Are you skint yet? No? Well you had better get spending because Christmas Day is hurtling towards you like the mega-meteor that obliterated the dinosaurs.
Yes, the frantic, fevered, financially-crippling festive shopping spree is broadly equivalent to the transfer window but with even more eye-watering sums lavished on unnecessary junk, oddities and peculiarities.
It’s such a high-octane, cut-throat scene, Alfredo Morelos actually got sent off in the jostling, jockeying queue at the household appliance department of TJ Hughes while vigorously debating the price of a Kenwood blender with Wullie Collum.
It’s got to the point where Steven Gerrard’s ill-disciplined side have had so many cards in the campaign, they are now coming out of the ref’s breast pocket with Season’s Greetings written on them.
Anyway, the moral is don’t overspend, it’s as simple as that, or you’ll soon attract an ominous knock on the door. History tells us that, of course.
“Christ, the receiver is here,” warbled the carol singers in a sombre rendition of Silent Night during Rangers’ cataclysmic financial woes a few years ago.
Having announced annual losses of £14 million the other month, a perusal of the Ibrox books still remains about as uplifting as reading The Unabridged Guide to Brexit.
Big earners from the calamitous Pedro Caixinha era, a period so engrossingly bamboozling it will be known in historical records, manuscripts and text books as the Mingin’ Dynasty, are still draining the Gers of significant funds even though the likes of Carlos Pena and Eduardo Herrera are contributing hee-haw to the cause.
So, for Gerrard this year, a simple gift; a sturdy, wholesome Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. The annual, all-you-can-eat edible extravaganza is enormous, expensive and unnecessary. A bit like the aforementioned Pena himself. Tuck in Stevie lad. If you’re lucky, Carlos might earn his corn by doing the dishes.
Across the city, money seems to be no object at Celtic. In fact, they seem to have so much swilling about in the bank, King Midas is coming to the Kerrydale Suite to get his fingernails touched up.
Just the other day, Santa was apparently intrigued to see the Parkheid supremo, Peter Lawwell, will land a
£2.3 million bonus on Hogmanay. The windfall is a cash-sodden reward for successes on and off the park under his tight fist ... sorry, shrewd, leadership and is something called a Long-term Performance Incentive Plan, or LTPIP for short.
In fact, the acronym, LTPIP, looks like something you’d perhaps sign off a text message with while maybe adding a cheery, smiley face emoji to it.
So, with that it mind, Lawwell is getting a new mobile phone so he can send David Murray the odd LTPIP-related SMS just for a nostalgic giggle.
There’s not been much to chortle about, though, if you’re a referee in this neck of the woods.
While the unrelenting march of technology continues with the expansion of VAR in more financially lucrative footballing lands, the hard-pressed whistlers in Scotland have come under the kind of withering fire you would get if you walked in front of a musket volley.
Rotten, a disgrace, farcical, clueless? And that’s just when they do the toss of the coin. Given the widespread harrumphing from players, punters, managers and pundits about the standard of refereeing this season, Santa is poised to deliver the game’s high heid yins with a radical present to help improve the state of the nation. That’s right, a qualified referee.
In the world of tennis, meanwhile, it seems so long now that Scottish standard bearer Andy Murray was fully fit, footage of him darting about the courts in flowing, carefree abandon is only available on the British Pathe newsreels.
Our greatest sportsman is preparing for competitive action in Brisbane at the turn of the year as muttering, chin-stroking analysts and experts opine that it’s another “make or break period” in the career of the Scot – or Brit depending how he gets on in round one Down Under.
But, with three Grand Slam titles and a couple of Olympic gold medals to boot, there’s no make or break about it. His shimmering legacy is already assured. But a nicely gift-wrapped clean bill of health for 2019 out of Santa’s sack would be gratefully received by all and sundry.
Laura Muir, meanwhile, remains one of Scotland’s truly inspiring figures. Not since Glasgow-raised James Herriot charmed the nation with his tales of animals and their owners has there been a more popular veterinary surgeon.
Having completed her studies while winning gold at the European 1500 metres during a hectic yet rewarding 2018, Santa would like to celebrate
her achievements by
giving Muir a starring
role in an adapted version of All Creatures Great And Small.
While embarking on a variety of dramatic veterinary procedures on the starting line of a Diamond League meeting, each episode ends with Muir managing to duck through the tape first despite considerable hindrances ranging from a newly delivered foal under one arm or an ailing swan that’s caught its beak in a discarded tin of rice in the Hogganfield Loch.
And from Diamond League, we tenuously yet seamlessly move to diamond watches and Cristiano Ronaldo’s £1.85m time piece.
Not since the bold Larry Grayson was in his shut-that-door pomp have folk been so entranced by someone’s wrist. Ronaldo’s gleaming accoutrement, which he unveiled at a Champions League press conference, was so appallingly gaudy, it made the entire contents of Liberace’s bedroom look as low-key as an abandoned mine shaft.
For Ronaldo this year, then, is something money can’t buy. A touch of understated elegance. Either that, or a life-time battery replacement service from Timpsons.
Merry Christmas everybody.
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