In the Picture

‘Uncle’ Tom Devine had brought firewood, meat and cases of the finest wines known to humanity and knew where to stock them all as after all, it was his cottage. I’d borrowed the key from him for our visit under the impression that he wouldn’t have the brass neck to join us after stealing my wife, sailing her half way around Scotland to escape Richard Gough with his Rangers 90s Squad Marines who kindly volunteered to help me, and then returning with her to shoot me in the belly at Lawwell’s secret headquarters under the summit of Schiehallion. It’s all there in my memoirs from last season if you care to look but anyway, our delightful weekend in the country took a turn for the better until the second day of Devine’s visit when I overheard he and Nevin whispering in the kitchen before coming through to tell me that they were going into Penrith to buy Wellingtons. Fine, I thought, I could do with the peace to catch up on Twitter and post some new buffoonery that’ll have them laughing in the press rooms. With me, not at me, I hope. So off they went, leaving me alone in that strange old cottage with its air of melancholy and fug of woodsmoke.

I sat with my laptop but couldn’t face Twitter since Phil McGillivan was stalking me again. He mentioned something about succulent lamb bhuna which could have been funny had it not been tweeted with such thinly veiled malice so I called him a sad and vulnerable man and logged out before he could come at me with something equally brilliant and witty, as if he could. As I sat in front of the wood burning fire, I pondered the bold Phil and sensed that there was something nagging at me in the back of my mind. Images of a cave on the seashore flitted around my mind’s eye until I could picture him having a wank which slightly turned me on so I looked around the room for something to take my mind off him.

It came to me quite by accident. Some piece of dry log sparked out of the fireplace and fizzed on the antique and threadbare rug, a little puff of smoke rising above the fire surround and gathering blue and hazy in front of an old oil painting. Something didn’t seem quite right with this painting; it was of an old house at the top of a hill, a path leading up to it, bare trees frozen in silhouette against an ominous sky by its side. There was something about it, something odd that I couldn’t take my eyes off it until I could do nothing but sit and stare, captivated by its hypnotic mystery. Outside the sound of rain and wind segued into one huge white noise, seeping through the cracks under the doors and windows into the cottage, surrounding me with a nightmarish hum as the picture dragged me into its world, barren and hellish and hardly welcoming. I sat and gazed at the house in the painting until I noticed there was a light on in the top right window which I hadn’t seen before. Had I missed it? Had it just switched on? Then a voice said, ‘Come in,’ and I found myself walking up the path, sleeves snagging on the reaching branches of the trees, not Autumn bare but scorched and twisted. I kept walking until I came to the door of the house as it opened and I entered.  ‘Sit down,’ said the voice and I did, I sat on a beaten old leather armchair and waited, quite unperturbed at where I found myself.

Then I heard a door open from outside the window of my new home and the voice inside the painted house told me to have a look outside so I got up and walked to the window and there were Nevin and Devine, arguing in front of the fireplace above which the strange picture sat on the wall, a solitary and new light glowing from a window that had been dark for a hundred years.

They had been arguing from the look of it and Devine was in the middle of one of his rants while Pat winced and stuttered, failing to get a word in edgeways.  ‘He is not alone in referring to it as the North of Ireland,’ droned Devine. ‘It's a phrase both Bishop Joe Devine and Cardinal Keith O'Brien are on record as having used to refer to Northern Ireland. This disingenuous phrase is almost exclusively used by the Celtic Minded with extreme republican tendencies, that it is becoming more widespread in Scotland I can only put down to the education of children in our denominational schools. So why is the phrase encouraged in our community? Well the answer to that is the same answer to BIG QUESTION #2: there are Roman Catholic schools in England and Wales so why are there no sectarian problems there? And as we all know, Catholic schools in England and Wales don’t obsess about Irish republicanism, usually of the violent kind and they certainly don’t suppress integration. You know it depresses me sometimes. If only our obsession with the old country took in the arts, history other than that of perceived oppression and struggle, anything except the bloody IRA. There’ll be no Lake Isle of Innisfree heard in class these days when the teachers would rather talk about Bobby Sands,’ and he opened a bottle of Margaux and downed it one obscene glug and continued.

‘BIG QUESTION #1 incidentally is about the Act of Succession which is just a huge smokescreen. Separate schooling according to faith affects every man jack of us in Scotland; it encourages division and tribalism, promotes superstition as fact, indoctrinates unsuspecting children from a young and impressionable age and has no place in a forward thinking, modern society. The Act of Succession affects a few old titled Catholic upper class English families with daughters who wouldn't know the Act of Succession if it ran down the street and grabbed them by the tits.’
‘So why do we constantly bring it up then?’ asked Nevin.
‘To put them on the backfoot and create a smokescreen so that they can’t bring up our schools without us whining about not being allowed Catholics on the throne. The argument has become so muddled of late that most Celtic fans now believe that we’re not allowed to have a Catholic Prime Minister. Of course we don’t say anything to discourage them in this belief; anything to deflect from our own failings is always welcome.’
‘Wow, I didn’t know all this,’ sighed wee Pat. ‘Thanks for the lessons Professor, perhaps now I’ll have more to argue during sectarian debates than my two anecdotes about a Rangers,’ and at that they left the room, leaving me more in the picture now than I’ve ever been.