LOCKER ROOM:The year ended with us all in such a trough of depression that we forgot our perspective. Come January we get back to living. And sporting, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

WE LEARN nothing from history. The geeks come bearing gifts. Eh, hang on geeks, you say, but they give you a column. Thrust it upon you. They point to a space on the back of the newspaper and they tell you to go away and to fill that little space every week. You know then you have made it. Your auntie gives you two shillings to buy an ice cream.

The professional in you inhales deeply from the flake at the top of the 99 and reflects on the journey you have made. At last, the professional yelps, when out of earshot, money for jam. Yay! The professional moonwalks down the street like Michael Jackson passing a petting zoo. Money for jam made of old rope. Free, old ropey jam money. And probably groupies as well. Lecture tours. Maybe an album.

And all it boils down to is your opinion and the feeling you’ve always had that everybody is entitled to your opinion. Wonderful world. Hear my song. I said, hear my . . .

They don’t tell you about weeks like Christmas week and the three weeks before it where virtually nothing happens except snow and depression and the greath litthle nayshoon getting given away to the gombeen men or na gombiní eorpacha as we call them in our proud culture.

You are obliged as a columnist to either ignore the pending iceberg and keep playing your oboe or to be funny about it. Or if funny is beyond you, to be wry. At least take a tongue -in-cheek look. For godssake try a sideways glance. Offer “your take”. Be zany.

Or else summon an irate bee from your bonnet which contractually is supposed always to be full of irate bees. Let the irate bee do the column. Drone on.

They don’t warn you about all those weeks when you play all the right notes but not in the right order so they don’t count. Or the crossroads you come to at the end of the year when you decide you can’t possible fill the column with another jokey awards thing (The Trap How Will We Know How Good He Is Till We Refuse To Pick Him Award goes to Andy Reid, etc, etc. )

There is a strong temptation or course just to have a glass of sherry and to knock out a seasonally cheery Leeds United column. Ho ho ho! The time is soon coming though when the Champions League will once again have the credibility it lacks and Leeds United will sign up and lend it their weight. Best stockpile the Leeds United columns.

(Also, it is an odd thing about the greath litthle nayshoon, that it can be given away with scarcely an angry world of demurral from the locals but a bad word about Man Yoo will cause the sky to darken with a hail of poison-tipped arrows. Fans of other clubs have evolved to the use of email in fairness.)

Cutbacks mean that all jokes and conceits must be made complete within the space of one paragraph. A sporting 12 days of Christmas, precisely the sort of Christmas Twee we do in this column, would be condensed as follows.

Day One: The pear tree, assuming it is artificial, is a decent long-term investment and will not suffer significant depreciation. Lose the partridge. A Stephen Ireland would be a festive addition at the top of the tree. Day Two: Turtle Dub – a Dub who falls on his back in Meaghers and can’t right himself. Fine. Two turtle Dubs. Very Celtic Tiger and very unacceptable. And against fire regulations. Day Three: Three French Hens. It’s not €85 billion but thanks Monsieur. I suppose. Day Four: Four calling birds? Who are they calling? Why? No we don’t want to buy Advantage seats from the FAI.

Five golden rings, a gift for the nations’ bondholders. Our most ’umble pleasure. Six geese a paying. Fill in own joke. Seven swans a-swimming. The one in front with abnormal musculature you know, yeah the others in the distance may be ducks. Welcome back. Eight bank executives a-milking. Carry on gents, just warm those fingers would ye. Ouchy. Nine Latvians a-dancing, 10 Lithuanians a-leaping , 11 Poles a-piping and 12 Estonians drumming.

That was last year’s All-Ireland half-time show right there. This year. One thousand masters graduates and their benefits cavalcade of tap dancing.

Now there was lots of far funnier stuff could have gone in there but regulations are regulations. Given the space, we could offer a column which combines the hilarity of Rory McIlroy’s hair with the comic stylings of G-Mac’s accent but we all have to make sacrifices.

There is the option of concocting an amusing pastiche of Stalin's show trial which the intellectual wing deem to be inappropriate given our current cultural stasis (BTW, Irish Intellectual: Somebody who reads the Guardian. Leading Irish intellectual: somebody whose name has been in the Guardian)

Or we could look back sentimentally at the year that was and recall our favourite moments. A wistful column on St Etienne which sent them into a freefall down La Ligue. Haven’t lost the old magic. Our thanks that we didn’t write something similar about Ipswich. Enjoyed the rain at the Ryder Cup and fell in love with Cape Town at the World Cup. Gaelic football came back to life. Sluddengate, though a dark day for the people of the Wee, kept the rest of us awestruck and amused. And the Dubs are coming back if they can find a couple more scorers.

Other good things like Katie Taylor and poor old Ruby Walsh require columns of their own. The year ended with us all in such a trough of depression that we forgot our perspective. Come January we get back to living. And sporting.

Anyway, happy Christmas fellow survivors and one little piece of advice you get for free at this time of the year by way of a gift. When the bank or the credit card company start calling in January just hiss urgently that they are to get off the line. You are a bondholder and you have to be protected more tenderly than an endangered species.