However this season ends, it can be seen as a success - unlike my New Year resolutions
Happy New Year! I hope Santa was kind to everyone and that you got exactly what was on your list. For me, it was another year of disappointment. Thirty-five years I’ve been wanting a Scalextric set and every single year it’s fallen on deaf ears.
The sense of excitement as I crept down the stairs at 4am, trying not to wake anyone, might have waned, but I’ve grown to love new socks and underwear.
I’m not sure whether it’s just a case of lowering my expectations or them being ground down by life, but at 42, I can’t think of many better ways to ensure you have a good day than by wearing new undergarments.
Maybe it’s a sign of my age that I appreciate comfort over everything else.
Maybe it’s a tiredness at wearing clothes that make me feel like they’re trying to strangle me.
Maybe it’s a sign that I need to go to the gym more and eat less so that I can fit in to all of those clothes I bought just before I retired.
My New Year’s resolutions of the recent past have just been to get more work and make sure that I’m always busy. That resolution made 2018 a good year and I hope it’s the same this year too.
But, like everyone else, I managed to talk myself into purging myself of all the bad habits that have led my waistline to grow four inches in as many years.
The first on the list? No red meat in January. So what did I have as soon as I got up yesterday? Ate a sausage sandwich.
I was almost down to the knuckles of my fingers before I remembered my promise to myself.
Pork isn’t red though, really, is it? It’s pink. All right, all right, I’ll start again today.
All of this festiveness is still relatively new to me. I even took a few days off to enjoy myself this year. - only breaking my bout of sloth and gluttony to do co-commentary on the Spurs v Wolves games last weekend. And, to be honest, as much as I had a nice time over Christmas and New Year, it was actually the game at Wembley that felt like a holiday for me.
That’s not a slight on my family, I’m just programmed not to enjoy this time of year or my birthday which falls in the first few weeks of the season.
Even watching games at home, as I always do, didn’t feel the same because I wasn’t analysing or looking to write something off the back of it.
And this is what’s at the crux of my lack of desire to play football ‘for fun’ now that I’ve retired.
A huge part of football for me was there being something at stake. Football wasn’t fun, it was a necessity. Once it ceased to become necessary, it lost its buzz for me.
Foolishly, I even booked a trip to France for a couple of days after FA Cup third round weekend and now I’m panicking at the thought of not doing anything again.
I’ll only end up going to a park and watching a group of lads have a kick-about and commentate on the game in my own head.
That leads me to doubt whether I’d even want to win big on the national lottery. What would I do? Travel the world watching obscure games and write on them anyway? Probably.
I wouldn’t go as far as to buy a football club though. I might be football daft, but I’m not stupid. No offence to Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven - braver men than I ever will be.
While we’re on the subject, let’s wish a happy New Year to the club’s owners and manager Jack Ross.
However this season ends up, be it promotion or not, it can already be seen as a success in relative terms.
The stands are filling back up and the club has a direction and a purpose that had been lost.
And to everyone else who reads this column, a happy New Year to you all.
Sometimes, like today, these might seem like the ramblings of a mad man, but that’s because they are. Cheers, everyone. Here’s a to a great 2019.