Gog and Magog

 

After the relative peace and quiet of the close season summer weeks since my last adventures, certain wine bar philosophers around the west end have been querying the role of my diary in the startling turns Scotland took last season, asking would there have been as much bloodshed and would Rangers have won the league if it hadn't been for the creation of the diary? Curiously, while the diary has lain dormant in my corduroy satchel, everything has been fine with nary a grotesque lurking to launch yours truly into any astonishing adventures. That was until I decided to record my trip to Verbier with Herr Lawwell and the Devine Brothers as Celtic yet again laid down how they wanted to see the coming season reported, and the moment I stood on the balcony of the casino and put pen to paper when Souness came racing out of the woods on skis, pursued by a helicopter while behind me James Traynor dropped his drink, howled and made for the trees.

With this existential conundrum spinning around my head I put the diary away, maintaining I'd consider it before writing again but I forgot all about it while putting on Graham Spiers the Musical at the Partick Burgh Halls as I got caught up in a maelstrom of Elton John and Take That classics while ogling lithe young male dancers and I got quite lost amidst the after show parties at the Speakeasy pub in the Merchant City where astoundingly I bumped into my old beaux, Stephen Purcell, wandering around in a daze with his manhood hanging out of his trousers - just the one time indeed! I'm just glad his part in my great story is over.

So I was sitting in the Common Rooms, a common little bar on Byres Road when I decided to write the first paragraph above when the ground shuddered. Everyone in the bar looked around at each other and it happened again, this time dust fell from the ceiling like in some great disaster movie so I got up from my table and looked out of the window. Shudder, the walls moved and a pane of glass in front of me cracked. The barman left his post and joined me by the window, along with Hugh McDonald who had been buying a cafe latte, the three of us straining to see down Byres Road, trying to work out what was causing the very earth to shake when suddenly there was a great explosion of dust and rubble as a blurred figure landed at force on the road outside, tearing up the tarmac and ricocheting into a tenement building, knocking a hole in the wall and sending bricks and cement dust sprawling all over everything in sight. People screamed, car alarms sounded and next to me Hugh McDonald soiled himself. Then another figure dropped from above and stood amongst the debris, looking around. He was wearing a mask over his eyes, had a noose tied round his neck with some strange symbol on his chest. I only got the most fleeting glimpse of him though before the figure who had landed in the building next to us recovered and flew out of the hole in the wall at great speed and landed a mighty punch square on the chin of the man standing outside, sending him flying into the air. This new figure was wearing a dishevelled hood over his head and long flowing white robes, torn and mucky now from being thrown into the road and through a tenement flat. He didn't stand for long before launching himself through the air in the direction of the other fellow he'd just knocked into the sky.

Well here was a turn up for the books, two super powered idiots fighting each other in the streets of Glasgow. I later found out one was going by the name of Master Mason while the other was Torquemada, two super heroes or villains, depending which side you were on. One thing is for certain though, their appearance here, wreaking destruction over Glasgow as they make battle can mean only one thing, the Scottish football season is about to kick in.