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.