L'Enfer C'est Les Autres

It's over, thank god.  The most bitter and hate filled season in Scottish football has come to an end and did I contribute towards it?  Did I half.  It was a strange ending in many ways and as ever, finished up with bloodshed and recriminations all round.  I was lying in a pool of my own blood if you remember after being shot by my own wife, brainwashed by Tom Devine obviously - Celtic Minded and brain washing, what are they like?  Anyway, as I lay there in quite some agony, nobody had noticed Graeme Souness and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos abseiling in through the hole in the roof of Lawwell's secret headquarters made there earlier by Martin Bain when he revealed himself to have super powers before crashing out of the place to prevent Lawwell's missile hitting Ibrox.  He's gone now, poor Martin; shame really as I really quite fancied him.  No one noticed the commandos until Graham Roberts appeared behind Devine, put an arm around his neck and whoosh, they were gone, reeled back towards the hole and out of there.  The same happened to everyone and Souness left a parting gift - half a dozen phosphorous grenades which lit up the place and left me lying there wondering why no one had bothered to rescue me.

As the flames spread I worried that they'd reach me and my end wouldn't be a pleasant one but the smoke got to me first and I passed out and as I did, I remember  my thoughts turning, not to my loved ones or how society would miss such a splendid journalist such as myself but to the janitor at the Times of Scotland who'd probably now get my job full time since he'd been writing my reports and columns for months now.  Not that anyone had noticed as no one reads the bloody thing anymore anyway.

Remarkably I came to and the pain had gone.  I'd been awoken by the tock tock tock of footsteps on a hard floor in a place where there was no other noise and as the footsteps got closer I could see the hefty figure of the Traynor approaching, but I thought he was dead, shot by Stuart Cosgrove on a roof in St. Vincent Street?  Then again, by rights I should be dead so I kept quiet and watched how things were to proceed.
'You're awake then,' he stated rather than asked.  'About time too, typical of you to sleep in and miss everything - sums up your career really, eh?'
'What have I missed then and how come you're still alive?  I saw you dead last night,' I squeaked but the Traynor shook his head and gave me a look of pity which was a new one for him.
'That wasn't last night, you've been out for almost two weeks now.  Kind of.  In reality you've been out for much longer while a replicant of you blundered around Scotland causing bother.  There was one of me too, that's who you saw shot.  No Spiers, we've been held in stasis in Walter Smith's Silence since that last old firm game when you tried to jump the old fellow.  Didn't I tell you there was something not quite right?  Haven't there been enough hints that we weren't who we thought we were?'
'Replicants, eh?  More importantly, who won the league?' I asked.
'Rangers.'
'DAMMIT!  What are we going to do now?  You know what the punishment for Rangers winning the league is - Lawwell will have our hides!'
'Oh I wouldn't worry about Lawwell if I were you.  Well, not quite - he's in here with us.  And Kearney.  And McBride.  Reid escaped somehow during the great round up but here we are: you, me, Lawwell, Kearney and Paul McBride, all locked up at the bottom of the ocean while up there Rangers go from a position of great weakness to great strength and still win the double while Celtic celebrate coming second in some outbreak of mass lunacy.  We hear they won the Scottish Cup and hoisted Neil Lennon on their shoulders as if he knew anything about it, the chap's been drunk, unconscious, possessed, missing a head or just too plain sociopathic to notice anything that's happened this season.  Yet you still think he's a nice guy.'
'He is...' I tried to object but the Traynor cut me off.
'This is the end, Spiers; the most spiteful and nasty season in my memory is over and we're down here to answer for our roles in perpetuating it.  Every day new guilty parties arrive, delivered by Richard Gough in the Nautilus but we never see where they go - half the sports department of BBC Scotland arrived this morning but in spite of searching every inch of this complex that I can find, I've yet to see them.  I'm afraid we're stuck with Lawwell and his pals.  Hell is indeed other people and sometimes I think that is precisely where we are - who knows what Rangers are capable of with Jorg Albertz on their side?'
'So that's it?  After everything we've been through this season, Celtic win nothing and we fetch up locked away down here?'
'They won the Scottish Cup I told you.'
'Oh that doesn't count.  This is so unfair - what have I done to deserve this?'  I almost cried and then I thought about my role in cliping Rangers to UEFA and my constant championing of Celtic while vilifying Rangers which when you think about it is only what I've always done but things had changed now, the coward Murray was gone and a new leader has taken over the Rangers, things next season were going to be an awfully lot different and with Lawwell and his goons imprisoned in Silence who is going to carry out Celtic's next campaign of intimidation, mud-slinging and violence against anyone in Scotland who doesn't support Celtic?  Well I suppose John Reid escaped so that'll be who.  I just wish I could be around to witness it again and be his cheerleader,  I did think I suited those short skirts and pom poms.

Oh well, Reid believed in the green half of Glasgow, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us this season, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...  And one fine morning -

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.