Lennon Sematary

The clouds bruised a deep purple as darkness fell over the moors as I sat in a car with Peter Lawwell with the quite dead Neil Lennon in the boot. We were waiting for complete darkness before sneaking into an abandoned cemetery which Lawwell insisted would sort out the Lennon problem leaving no-one any the wiser.
‘Run this past me again, please?’ I asked, bewildered at the chain of events that brought us here and how quickly my life can a turn for the worse thanks to a newspaper column that although not written by me, ticked all the boxes and could just as well have been.

A piece about Celtic being investigated by UEFA for sectarian chanting? Bring up Rangers as often as possible although a similar piece about Rangers last season didn’t mention Celtic once – check. Equate the chanting with the word ‘political’ to make it sound less contentious and distance the charge from sectarianism – check. Mention ‘whataboutery’ – check. Frankly I’m amazed that I get away with the whataboutery argument – it’s a good way to silence any arguments whenever people question what I have to say about Celtic and their own problems whenever I’m getting all self-righteous about Rangers fans, I just say there’s no place here for whataboutery and you’ll notice, I never answer the question. Ever.

So when I first read my piece I didn’t fret too much as I thought the janitor had done well under the circumstances as the story was growing wings and going nationwide and if there’s one thing Lawwell can’t do, that is control the national press. Oh he might have all of the Scottish media by the balls, either through their own desire to help the cause as they’re as Celtic Minded as he is or they’re scared of him – one word from him and Lawwell would bring Kearney into it and next thing you know, your name is mud as someone somewhere accuses you of anti-Catholic bigotry, sometimes a Bishop but mostly just Kearney himself. They can’t do that with the nationals you see so I shouldn’t have been so sure of myself when I was summoned to Parkhead; I should’ve known Lawwell wanted someone’s hide and mine was as good as any.

So even although I think Neil Lennon is a remarkable person, I was glad the bullet missed me and hit him and I’ve got to be careful how I word this as no one wants the police turning up at their door, Paul McBride behind them in is wig and pink bow tie, pointing and shouting, ‘that’s him officers, he’s the man who mentioned killing Neil Lennon on the internet’.
Lawwell had stood behind me, shaking his head and not looking too worried. ‘We’ve been here before, Spiers so you can stop sobbing. Here, help me get him in a car; we’re going to the moors.’
And I thought at that, that we were going to roll him up in a rug and bury him but no, Lawwell had another plan.
‘It worked with Phil McGillivan you see,’ he told me as he drove us out of Glasgow. ‘When we found out we’d been tricked by Jorg Albertz into killing him outside his cave on the Ayrshire coast. At first we didn’t know what to do but Father Wormwood who you’ll recall helped us briefly last season, suggested a place where we could restore him; a magical place, an old cemetery where if you bury someone there in the light of the moon then they’ll be brought back to life. Well it worked for McGillivan although it seemed to have an adverse affect on his sanity – already clinging onto it by threads, his death and resurrection seemed to snap him entirely and his blogs haven’t been quite the same since. In saying that, he still somehow keeps the fans happy as they’re just as nutty as he is and that’s without being buried dead and then pulled out alive.’

And that’s how I fetched up in a cemetery with a shovel, burying Neil Lennon by the light of the moon while Lawwell leaned against a gravestone and puffed at a cigar, telling me how he’d recruited Neil Doncaster. ‘Sodomy is a wonderful thing, Spiers. Once you’ve done that to a person, things can never be quite the same again,’ and as he said that I dug deeper and more quickly and began to wonder if I’d ever get back to the west end from here.