The year rolls round again.

2025 wasn’t a particularly good one – for just about everybody.

We can only hope 2026 will be.

Happy New Year.

Another year passes and another begins.

The news rarely seems to get better though.

Happy New Year anyway.

Well 2023 was a pretty bad year – on just about every count.

And it doesn’t look like 2024 will be any better. The only things that look likely to bring any cheer will be personal ones.

Happy New Year anyway. It’s traditional after all for the first day of a new year.

Happy New Year.

Goodness knows we need it.

A happy year that is.

Happy New Year.

Well, I say happy but – apart from my eldest son getting married in February – I can’t see much cause for celebration this new year. Sons are pretty ropy this season (with only the Cup run helping last season to be anything like bearable) and Brexit looks like making life for most people in the UK more arduous then it need have been.

Happy New Year anyway.

A guid New Year tae yin an’ a’.

(And monie may ye see.)

What it says on this post’s title.

SPFL Tier 2, Central Park, 27/12/14.

A good and well deserved three points. We pretty much dominated this game and ought to have had it put to bed in the first half but all we had to show at the interval was a wonderful finish from Colin Rhyming Slang. Yes, you read that correctly. He had earlier blistered a shot just wide. He was having a good game.

Our line-up was a bit odd seeming with Archie Campball in for Mitch Megginson on the right and Garry Fleming playing wide left.

I thought our failure to put more than one away would come back to haunt us when we allowed them more possession in the second half and they duly scored. Danny Rogers saved their only other chance soon after but then we scored – from a corner! – Lee Mair heading in Scott Agnew’s delivery, though Sons fans were so far away in the corner of the old stand that no-one was really sure who the scorer had been until the internet was checked!

Then the clincher. Chris Kane (who had a poor game by his standards) was put in behind the defence by Colin Rhyming Slang’s pass, tripped by the defender and even though he was heading away from goal the ref gave a red card. Sons fans had the perfect angle to see Garry Fleming’s bullet head for the net. Unstoppable. It was almost a carbon copy of Gylfi Sigurdsson’s goal for Swansea on Boxing Day except the keeper didn’t take a step to his right first.

There were two more notable Colin Nish efforts, one hitting the post, and we had chances beyond that as the ten men struggled a bit to contain us but the ball wouldn’t go in.

Sixth at the New Year. That’s more than acceptable.

A couple of supermarkets – Morrisons and, I think, Sainsbury’s – I visited between Christmas and the New Year had signs up saying, “Happy Hogmanay.”

Happy Hogmanay?

No-one ever says that.*

My local Tesco made a better fist of it. Their sign – above the alcholic drinks isle, natch – said, “Celebrate Hogmanay,” which is more like it. But even then drink isn’t usually taken till after the bells, by which time Hogmanay is past.

So, now it’s here.

Happy New Year.

* Edited to add: except, oddly, Catriona Shearer and Craig Hill on Scotland’s Hogmanay Live last night.