Here she is, this Nabakovian sun-child, crystal-cold Russian tanned to honey by a decade in the heat of American skin-worship, giggling as she lifts her trophy. Ten thousand Humbert Humberts, comparing over-earnest notes on her forehand, look at the girlish knees, the still-soft calves, hair the colour of a Ukrainian wheat-field, and endure the delicious torment of being old and ugly in the shadows as this new loveliness dawns over the tennis world.

Lawrence Fishburne is considered one of the finest actors of his generation. His generation includes Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. Those who are doing the considering — usually chat-room visitors called ”Viking Wolf” or ”SoulThresher” (16-year-oldmounds of asthmatic, nearsighted acne) — say that Larry is one of the last true Method actors. And they seem to have a point.

Awkward questions were asked in Pretoria this week about how South Africa won its Football World Cup bid without consulting a single praise singer. Disturbing evidence of an entirely spoken bid presentation has come to light, and speculation is rife that the bid team had neither a praise-singing contingency plan nor an emergency backup ceremonial leopard tail.

While there’s much that we know about Eleanor Rigby, there’s a lot more that we don’t. It is here that Ms Rigby’s prospective biographer must pause and ask: What do depressed, lonely, abandoned, socially inadequate people do? Sometimes, on very rare occasions, emboldened to reckless exhibitionism by a satisfying heart-to-heart with the talking clock, they invent new sports.

New Springbok coach Jake White is a great motivator. He’s a student of the game. He’s a thinker, a facilitator, a mover, a groover, a philosopher-king. But consider this, in light of the state of South African rugby: Is there anything a modern Springbok coach can do that a trained chimpanzee can’t?

January 5. Somewhere in southern Mauritania. Michelle, mon petit baguette, I write this by the guttering light of a burning Mitsubishi. The driver will soon be extinguished and so I must be brief. The weeping has become incessant. At first it was just the Italian bikers, sobbing into their malfunctioning carburettors …

The new year is here, and I for one am very disappointed. Not least because it means that, for the next six months, we’ll be three rather than two years behind America in broadcasts of Days of Our Lives: John Black could remember his priest/mercenary/ art-thief/vole-wrangler past and run away to live in the bayou next week, but I’ll only know for sure in 2007.