From now on the days will get longer in the northern hemisphere.
That means a great deal to me and in 2016 I laid out my reasons in some detail.
Last Christmas my brood bought me a light box and that coupled with some Iberian sun has been a boon to me this winter.
For sure we can still have some rough weather in front of us on the wintery island, but the days will now lengthen.
Just the thought of that makes things a bit better for me.
Baby Doctor is already here and Number One Daughter and the Big Fella will arrive over the weekend.
This well-heated house has enough food for a siege and the Bean a tí has everything in place for the day itself.
We’re lucky and we know it.
However, it doesn’t escape my attention that as this economy motors along there are people sleeping in the streets of our capital.
Within yards of where the Proclamation was first read by Pearse citizens of this republic huddle in doorways.
The Irishman from Scotland who was standing beside him that day warned that this might happen.
We should be sick with shame.
So dear reader, I hope that you are as lucky as we are here in Dún na nGall.
The vast majority of ye are regular visitors to this place and for that, you have my thanks and gratitude.
The traffic figures would certainly put forward the case that there is an ongoing need for this samizdat on Planet Fitba.
Give the ongoing failures of the local media in Glasgow on the Ibrox story it would appear that this site still has a role.
Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, the darkness has incrementally started.
Indeed, I cannot imagine that there will be much brightness over a certain household in Johannesburg today on their summer solstice.
It was just confirmed to me by an excellently placed source that Dave had not come up with the £19m.
For the sake of Mr King, I hope that my chap is wrong on that one.
I am in touch with a business journo in Joburg and he is a veteran Dave watcher.
He estimated that the King family net worth was around £24m (stg).
Consequently, I can understand why they would be reluctant to put £19m of that into an escrow account in the UK.
Now, it would seem that Dave has bet it all on less than 50% of the potential sellers taking him up on his court-ordered offer.
However, I’m told that the chaps in the Takeover Panel have already a contingency for that.
Of course, despite the changes in the seasons, there are some things that are a constant and Squirrels over Ibrox seems to be one of them.
It is a remarkable coincidence that the figures leaked this week on Sevco’s Europa League journey just happen to be the same amount that was missing in the RIFC accounts.
Of course, The People were soothed by this good new narrative.
That was never in doubt.
I will pop up here at some time next week with my review of 2018.
Regular readers will know the usual format of that.
In the meantime, I hope that you and yours are in a good place in every sense of the that term.
I trust that 2019 will be everything you need it to be.
