Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

What a terrible festive season I had - I came down with a frightful little bug just before Christmas and was laid low for the duration of the holidays. Having spent the best part of two weeks in bed sucking a fisherman's friend, I couldn't complete the Lawwell Christmas Carol and since it's too late now I'll just say that Lawwell tied up all four ghosts of Christmas, indoctrinated them and sent them packing once they were 'on message' - so a sort of First Communion for spirits if you will. Meanwhile Tiny Tim survived and grew up to be a mad junky ned so no surprise there then.

Unable to attend the first old firm game of the new year, I watched it on television from my sick bed and wrote my report with the benefit of multi-angle replays. I was about to write that the Fortune 'goal' was obviously a foul when my fax machine stirred and my email inbox started beeping at the same time as my mobile phone was going off. All of them were messages from Lawwell's office to warn me (and every other Scottish sports journalist no doubt) that there was a three line whip out on this issue and that we were to state that the referee was wrong and that it should have been a goal. We were also to mention the Lafferty tackle and how it should have been a red card and that Celtic expected everyone to campaign against Lafferty and Conroy in an effort to distract the hordes from their team's inability to beat a mis-firing Rangers team.

So copy posted, Lawwell happy, editor praising my work, I put on my best corduroys and took off down Byres Road to check out what I'd been missing when who do I bump into but Stevie Conroy himself. He was wearing a hat, shades, a false nose and fake moustache but I still recognised him. I called out his name but he ducked into the Oxfam shop and made out the back door so I couldn't catch up to ask him how his family was after having their windows smashed on Sunday night. Disappointed at not getting to speak to Conroy, I popped into the Chip looking for the Reporting Scotland bhoys but the barman told me they hadn't been in since Sunday as they'd been too busy burying bad news and trying to erase Sunday's match from history. He had seen the Scotland Today gang who had been in briefly but then they heard that Raman Bhardwaj had been spotted in Oran Mhor and set off to beat him up. Having no luck in the Chip I walked across Ashton Lane and into Jintys but it was empty, not a soul there except the barman who said it'd been like this since full time two days ago. It seems the whole of Glasgow is mourning Celtic's defeat on Sunday, except, they didn't lose, did they? There does seem to have been a higher number of Rangers fans laughing at me in the street than normal so perhaps they did win and in my fever I thought it was a draw. I must check this out at once.