Odyssey Part Three

 

It was six am and as usual I was wakened not by the sound of the gulls or the gentle rolling of the boat but by the noise of Richard Gough doing squat thrusts. There was a definite routine to the mornings on board HMS the Walter Smith: Gough would be up first to exercise, then Ian Ferguson would take a rifle to the top deck to let off pot shots at the birds, Stuart McCall would always sit and watch the news and read the papers while Andy Goram would surface around midday if he was lucky, scratching his arse and complaining of a sore head. Me, I stayed in my bunk for as long as I could before joining McCall in catching up with the papers and wondered how on earth football reports were appearing in the Times under my name without me having written them.  But since no-one reads the Times anymore anyway, I didn't worry too much.

We had been sailing around the west coast for weeks now with no sign of Devine or his boat. I was beginning to think my wife was lost to me which wouldn't be the first time considering she'd already run off with Aamer Anwar and Jason Allardyce - I got used to lonely nights with my Martin O'Neill scrapbook then and I'll get used to them again, and I was just about to say as much to the Rangers 90s Squad Marines and tell them that I was ready to jack it all in when Ian Ferguson spotted movement in the distance and called for a telescope. I left the fo'c'sle with Stuart McCall bounding up the steps in front of me and joined the whole crew on the bow and squinted at the horizon where Richard Gough was studying something through the telescope.
'It's definitely Lawwell,' he said. 'I can make out half a dozen others and they have someone on the plank - I can't believe it, Lawwell has someone walking the plank at the point of the sword. I can't make out who it is though, here Stuart, have a look - you're the one who's up to date with current affairs, who is that on the plank?'
And McCall stood silently concentrating on the small boat in the distance then he gasped,
'It's Ian McGregor!'
'Who?' burped Andy Goram.
'Ian McGregor, Chief Executive of PoppyScotland - Lawwell's making him walk the plank! McGregor's shaking his head to whatever it is Lawwell's demanding but the swine keeps prodding him further out with his cutlass... Now McGregor's nodding, he's agreeing to something, now he's being brought back in and Lawwell and his men are celebrating. What could all this mean?'
'I don't know,' said Gough, 'but we're putting a stop to it - all hands on deck, hoist the anchor, back and fill gentlemen, let's get over there and put some pepper in Lawwell's pipe!'