GOOD to be back with you after a while and happy new year to one and all. I've had the veins done (again) and hopefully will be back to full fitness soon, targeting the 2012 Olympics to reach my peak!

As ever, the build-up to Christmas seemed to be about a hundred times longer than the event itself, it just seems to fly by. And my waistline seem to have borne the brunt of some serious scoffing. Still, lots of sport over the holiday period, although it has to be said not great for some of our local teams.

Some sad news for me on Boxing Day was the death of my old mate Don Taylor. I'm sure many of you reading this will have known Don. If you didn't, let me just tell you that he was a larger than life character. He and his dad started with a single lorry and built up one of the biggest privately owned companies in the country, with more than 200 trucks on the road. You must have seen the big green monsters out and about on the motorways and highways of Britain. Don was also a great sportsman, a good cricketer, and one of the best shots around. He knew many famous people and could rub shoulders with the best - the Bothams, the Gareth Edwards, the Basil D'Oliveiras of this world were his personal friends, but he never ever forgot his roots and the people he grew up with and lived with. I spent many happy hours in his company from spending my school holidays on the trucks going all over the country, to the Saturday of a Test match at Lords when he kept asking the good and the great of English Cricket why they kept dropping Graeme Hick. Good bloke Donald, he will be missed. Talking of lorries, another guy I used to hitch lifts with was Jim Corbett, and I know I have mentioned Corbo in this column before. On Sunday, his grandson Andrew will line up for Burton against Manchester United in the FA Cup. What a great cup tie that is - it reminds us what the FA Cup is all about. Andrew was at Harriers for a time, and as I have mentioned in the past, it makes me feel old when I say I played football with his grandad.

Nipping back to Christmas, I popped into one of our more traditional pubs on Christmas Day. It's not something I would normally do at lunch time but it all fitted in with the plans for the day. I was amazed at how many people turned out. The landlady must have wished it could be Christmas every day.