It's at this time of the year, when the days begin to shorten to the length of a dispirited groan, that you realise the world has taken complete leave of its senses.

As October creaked into November recently and I trudged wearily down the damp, pigeon-infested high street, I witnessed a frenzied scene that convinced me that modern-day life is just one over-packed suitcase and we're all bouncing up and down on top of it trying to cram everything in.

One hattered wifie was buying a costume for Hallowe'en, another was careering around gathering fireworks for Bonfire Night while the whole breathless palaver was being played out against a backdrop of rosy-faced bloomin' carol singers.

Forget three separate celebrations; we may as well christen this time of the year Hallo-Fawkes-Mas and get all the guising, Guys and yuletide guddling over and done with in seven, fraught days before collapsing in a crumpled heap and re-emerging in the new year.

It really is the silly season. Rather like golf in many ways. As the European Tour year shudders to a conclusion, the bickering knows no bounds while the riches keep pouring in like the aftermath of a collapsed ceiling in a Sultan's flat.

This week in Dubai, the concluding event in the $30m Final Series takes place, but there will be one or two not loading up their wheelbarrows. And they've made everybody know that they won't be.

Because they hadn't fulfilled the requirement of playing in two of the three events leading up to the showpiece in the desert, the likes of Ernie Els and Charl Schwartzel are major-winning absentees. Schwartzel went on record to express his displeasure and put a question mark over his European Tour future while Els, a long standing supporter of the European scene and one of the truly global campaigners, went further and brandished the various rules and regulations "farcical" and "an absolute joke".

For poor old George O'Grady, the chief executive of the European Tour, the year probably can't end quickly enough. Instead of revelling in the cut-and-thrust of the inaugural Final Series, O'Grady, who came under siege earlier in the year for comments made in the wake of the Sergio Garcia-Tiger Woods race rumpus, is facing a flustered finale and is now preparing to unveil changes to the season-ending bean feast in an attempt try and keep everybody happy. Good luck with that.

In this era of "independent contractors", player power has never been greater and you probably can't blame the European heid honchos for trying to coerce their leading lights into competing in as many events as possible on the tour, particularly as the juggernaut that is the PGA Tour continues to thunder along in the fast lane. Big names keep big sponsors happy, after all, but the plan has backfired and Els and Schwartzel, as well as Garcia, will all be missing from the Dubai drawsheet.

It's hard to get too tearful about the girns and groans of these global superstars, of course, particularly when the annual scramble to merely gain a foothold on the European Tour is taking place this week at the qualifying school final in Spain. The gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow and grow and for those giants of the game who are fortunate to be able to straddle both the European and the US circuits during the season, yet bleat about having to scribble one or two more events into a schedule of eye-popping opportunity, they should perhaps take a step back and look at the wider picture.

Thomas Bjorn, the straight-talking Dane who has the highly unenviable task of keeping the ship steady in his role as chairman of the Tournament Committee, has his owns views. "Sometimes golfers forget it's not about golf," said the multiple European Tour winner in the current edition of Global Golf Post. "They think they are the most important thing in the world and they're not. There have been players before and there will be players after them, but the tour will always exist."

This week's DP World Tour Championship will still be a lavish, end-of-season extravaganza but the rumblings in the background have given the Wentworth high command plenty of food for thought.

As well as trying to iron out the flaws in its new Final Series, the cloud circling Simon Dyson - the Englishman faces disciplinary action after his disqualification from the BMW Masters following the tapping down of a spike mark - continues to hang heavily, like flatulence in a cold waiting room.

Toss in the PGA Tour's expansion into China, with the unveiling of a new feeder tour in the Far East which tees-off in 2014, and the last couple of weeks have probably given O'Grady and his crew the kind of headache usually reserved for someone trying to squeeze themselves into a Hallowe'en outfit while lighting a Bonfire and warbling Oh Come All Ye Faithful at the same time. Talk about a winter of discontent.