Masque of Anarchy

As the figure got closer I could just about make out the curious shape of a man dressed in a tall hat and black cape. His face looked jolly but as light from a flickering torch shone on it briefly, I saw that he was wearing a mask, a Guy Fawkes mask! What fresh madness was this?

‘Rise like lions after slumber,’ said the man in the mask as he walked towards Regan and his gang.
‘In unvanquishable number’ he continued, his voice soft but stern, educated but with a hint of the potential for violence.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ demanded Doncaster.
‘Shake your chains to earth like dew
which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many, they are few’ carried on our strange fellow, his hands hidden beneath his cape as he approached.
‘Hit him with your truncheon’ ordered Regan and one of the police put his hand to his pocket and paused, waiting to see if the masked man got closer before revealing his intent.

‘What is freedom?’ The mask continued to speak.
‘Ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well-
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.’ And his head very deliberately turned towards the two policemen who stared at him before collapsing to the ground unconscious. Had I seen the masked man move? I could swear I had the idea of sudden violent movement towards the two uniforms but it was so fast I now couldn’t even be sure it had happened.
‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ exclaimed Regan and pushed Doncaster in front of him towards the masked man. There was a blur and Doncaster’s wig was off and spinning in the air as the SPL man’s chin hit the floor with a sickening crunch then Regan had produced a pistol from his jacket and was aiming it at the motionless man in the mask.
‘I swear, I’ll shoot. You come any fucking closer and I’ll shoot you like a…’
There was a flapping of the cape and the gun was in the left hand of the masked man, his right was holding Regan’s fist and squeezing; I could hear the knuckles rending and breaking as Regan made to scream but in the blink of an eye, the man emptied the bullets from the gun, closed the chamber and darted his left hand to Regan’s mouth and muffled his cries before the gun had even hit the floor. At least I think that’s what I saw – it was all so fast and the corridor so damned dark. Then Regan fainted from the pain and the man stood for a minute without moving, that awful smiling mask gazing silently at the four bodies on the ground.

‘You can come out now,’ he said, to me obviously. Not wanting to get on the wrong side of such a new and remarkable creature, the latest monstrosity to appear operating within Scottish football, I stood up and walked over. He knelt down and reached both hands behind the heads of Regan and Doncaster and produced something from their necks: two little rolled up scrolls which he opened, read and held out for me to see; they said simply, ‘destroy Rangers’.
‘Gollums,’ said the man. ‘Lumbering brutes with no real intelligence but useful should they be placed in the right environment with instructions buried in the back of their necks. No wonder John Reid went to so much trouble to install them here, they have a mission and they won’t stop until they’ve carried it out. Or someone stops them.’ He crumpled the scrolls and dropped them into the gloom then reached his gloved hand under his cape and produced two new scrolls.
‘Their new instructions,’ he said and reached behind Regan and Doncaster’s necks and tucked them away. He turned and that sinister mask regarded me, its eyes creased in soundless mirth, the unsettling smile unmoving, straight black hair falling down in a severe fringe from a hat that wouldn’t look out of place in a gunpowder plot.

‘What was on your scroll?’ I asked him. He continued looking straight at me in silence for what seemed like an eternity as my bowels dissolved in fear that he might attack me for being very much on the same side as the men at our feet. Then he simply said, ‘Fuck up your attempt to destroy Rangers’ and he swung his cape at me, I flinched and when I opened my eyes he was gone. I didn’t wait around and was soon out of that damned place and scuttling down through Kings Park looking for a taxi.

Later I wondered about what had just happened, about the new instructions my masked man had given Regan and Doncaster – they were as simple and straight to the point as their original mission to destroy Rangers but to fuck it up, how would they do this having got so far without anyone in the Scottish media saying a word about what was by now, pretty bloody obvious even to an idiot like me – even to the Traynor! That beast had been the only one who was spot on about the whole affair but since he is such a sociopath, everyone had ignored him. How to fuck up destroying Rangers… How on earth would they manage this? I soon found out: one day later the SPL revealed that SPL secretary Ian Blair had ‘investigated’ the Celtic EBT case and decided there was no case to answer.

Out of a Misty Dream

Having heard Lawwell exploding at Regan I understood that if I didn’t make myself scarce then I’d be in for a horse whipping so I sprinted into the darkness of the Hampden corridors, lost my way in the stygian black and promptly fell down a flight of stairs. Well they hadn’t been there before when George Peat ruled the SFA with well meaning yet blundering common sense; this was the first time I encountered the new underground torture rooms soon to become known as the Skin Flats. As I came to in a heap at the bottom of the steps, I heard commotion behind me so quickly found the darkest corner around and kept out of sight or at least I hoped. Into view came the lumbering monstrosities that had once been Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster, behind them some high ranking police judging from the braid on their helmets. I kept quiet and listened.

‘He wants arrests: the more high profile the better but they must be connected to Rangers,’ this was Regan to the police. ‘He has reassured us that the Lord Advocate has prepared the way for your move and there will be no interference from above. Then once our plans enter their final stage you are to follow our lead. Broadfoot will choose the best candidate for the death threats depending on how things are going at the time, all you have to do is treat them seriously.’
The police nodded and took notes with their little pencils.
‘With the greatest of respect to our master,’ began the taller of the two police. ‘There must at least be a suggestion of death threats, nobody wants an embarrassing repeat of the Alex Thomson debacle when we investigated threats by a Rangers-friendly journalist only to discover it was one of our own at the madam.’
‘Broadfoot will make sure the threats are tangible,’ hissed Doncaster. ‘Once the result of the SPL panel’s investigation into Rangers and their dual contracts…’
‘No, not dual contracts’ interrupted Regan.
‘Well, side letters…’ continued Doncaster.
‘Erm, I think we’ve been warned off the dangers of calling it that too.’
‘Well what the fuck are we calling it now if it’s not side letters?’
‘Who cares?’ snorted Regan. ‘It’s not as if anyone from the Scottish press is going to bother what we charge them with, they’re as keen to see Rangers destroyed as we are. Call them Dirty Cheating Orange Bastard Internal Side Memo Email Letters with Dual Fucking Pictures of the Pope for all I care, just make sure you nail them and the moment anyone from Ibrox makes a peep in protest, our friends in uniform here will squash them.’
‘Hold on, what’s that noise?’ said Doncaster, motioning for everyone to be quiet and listen. I almost vomited in my mouth with fear as I thought I’d been rumbled but it wasn’t me they’d heard, there was a dark figure of a man walking towards them. From further inside the Skin Flats – he’d been here all along and had no doubt heard the SPL and SFA scheming to ruin Rangers with the help of the Establishment.

Vitae Summa Brevis

 

Last night I dreamt I went to Hampden Park again.  It must have been a dream because in the old days when I visited, the place was full of cheer; unintentional comedy granted but it was a light hearted place nonetheless.  I would walk along bright corridors and stumble across George Peat with a custard pie on his face or Gordon Smith covered in whitewash or stuck to a tarred chair by the seat of his pants.  Then I could turn corners and encounter old George creeping around in his slippers with an ear trumpet in one hand and his blunderbuss in the other as he searched for whoever it was who was singing songs from the rafters and driving him up the wall.  I could open office doors and disturb young Gordon sneaking about in filing cabinets trying to find out what on earth he was doing there and while all this was going on, Darryl Broadfoot sat in a corner and plotted, his mobile phone hot from the constant calls from an office deep in the bowels of Parkhead.

Aye, they were great days, those days of wine and roses but as the poet said, they are not long.  Now Hampden Park echoes to screams from faraway dungeons buried deep in the foundations.  The corridors lie in darkness, occasional light from low burning torches that flicker and throw terrible shadows across walls thick with soot and cobwebs.  To reach the office of Peter Lawwell I had to step carefully through dank puddles of something sticky and red and as I reached his door it was caked in gore, hardened by time but unmistakably human.  Yes, the office of Peter Lawwell: he'd more or less annexed the SFA two seasons ago when Celtic forced the hand of Scottish referees and they went on strike and every journalist in the land was too scared to mention exactly whose fault and whose fault only it was.  The SFA was just as bad with the only man capable of speaking up being taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot in the head for forwarding a satirical picture of the Pope.  Annexation complete he moved in at the beginning of last season and had the builders dig under the stadium to provide him living quarters for his gollums, Regan and Doncaster , some gaol cells and a state of the art torture chamber.  By the time Celtic had won the league without anyone noticing, the SFA was being run for and by Celtic and again, the media were either too compliant or petrified to speak up about it.  Personally, I mentioned it casually at a dinner party and fetched up on Devil's Island for my troubles so will be more careful what I say from now on and that's exactly how Lawwell's fear machine works - threats, intimidation and promises of exposing you as a bigot, the worst thing a man could be accused of in modern Scotland.

It wasn't a dream though, my visit to Hampden; it was only too real.  I'd chosen a bad night to visit as Scotland had just drawn a World Cup qualifier match against a bunch of olive pickers from Macedonia and Stewart Regan had surfaced from the dark to ask Lawwell how he was going to face the press about this latest disaster.  I was outside Lawwell's office eavesdropping when I heard him explode, 'What the fuck should I care about Bonnie fucking Scotland?  That's your problem you fucking moron, now get back in your hole and bring me a better draft response to Charles Green's assault than that pish you gave me last night or I'll have your balls on a plate.  Hear me?  I want you to get this fuck where he breathes!  I want you to find this nancy-boy Charles Green, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!'

'Yes master' mumbled Regan and sloped off into the darkness.

Idea of a Presence

My own homecoming was not as celebrated as that of Souness; where he was welcomed with open arms by Donald Findlay and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos at a party in Findlay’s residence in Baker Street, I was left to step over a pile of putrescent mulch and liquids inside an old sleeping bag that is all that’s left of Brian McNally who was sleeping rough on my doorstep - it seems that without me to feed him every day, he’d just wasted away. I asked a neighbour why they hadn’t reported the stench of decomposition and the cheeky blighter just winced and said he didn’t think it unusual since he lives beside me. Once I’d negotiated McNally I’d resigned myself to having no one to celebrate my return from Devil’s Island and was planning to get naked alone with my Martin O’Neil scrapbook but who was waiting for me in my lounge but Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and the Osmonds. I told them all my tales of incarceration, blaming the Masons as usual and they lapped it up but then I took my medication and when I returned from the kitchen they’d all gone.
I decided to take a stroll down memory lane, Ashton Lane to be precise and on my way there I bumped into Alison O’Connell who whispered a disgusting suggestion in my ear and tweaked my balls while she was at it. I helped her on her way with my boot and she ran off shrieking, stopping outside Jintys to throw a brick at me.
Once safely upstairs at the Chip I wandered around looking for a friendly face but recognised no one. Thinking perhaps I’d find the Young Bhoys of the BBC in the loo with their noses stuck to the cistern I strolled out that way and there on the stairs was Tom Devine, galloping some trollop, her petticoats pulled over her head as that vile old Satyr plunged and gasped.
‘Oh hullo Spiers, I’ll be with you in a moment, just teaching Jeanette Findlay here a thing or two about manners – you’ll think twice about stealing my gin now, won’t you Findlay?’ and he gave her a hard spank on an arse so hairy that I puzzled over whether it might not be Findlay after all. Then again...

‘They’re in the Drake, Spiers’ shouted Devine. ‘This place is dead now; the Drake’s where you’ll find your pals. Tell the boy Lennon I’ll be having a pint of port when I arrive, there’s a good chap’ and he burped and followed through, vomiting all over Jeanette Findlay’s back.
It was a solitary walk to the new favourite haunt of the Celtic Minded and on the way there I considered how lucky I’d been to have been recalled to Scotland by Peter Lawwell. It was a new Lawwell I returned to, no longer was he so brazen as to march around in Wehrmacht dress uniforms, thrashing with a horse whip anyone who crossed him. No, he now operated in the shadows; the shadows of Hampden to be precise. It was to the grand old lady of Scottish football that I was summoned the moment my plane touched down and in the taxi over there I was considering how little things had changed in my absence, until I got to Hampden and saw the transformation of Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster.

Fantastic Stories from the Mind of Graham Spiers: Papillon

I’d been months on Devil’s Island in French Guiana after Lawwell’s Great Purge towards the end of last season. Anyone remotely suspected of not being completely on-message was rounded up and fetched up somewhere around here in one of many penal colonies. I’d obviously been mistaken for someone else when the Stasi grabbed me one night as I was toodling down Byres Road after an evening of debauchery with the Pacific Quay CSC in the Chip where we celebrated our diversity by singing about IRA bombing campaigns. They zipped and hooded me and I saw nothing but the blackness of the hood until days later when I was bundled off a boat in the arid heat of late morning and bundled into a camp where I was eyed up most salaciously by some hairy Frenchmen. It wasn’t all that bad then and within two weeks my arse was on first name terms with most of them.

I was kept there from April till now and admittedly I did fret at first about my new column at the Herald being written by an African immigrant cleaning lady but it seems that no one has noticed and my new job is safe for the time being in spite of the exodus of small business advertisers since my arrival.

By the middle of the summer everything changed with a new arrival. Word had spread amongst my lusty friends and I heard tales of a man who had escaped from every other penal colony and was now being brought here to the inescapable Devil’s Island; the Frogs called him Papillon which is French for moustache – no, don’t argue, I’m Graham Spiers, I’m always right. I always got a laugh in the dining hall when I pointed this out and it’d always end with me being clapped on the back as the filthy old felons pinched my cheeks and told me I stank worse than them and they’d not showered for eight years.

So when Papillon arrived there was a great crowd gathered at the gates watching as the tiny boat that brought him disappeared into the horizon and the clank of chains got closer as the guards dragged our new guest up from the jetty. A great murmur went up as they got closer so I pushed my way to the front and goggled at Papillon – it was Graeme Souness!
‘I’ll be seeing you later, loser’ he said as he winked at me on his way past. And I did. For a month he kept his own counsel, staying out of trouble and allowing me to accompany him on his trips to the cliffs, unguarded since they were so deadly and unforgiving, where he’d gaze for hours at the sea. I used to lay a short way from him, down wind on his orders and wonder what he was thinking. Later he’d tell me of how he’d been brought to the region alone, Donald Findlay having been secreted from Lawwell’s dungeons by Mr Mojo Risin’ shortly after the end of the season.
‘We’d never have got him out if Lawwell hadn’t been distracted by all the talk of a tainted title and been spending all his time on the phone to newspaper editors throughout Scotland, warning them of dire consequences should the phrase be used again. While his eye was off the ball Mo Johnston got in and saved Donald. They didn’t have enough time for me’ he said quietly, still studying the waves.
‘I was in three camps before this but broke out of them all. See, Spiers, I have to escape, I have to get back to Scotland because the very existence of Rangers is at stake and I am needed there.’
Of course he didn’t know about Charles Green at this point because we’d been gone since May but I felt that even if he did then he’d still be itching to get home, who wouldn’t? My bawdy Crapauds (French for darlings and I should know, I’m Graham Spiers) were all very well and good but I longed for the light summer evenings at the Drake watching Neil Lennon become progressively pished until he passed out on a girl’s tits or puked under the table or something equally awful. Curiously I often see newspapermen in there observing these antics but does it ever make the rags? Does a bear shit in the woods? Does Lawwell carry a whip?

Eventually, Souness was so well behaved that the guards figured his reputation was mere camp gossip and so they began to give him more freedom to roam the island – there was no way off after all or so they thought. Then one day I found him by his cliff with a huge bag of tied reeds full of coconuts. ‘I’m off Spiers, you coming?’
‘Eh?’ was all I cold manage in response as he threw the bag over the edge and followed it into the sea. I ran to see where he’d gone and could see his sack of coconuts floating in the waves but no sign of Souness. He’s gone, I thought but eventually he broke the surface and moustache spluttering, climbed onto his sack and began to float off into the distance. You see, all that time he’d been studying the tide and biding his time. He knew when to get into the sea to be taken away from the island by the pull of the sea itself. As I marvelled at his ingenuity, I heard him in the distance shouting as he lay on his back on his makeshift craft and although he didn’t know it at the time, his cries echoed those of tens of thousands of Rangers fans at home as their club by this time had been pulled back from the brink of extinction. Gazing at the sky, Souness was shouting ‘I’m still here you bastards!’