You've got to love the darts.
No, seriously, now that football has been taken away from us along with the freedom of choice, there’s not that much else left to do than turn on the telly and marvel as thousands of grown men behave like boozed-up teenagers on an idiots-only stag do, while trying to work out exactly why it is that we’re locked up in the house again, having to open every window if we get as much as a visit from the postman.
First thing’s first. There has to be a degree of sympathy for those faced with making the difficult decisions required to plot a course through a global pandemic at a time of the year when most of us would struggle to plot our way through a generously portioned panna cotta.
Of course, when lives are on the line, every decision counts and the burden of responsibility for those in charge of making them must feel crushing.
Even so, when logic appears to have been removed from the equation it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask some glaringly obvious questions, especially now that our national game has gone into self-isolation while spectator sport in England appears to be carrying on regardless.
For starters, how many pints of moron juice does it take to sing songs about Scotland getting battered ‘everywhere they go’ while, just a few yards way up there on the big stage, two Scotsmen are smashing the double tops out of the rest of the world while arrowing their way straight into the semi-finals of the World Championships?
But, more importantly where this mind-blowing imbalance is concerned, how are the rest of us supposed to process what we’re seeing every time we pick up the remote control?
How on earth can two different governments examine the same science and the same data and yet come to such diametrically opposed positions where protecting public health is concerned?
How can it be deemed safe to dress up as a giant Christmas pudding and cavort around inside London’s packed out Ally Pally while, in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the national game has been shut down and New Year derbies wiped from the fixture list?
It’s a nonsense and it is no wonder that football in this country feels as if it’s been given another kicking from the House on the Hill as part of the endless sabre rattling and political posturing which goes on between Holyrood and Westminster.
Of even more concern where the game’s governance is concerned, it was also entirely predictable.
The moment Omicron came wheezing its mutations over the horizon, it was almost inevitable that Scottish football would be one of the first to suffer the consequences.
Indeed, this very column warned as much way back at the start of last month, long before the knee-jerk decision was taken to limit crowds to just 500 and effectively force our clubs back behind closed doors.
Even national clinical director Jason Leitch admitted afterwards that the figure was pretty much plucked from thin air on the basis that “Well, you have to start somewhere,” which was in itself an extraordinarily glib way of explaining why so much has been taken away from so many.
Worse still, when the SFA and SPFL tried to reason with the government they were effectively warned that they would be wasting their own breath.
There was absolutely no room for negotiation where the figure of 500 was concerned, far less an explanation offered of how they arrived at such a specific number and then rolled it out across the board, regardless of stadium size or capacity.
Nor was there any willingness to discuss a raft of counter-measures which were put forward as proposals to allow football to stay open for business and in the safest environment possible.
Having previously conceded that there is no compelling evidence to suggest that attending outdoor events is a driver of transmission, Leitch pointed out that Omicron could run riot on supporters’ buses and inside pubs before and after matches.
And yet there was no room for discussion when a further offer was made to implore all fans either to take their own cars to the game or to get there on foot. And so here we all are. Triple jagged. Back on the couch. Watching the darts.
All the while wondering how or when all of this misery might finally come to end. It seems naive to believe it will be any time soon which is why the decision to suspend the top flight over the festive period also appears to lack any real logic.
If clubs truly believe they’ll be back to full capacity as soon as the clock strikes midnight on January 17 then they’ve clearly not been paying attention since this catastrophic business began.
Leitch has already warned that this latest wave of infection will not reach a peak until some point next month so it seems far more likely that attendances will remain limited to such an extent that it will feel like we’re all back behind closed doors again when the ball comes back out of the cupboard.
Perhaps the biggest concern for the game’s governing bodies will be how the fixture list might look if or when Omicron really lets rip and more and more games have to be postponed and squeezed in somewhere else, further down the line.
With that in mind, it might have made more sense to scrap this season’s winter break entirely rather than bring it forward on the basis that it’s better to make hay and get games played for as long as the sun is still shining.
Then again, perhaps that would have been too much of a sensible solution to a set of circumstances which continue to make no sense at all.
