I am a little bit justified, however, in that Christmas officially kicks off when you see the first 'Holidays are coming' Coca Cola ad (check out this family's dedication http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqHz8LQBv5Q). This year it was around the first of December. Ooh, it gets earlier every year.
My point is that the blogging has slipped, and the running also took a bit of a backseat to the festivities. There's just so much to distract. The long lunches, the work Christmas do, the seasonal drinks with friends. Then when work finally finished there was the long drive north and the shuffling around to various events with my family, the 'in-laws' (the inverted commas are to symbolise that they are not my in-laws but it is a much more succint way of saying 'my girlfriend's family', although some of them have taken to referring to themselves as such, and I have gone along with it), and friends.
Every stage of the festive period involved food and drink and, knowing that I had already vowed to pack in the booze come January, I was torn between cutting down gradually and going out in a blaze of glory. I wouldn't say I had a blaze of glory, but I held my own.
When I did try to get to the gym, I was scuppered by the increasingly skewed idea of holiday activities. In my day (approaching the age of 28 I now feel qualified to speak like this. I really do not look at the world at the moment and think 'this is my day' in the same way as I did in, say 1996. Ah, 1996. Now there was a year...) all the shops were closed on Boxing Day but you could, for example, go to the cinema. Now, it would appear, all the shops are open (YOU GOT A PANTLOAD OF PRESENTS YESTERDAY. SURELY YOU AREN"T BORED OF THEM YET!), yet the likes of David Lloyd gyms do not feel the need to open their doors and allow those of us whose parents still haven't bloody well got Sky Sports yet (another good namecheck. Maybe I can secure something for them too) to get some exercise and watch some live football.
I forget exactly what the game was. I think it might have been West Ham v Reading, but I don't think I missed much. When there are a number of games going on simultaneously to a live game I'd almost rather be in the company of Jeff Stelling and co to see the whole picture. Unless Martin Keown is involved.
While I'm loathe to lay into someone again after the Venables debacle, I think it's necessary to have a word about Keown. For a kick off, he has been responsible for a bastardisation of history. The famous Arsenal back four was, in large part, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, Tony Adams and Steve Bould. Andy Linighan deputised on occasion (inculding the 1993 FA Cup Final replay when he scored a last gasp goal that put Norwich into Europe. oh, and won Arsenal the Cup) and so did David O'Leary at the end of his career.
Martin Keown, meanwhile, was racking up seven years of experience between Aston Villa dn Everton. He came back after Arsenal stopped winning things and managed to stick around until Arsene Wenger managed to sort them out, yet has somehow managed to ease Bould in particular out of the picture and write himself into Arsenal's most successful side.
As if this wasn't enough, he was also responsible for one of the most pathetic footballing scenes in history (that's actual history as opposed to Sky's Premier League/ship history that only goes back to 1992) when he and his mates attacked Ruud van Nistelrooy after he missed a penalty(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWXq_-LdxHk - it's all on You Tube!). The look on Keown's face is ridiculous. The bewilderment on van Nistelrooy's face very telling.
Anyway the latest embarrassing situation Keown found himself in on television was during the Blackburn v Arsenal Carling Cup match. Martin, in whom some TV exec mistook intelligence for being plain old boring, was charged with watching the match and relaying the scenes to the watching public. Which is where the problem comes in. To put it bluntly, Keown is unable to talk about something that is happening at the same time as he is watching it. This is not a unique deficiency among ex-professionals on our beloved Soccer Saturday, but most manage to disguise the fact with some sort of gurning, shouting, stuttering or repeating 'Unbelievable!'.
I'm still not sure exactly what happened or who was sent off, but there was some kind of scuffle involving lots of Blackburn players having a go at an Arsenal player for something or other and someone was sent off. I only know this because Ian Payne put the viewers out of their misery. He spent a good couple of minutes trying to elicit Keown into actually describing what was happening, then gave up and moved on to something else. I'm not even sure they bothered going back to Keown when there was a goal.
Keown seems to have been banished to Football Focus now, alongside the terminally incorrect Mark Lawrenson. 'Lawro', as everyone calls him in pally BBC land (that's pally as in like pals, not as in Pally Gary Pallister who crops up occasionally), has made such an art out of not knowing anything that he has taken to presenting pretty basic knowledge in the form of a wild guess. John Motson is better than the role he has been reduced to, that of Lawrenson's straight man, if you'll pardon the double entendre.
I've got to end with an apology. In my last blog I wrote about Sky Sports News tipster Alex Hammond. I'd completely failed to notice that she has, for some time, been Alex Quinn. I think this subconsciously answers my question to myself about whether or not I fancy her. If Georgie Thompson, Vickie Gomersall (who apparently collapsed and was brought round by Sven Goran Eriksson recently, and has a glint in her eye whenever there's mention of him) or, god forbid, Millie Clode got married, I'd notice. I'd probably write a blog about it.