Weird Tales from the Journals of Graham Spiers

Four days ago
Popped into the Pacific Quay CSC to see what I´ve missed over the close season. Seems I missed a lot. Celtic fans rioted in Australia and many were arrested after spending more time on the park than their team. Of course there was no mention of any of this in the mainstream Scottish press never mind at the BBC. I mentioned this to Ian Small while we were having a threesome with Jackie Bird in a sound booth and he said of course nothing would be mentioned, it was Celtic fans, not Rangers fans for heaven´s sake! Later as we sat about worrying what would happen to the tape the sound engineer made of our spit roast session (Jackie wasn´t worried, apparently this had happened to her before and nothing had come of it), Small told me he was interviewing candidates for junior BBC Scotland posts that day; seven of the candidates were nominally Protestant, one a Jew and three were RCs, ´Guess which three are getting the jobs?´ he roared and collapsed laughing.

Five weeks ago
The Traynor continues to stalk the corridors and never ending rooms of Silence, sometimes he disappears all day but always returns to our room to sleep. He´s built a nest in the corner.

Two days ago
Visited my GP to discuss my cricket dreams.

Four weeks ago
Lawwell thrashed McBride QC today after Pansy Paul made a clumsy pass at him. The lack of sex must be getting to him for him to be so bold. Still, he seemed to enjoy the horse whipping as did Lawwell who´s missing his daily kicking around of the Scottish media.

One week ago
Chief Constable of Central Police, Kevin Smith put his head further above the parapet than ever before after releasing a press statement laying into Rangers fans for no apparent reason other than because he hates them. I recall a drunken conversation with him one night in the Brazen Head when he was still a Glasgow cop and he told me his superiors had stuck the knife into him when he was younger and had applied for Special Branch. Apparently his support of Celtic and Irish Republican causes had created concerns unlike these days when such a background would see you promoted well beyond your abilities.

Three weeks ago
I had the dream about crickets again last night, it´s beginning to concern me. This morning when I first woke up I gazed over at Peter Kearney and his head looked like a cricket´s head. He chirruped and hopped away, leaving me worried that the strange living conditions here in Silence are beginning to affect me. Wily old Walter Smith ensures the neon lighting down here is on 24 hours a day so we´re becoming a little confused about what is night and day. Maybe this is why the Traynor built a nest?

Two and a half weeks ago
The Traynor didn´t come back last night. He´d been searching Silence yet again, having spent the weeks looking for a way out or a light switch and that was the last we saw of him.

Two weeks ago
Pansy Paul McBride QC to give him his full name, made another clumsy pass, this time at Kearney. Next thing you know they were both rolling around inside the nest the Traynor had vacated. For all his prejudice against gays, it doesn´t seem to stop Kearney from wearing cut off denim shorts and baring his backside to Pansy Paul at the drop of a pink hat. Of course, locked away down here there isn´t a hope in hell of McBride´s parents finding out he´s a friend of Dorothy, his greatest fear.

Six weeks ago
Rangers have won the league again and I´m locked in Walter Smith´s deep sea headquarters with a bunch of lunatics. Everyone´s keeping out of Lawwell´s reach as he smuggled in his horse whip and is laying into anyone who mentions football. Except the Traynor of course as the Traynor, seemingly freed of any societal constraints, would have his hand off if he went near him with the whip.

One week three days ago
Lawwell insulted me this afternoon. He said, ´with all that water surrounding us, you´d think you´d find some of it to take a bath. You stink, Spiers!´ So I´ve been sulking for the past two hours and while doing this, I swear I saw a light in the darkness out one of the portholes.

Two days ago
Well the medication is beginning to work and I´m feeling quite embarrassed that I used to think Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone used to sit on the end of my bed of a morning, dispensing wisdom about how the Masons were responsible for all the world´s ills. I mean, come on, giving up Hollywood to sit in a west end tenement and whisper conspiracy theories about Rangers into the ears of a dashing young journalist? I find it quite funny now as do the Osmonds who joined me at Whitecraigs for eighteen holes, Jay and Little Jimmy found it hysterical and laughed so much they put Donnie off his stroke for his final put and he ended up chasing them down the Ayr Road with a seven iron.
As I relaxed in the bar later I chanced upon a few conversations which previously I´d have assumed were about me but on this medication, I don´t feel quite so paranoid anymore so when I overheard one fellow journalist to another say,
´You know he´s gay of course, don´t you?´
´But he´s married with children.'
'So was Oscar Wilde.'
Wow, to be mentioned in the same breath as Wilde, how kind.
Then another pair who didn´t see me lurking in the corner booth were overheard saying,
'A good journalist deals in news, he wouldn´t know news if it chased him down the street and bit him on the arse, all he deals in is conjecture, lies and ill informed opinion.'
'And he´s gay.'
'Not that there´s anything wrong with that.'
'Try telling that to the Diocese, Christ I wish they´d let us get on with being councillors and stop interfering so much with Labour policy, it´s becoming embarrassing especially when we shout about prejudice on their behalf only for them to pick on the poofters.'

Five days ago
I’m out. Silence is just an unpleasant memory now and I’m let loose once again to insult Rangers fans in the only medium I can which will ever be read since no one reads the Scottish Times anymore: Twitter! I casually mentioned the Ascent of Man which was a mistake because now all the staff at the Times are saying things like, ‘more like the scent of a man, a very unpleasant scent’. I walked into that one.

Yesterday
I woke up full of enthusiasm for the coming season and opened my curtains in a display of gay abandon when the sudden light illuminated dead crickets lying on the floor surrounding my bed. This doesn’t bode well for what lies ahead.