'PUT this date in yir diary,' said the sports editor.

The sticky fruit fair ruined my 2014 Justin Bieber Official Fan Club Diary but his next order caused me the most grievous consternation.

"And when you are trying to separate those pages, you might consider telling me what will happen next year," he rapped. He is known among the sports desk dissidents as Kannot West.

My predictions are as follows: I will choose the wrong queue at the supermarket, ending up behind the woman who seems surprised, nay shocked, that once 10 minutes of soddin' bleeping has passed that she has to pay for her messages. She then spends so much time looking for her purse that one considers calling in mountain rescue and sniffer dogs.

Once purse has been found she assembles most of the £148.72p needed for said purchases, coming up just 2p short. She then says: "I have 2p somewhere." Unfortunately, this somewhere is under one of the 390 billion individual trees in the Amazon. She is not quite sure which one, she says with a smile, adding: "We will get there."

And we do, after several members of the queue have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. I have to do another shop as all my items are past their sell-by dates. Except the dates. And the sport editor shoves them in my diary.

Which brings me back to said executive who looks like Mussolini but does not have the same charm. "I want you to put your neck on the line," he said, polishing the guillotine he received for Christmas after his wife converted his reconstruction of a Texas death chamber into a conservatory.

I mused. Subsequently, wafting an air freshener above my napper, I opined: "Celtic to win the league and Rangers to lift the League 1 title."

This perspicacity, of course, did not satisfy him. "You can do better than that," he said, knowing that I can't.

"All right. Scotland to remain unbeaten at Hampden through 2014."

He peeled his eyes away from 12 Years a Slave, the training DVD he is preparing for new starts.

"Scotland do not play at Hampden next year," he said. "So even Craig Levein channelling his inner Berti Vogts would find it hard to rack up a defeat there. I need something fresh and sparkling."

My regular reader will know this statement was a triumph of hope over experience. I do fresh and sparkling in the same way that Graham Norton does deep and meaningful.

I always say that if you want explosive content search a football fan (clue: look under the banner). My 2014 prediction holds to my lifelong aversion to originality.

I believe there is another grand slam in Andy Murray and it may be extracted without anaesthetic at Wimbledon. I believe the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles may be as damp as the back room in a high-rise flat, but that its outcome will be almost unpredictable as that following the pressing of lift button in self-same building.

And I believe in the Commonwealth Games. All that running, jumping and shooting may be reminiscent of a dispute over a payment for a bulk delivery of pharmaceuticals in an East End pub but there is a more compelling reason for looking forward to the invasion of sportsmen and sportswomen.

It is this: this is a city that loves sport, though of late that has been reflected in subscriptions to satellite sports channels rather than in participation.

But what if - and the 'if' is as large as the chip on an aggressive drunk's shoulder - a generation of kids are inspired to take up sport? What if just one or two of them become very good at it? What if they, in turn, inspire others?

What if the Commonwealth Games is pure kwality, man, and Glasgow emerges as genuinely gallus? This is all as intoxicating as a Buckie buffet breakfast but with the possibility of a pleasant hangover.

It all kicks off at Celtic Park on July 23 with reports suggesting that the Green Brigade will carry all the nations' flags and will take charge of the firework display.

At least, I think it is July 23. It is difficult to be sure until I get that date out of my diary . . .