Since you have to look at it every day, choosing the right calendar is important. So if you were one of the thousands who made sure 17-year-old Rebecca Clark sold hers, you’ve already helped to make 2009 that bit better.

Rebecca, from Musselburgh, created her calendar to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust, to show that having Hodgkin’s disease doesn't mean you can’t look beautiful, and to celebrate the fact that she’s been given the all-clear. Sounds perfect — lovely to look at, inspirational — but I missed out, so I’m still struggling to find a bearable calendar. And what’s left out there is grim.

It used to be so simple. Calendars showed either picturesque, seasonal stuff (daffodils in March, snow in December) or cute kittens stuffed into big wine glasses. Scenic or saccharine, take your pick. But now the whole business is out of control.

From Bob Marley to Bob the Builder, it doesn’t matter if you’re fact or fiction, dead or alive, anybody who has appeared on television for more than 10 seconds is guaranteed an “official” calendar.

You’re nobody unless you’ve got your own calendar so, as a result, there are hundreds of calendars that feature nobodies. For instance, who in the name of anonymity is Jakki Degg? On second thoughts, don’t answer that — I want to preserve my innocence. I already lost too much of it by rashly investigating the “official” 2009 celebration of Milo Ventimiglia. Luckily for me, and anyone dumb enough to buy the calendar of someone they don’t recognise, the manufacturers have helpfully added that he plays Peter Petrelli in Heroes. I am now officially enlightened.

All this makes creating a family calendar seem like the simplest option — you already know who the people are and chances are you’ll still know this time next year — because buying some nonentity’s calendar is like asking somebody you met in Sainsbury’s to hold still for 12 photos.

Spending a year under the vacuous gaze of some nondescript stranger is scary enough, but in these days of instant celebrity turnaround most of these awful almanacs will have become nostalgia by March. Which makes me wonder: did all the Scottish Labour supporters who bought a Wendy Alexander calendar last year get an Iain Gray one this year? It would take a pretty enormous wine glass to make him look cute.

Becoming neighbours might be Donald's trump card, but I always back Scots in a feud

Donald Trump obviously doesn’t watch Aussie soaps, or he would know that everybody needs good neighbours. Unfortunately, he’s still locked in mortal combat with Michael Forbes, the smallholder who refused to be bought out by the billionaire and whose property now sits defiantly in the midst of Trump’s planned golfing resort near Aberdeen.

Trump has decided to make his family home at Menie House, a manse next door to Forbes’s “disgusting” plot. Having already made an enemy of Forbes, it looks as though Trump is deliberately cocking an

almighty snook by becoming his neighbour. But is all this posturing really worth it?

No leylandii can grow high enough to block Trump’s view of Forbes. Neither man will capitulate, but I’m backing Forbes because he’s a real Scot (not just second generation) and when it comes to full-on, world-class feuding, Scots are the experts.

This squabble could last for generations, so if Trump has any sense, he’ll pop around to Forbes’s to borrow a cup of sugar, congratulate him on being a worthy opponent and celebrate what they have in common: stubbornness, bloody-mindedness and an extraordinary ability to piss people off.

Too bigoted to be fascist

The Scottish Historical Review has published a paper entitled The Fasces and the Saltire:, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists made no impact north of the border, and a meagre 1,000 Scots joined the 50,000-strong party. This might seem like a cause for celebration, except for one teeny problem.

One of the main reasons fascism never caught on in Scotland was the strength of sectarianism. In other words, we were all too busy hating each other to bother hating anybody else. On this evidence, Scotland could go down in history as the country that was too bigoted to be fascist.

Another travel sickness

From next spring, the £1.2 billion e-Borders scheme being implemented at large English ports and airports will include Scotland. This means everybody’s comings and goings will be electronically screened in more minute detail than before.

So just when we hoped it might be time to wave goodbye to tiny plastic bags and the 100ml liquids limit, we can start looking forward to even more red tape and much longer check-in times.

Still, looking on the bright side, at least it’s come at a time when nobody can afford to go anywhere.

Times Recommends

• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power
• Big guns wheeled out for the marginals
• Wanted: new merchants of light