forward to because of the first round of the FA Cup. The cup's often a respite from the trials and tribulations of a relegation struggle - we're used to praying that we can somehow luckily scrape past a couple of plucky non-league minnows, so that we can get to play one of the big boys in round three, where we'll suffer a hammering but give Bazza a bit of (much needed) air-time on the box and make him a few bob in the process.

This season it's different though. Much as any O loves the FA Cup amazingly this time round, we're all wondering if we really want the distraction of a cup run with our boys looking down on the other 23 in League One.

True we can't put out a reserve team this Saturday for the simple reason that we have not got a reserve team, but I don't think any of us would grumble if Kevin Lisbie and a few of the lads were rested against Southport. And lets face it Super Kev's always rubbish in the FA Cup anyway. The guy's got 100 league goals over the years, yet remarkably has never scored in the country's number one cup competition.

And what about the Johnstone's Paint Trophy? Are we really keen on progressing in the fourth most important competition we enter? A trip to Wembley in it would certainly cost us all a few bob and lets face it though I can't tell you how it was when we played there in 1930, recalling how we played there in 1999, we maybe don't save our best for the venue, anyway.

And be honest, 20,000 O's in a 90,000 capacity Wembley would not create anything like the atmosphere that 15,000 of us would on the last day of the season at MK Dons in May if we were to have our promotion party there. No, the way we're playing at the moment we should put all our eggs into one basket - i.e. the league, even if it is at the expense of the other competitions.

Indeed, the way we are playing at the current time is quite staggering. Just when you thought David Mooney's bubble had burst and he had gone from being alright to being something else again, he pops up with two goals and a blistering performance at Peterborough. Just when you though Dean Cox was beginning to look tired he stuns us all with a beauty at London Road.

We're getting much acclaim from everybody - even Alex Ferguson made a special trip to watch the O's last Saturday ( the fact that his son is the 'Boro manager being purely co-incidental) and he must have been suitably impressed. We're surely worth a mention in his next book.

We're Leyton Orient of course so it can't continue - normal service must be resumed soon - but then I've been telling myself that all season and at the moment unbelievably, it does seem to be continuing.

And as someone posted on the message board today we've got 38 points so we only need another five wins to guarantee safety for another season. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Reading did get relegated with 53 points in 1983 so that's not strictly true, but even allowing for that I'm confident we won't be playing League Two football next year.

Lets just hope we might even be playing that team up the road without any strikers in 2014-2015.

Now that would be nice.

Up the O's.

Martin Strong is a regular contributor to the Leyton Orientear fanzine.

Copies of his book '60 Great Leyton Orient Matches From the Tijuana Taxi Era 1968-2012' will be on sale in the Supporter's Club before and after the game against Southport this Saturday priced £12.99.