The Unravelling of Alex Thomson

A curious thing happened yesterday.  Well, even more curious than Angela Haggerty crawling out of Tom Devine's television and rogering him senseless: I bumped into Alex Thomson on Byres Road.  He was standing on the pavement outside Findlays, dressed in full desert combat fatigues and a blue helmet that had 'Alex Thomson: Genius' printed across the back lest anyone in the great combat zone that is the trendy west end of Glasgow mistake him for the Taliban.  He was gazing at a pothole at the side of the road, it was no more than the size of a man's fist.  'What's up Alex?' I asked breezily.

'This pothole is what's up, Spiers.  It's the biggest pothole of its kind in the history of potholes.'

I stood beside him and looked at it.

'Looks like just a normal sized pothole to me old chum, fancy a pint?'  He nodded and we loafed into Findlays for a couple of pints of ale.

'There you are ducky,' smiled the barmaid, handing over two pints of foaming ale but Thomson looked perturbed.

'What's up now?' I asked.

'This pint, it's the biggest pint of ale of its kind in the history of pints of ale' he exclaimed, eyes wide open, a manic look on his big wide face.

'Look old fellow,' I consoled.  'That's just a nonsense, that pint is no more and no less than any other pint in here or any pint in the history of people having pints.  It's very name: pint, indicates it cannot possibly be more or less than the one in my hand.'

He frowned.

Later we took a stroll up to Ashton Lane and took a table sitting outside the Chip.  'I'll get them in,' I said and left him sitting on his own, staring at the table.  When I came back out he was looking jumpy again.  'Oh alright, what's up now?  Is the table the biggest table in the history of tables outside pubs?  Is that ashtray the biggest ashtray in the history of ashtrays?  The cobbles the biggest cobbles of their kind in the history of cobbles?'

'No!'  He cried.  'These feet of mine - they're the biggest feet in the history of feet, I'm telling you Spiers!  I have to get to a hospital!'

'That last part is the most sane thing you've said all day.  Come on, I'll take you to the Western.'

'To have my big feet cut off?'

'No, to have your head examined, you're obviously barking.'

As we left Ashton Lane, Neil Lennon fell out the door of Jintys and rolled around the ground, wrestling with some student he'd seen wearing a red white and blue jumper.

'Hey,' spoke up Thomson.  'That man is the biggest ned in the history of Scottish football management.

'You got that right,' I said as I hailed a taxi and took him away to be sectioned.

Bravo You Zero

Souness had given me the old VHS tape, telling me I really had to watch it, that I’d be astonished at what I see.  Well, all I saw was a jumble of odd images: ladders, a cliff, a close up of Neil Lennon’s teeth and then a strange glowing ring which fair took me back to my nights in Bennets with Gordon Matheson.  When the tape finished my phone rang and a grasping voice on the other end said, ‘Seven days’.  At first I thought it was Lawwell as he’s well known for spending all day on the blower to journalists and editors, making all kinds of threats but it couldn’t have been him because the line went dead and Peter usually spends a little time detailing exactly what he’s going to do to you if you don’t toe the Celtic line when it comes to reporting any outrages perpetrated by Celtic players, the Celtic support or even Lawwell himself – hasn’t Allan Rennie’s Daily Record not pulled off a masterstroke this week alone by making it seem that the Rangers tribute to the Armed Forces is somehow seen as anathema while the Celtic supports’ disgracing of simple acts of remembrance goes unreported three years in a row?

So for seven days I began to experience curious visions and every day the phone would ring and the same voice would count down the week with me wondering what on earth would happen at the end of it.  I put it to the back of my mind though and got on with weighing in behind the Record and calling the Rangers Remembrance Day match, ‘a circus’, ‘a jamboree’ and ‘daft stuff’, all on Twitter of course because I don’t really have a full time job at the moment, relying mainly on bit parts in the Herald and BBC Scotland because, well because I’m just as big a Rangers hater as anyone in those two once great institutions laid low by Celtic supporters gaining influential positions and employing and promoting only their own.  It’s like Common Purpose in green and white hoops if you get my drift?

When the final day of my countdown came I was fortuitous to be dining with Tom Devine at his west end townhouse.  When I say dining, I was dining and he was drinking Port from a bucket and tossing the occasional scrap from his plate into the corner where Elaine C Smith was chained to the wall.  I was there to discuss the SPL Independent Inquiry into the Rangers side letters and Tom was looking smug.  ‘They can’t possibly find Rangers guilty,’ I said, enjoying the succulent chicken.  ‘Not after they won the Big Tax Case – not even Doncaster and Regan are that mad.’

‘You credit Doncaster and Regan with too much free will,’ burped old Tom, spitting on the floor.  ‘They’re a pair of golems doing their master’s wishes, that’s all.  No matter how outrageous the decision, how flimsy the evidence, how completely and utterly against the notions of fairness and decency, that panel is going to find Rangers guilty and demand titles in recompense.’

‘But that’ll mean war with Rangers,’ I squeaked.

'You think we’re not at war with them already?’ he sneered and then paused and stared over my shoulder to the far corner of the room.  I turned and gasped in horror: the television had turned itself on and in the screen was the horrible vision of a grotesque woman, hair covering her face, arm reaching out towards us and that’s when I noticed the arm was sticking out of the screen.

She climbed out of the television, dripping wet, hair matting the face disguising her features but I knew that underneath it was a face so awful that it would haunt my dreams forever.  She crawled along the floor, arms and hands at impossible angles, her movement stunted almost crablike.

‘Oh gawd, it’s coming for me, it’s coming for me Devine – do something, save me!’ I cried and Devine to his credit got up from the table and strode towards the malevolent thing that was straining to get close to me and he grabbed its nighty and howked it up revealing its nakedness.  ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed.  ‘A bush like an angry Russian, it can mean only one thing,’ and he pulled the thing’s hair back and revealed...  Angela Haggerty!

Then he took her upstairs and she gave him the ride of his life, the bed hammering the walls so hard that the chandelier nearly came down on me from the ceiling so I got up and made myself scarce, pausing only briefly to reassure Elaine C Smith who was whimpering in the corner.

The Evening

In the years since I began writing this journal, since I opened this portal into a strange world of Dickensian grotesques, Victorian curiosities and post-modern adventurers, I've spent more or less all of them in abject terror or despair, more often than not running for my life or waiting in line for some horrible fate to befall me.  There are two constants though: I never get my own way and Souness.  I have grown to resent his perpetual saving of my hide and I bloody hate the way he always winks at me and calls me loser.  Then he pulls my fat out of the fire again and I'm grateful all of a sudden.  Just like I was that night on the Fenwick moors after Donald Findlay's coach was ambushed by the Green Brigade.

Findlay had taken to accompanying me home from my little stints at my spiritual home, BBC Scotland and would quiz me on what everyone was saying about Rangers, settling back in the comfort of his coach and puffing on his pipe as I stammered and tried to reassure him that no one at Pacific Quay had an anti-Rangers agenda and that it was all just paranoia on his part.  I could see from his eyes and his tugging at his whiskers that he didn't believe me and nor should he have, they fucking hate Rangers at the BBC.

One particular late afternoon I was prattling on more than usual, gulping and stuttering whenever Findlay's keen legal mind saw through another of my lies so I pulled a blanket over me and sat in the gloom looking out the windows of the Hansom cab at the setting sun.  The sky above the moors was shining like lemon and honey with blushes of rose blossom and I was beginning to feel the calming effect of the beauty of a late winter evening when a great cry went up from the side of the road and some spotty youths descended upon our coach, trying to clamber on top and pull their way into our compartment.  The driver hullooed at the horses and they kicked up dirt as they went at the gallop, the sudden change of pace dislodging some of our attackers but there were still four or five clinging on and hurling oaths at Findlay, telling him what violence they were planning to dish out in his direction.  Findlay merely chuckled, one forefinger idly tapping the phial of bubbling orange liquid that I knew from past experience could transform him from mild mannered gentleman into a great beast capable of the most awful acts against a man.  Then he did something that caught the Green Brigade and me by surprise, he opened the door, said 'Righty-ho, Spiers, I'll be seeing you around,' and then kicked me out.

I tumbled across the edge of the road and crashed through a hedge before coming to in a mound of snow covered grass but was up and haring across the moors immediately lest the Green Brigade see me and decide to chase me.  I shouldn't have worried about them though, they were still after Findlay and the one time I glanced back I could see them still pursuing his coach, the occasional pop of a pistol echoing across the moors indicating that Findlay was content to leave his phial unopened and resort to the muskets instead.  I was beginning to slow down and the thought of how to get home from here now had entered my head when a disgusting harpy screamed and leaped on me from the shadows.  She pinned me to the ground and raised her arm to strike me with something when I realised I shouldn't have been so careless in forgetting that I was now in Suzie McGuire territory and that thing in her hand was her black fighting dildo.

It was at this point that a great black shape swooped out of the sky and grabbed her off me, rising on the wind's cold vectors and dropping her unceremoniously behind a small hill where she disappeared from sight but remained cursing which I'm sure they could hear from Waterfoot.  The black shape turned full circle against the last of the evening sunlight and came bearing down on me and lifted me effortlessly into the gloaming, soaring to safety and I knew before I turned to look at my rescuer that it'd be Souness, sporting goggles, his aviator moustache blowing in the breeze, para-gliding to my rescue.

'Alright, loser?'  he asked and winked at me.  'You're coming with me, I have something for you.'

And that's how I ended up sitting with Tom Devine at my flat in the west end, watching in horror as some fiend from hell climbed out of my television and crawled along the floor towards us...  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lawwell's Lepanto

Conditions were calm and the sea flat which made the explosions all the more violent as they erupted around us in a fury of flame, spray and burning hot shrapnel.  And to think it all seemed the most remarkable coincidence that two great sea battles should clash and combine into one here in the Kyles of Bute but it was no coincidence; there is no such thing when you're dealing with the most Machiavellian man since old Niccolo himself, Peter Lawwell.

Lawwell was at the head of the Port Glasgow Fenian Navy, laying into the remnants of what was once a proud fleet of Rangers with Richard Gough at the helm of the Nautilus barking orders at the Rangers 90s Squad Navy as they struggled to prevent old HMS Ibrox taking a battering.  Then from the south hove into view another struggle as two more fleets popped away against each other and we were joined by the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland as it continued its attack on HMS Secularism.

I of course, was on board the LS Bismarck, Lawwell's of course - well what do you expect from a man whose country house is called Schonhausen - and I stood with Lawwell, both of us looking through binoculars at the action when we noticed a change in the sounds around us.  The heavy ordnance from a navy ship's guns make a deep mournful sound as they approach or pass above you so the high pitched buzzing noise attracted our attention immediately and as we looked up we saw a plane passing by.  I peered through my glasses and exclaimed, 'It's Peter Kearney, by Jove and he's heading straight for the Secularism - pull up, Kearney, pull up man!' but of course he didn't hear me and to our astonishment his plane rammed the great ship just above the water line.

'She's still sitting,' I cried.  'Kearney's suicidal attack was absolutely bloody pointless!'

'Just wait,' said Lawwell, his face impassive as ever as he held his own glasses up to those half shut eyes.  Then I saw what he meant as a torpedo boat went screaming past us, at its wheel, Tom Devine who waved a bottle of port at us as he passed, sloshing its contents all over the brig of his own personal yacht, the Voice of Reason.  Devine went straight for the smoking part of the Secularism and launched a couple of torpedoes at it before pulling away as they detonated slap bang where Kearney's previous attack had already caused some damage - it was the most amazing twin pronged attack and no doubt the papers the next day would be full of Devine's Voice of Reason while at the same time recording the damage to the Secularism.

Lawwell's sailors cheered and threw their hats in the air when Devine returned and the Secularism limped off, then we turned our sights to the attack on the HMS Ibrox as Gough tried in vain to slap away the constant nips and bites from the combined forces of the Scottish Press but it was all seeming too much for him until something extraordinary happened and the Traynor appeared from nowhere and climbed into the big guns and let off a barrage so violent and loud that the Scottish Press turned about and headed back to port where they gathered on Twitter and mocked and laughed at Traynor from a safe distance, claiming they had never been scared of him in the first place.

I was just edging out of horsewhipping range of Lawwell after this new turn of events when the most amazing thing yet happened: every boat stopped firing and turned and went home as if some giant referee had just blown his whistle for full time and sailors who'd only minutes before had been screaming hatred at each other docked and repaired to pubs where they mingled and drank and laughed about the day's events.  Personally I fetched up in Rothesay and while lurking at the end of the bar in the Golfers, I overheard some of these sailors talking and it went something like this.

'Aye well, a draw suits everybody I suppose but wait till we get a haud ae youse the next time.'

'You couldnae get a haud ae yer ain dick wi' the big light oan.'

'Did you see big Tam loading that six pounder and having his hat knocked off by wan ae your bams? 

I've never seen anything like it, it was hilarious!'

'That wis wee Shuggy fae ma street did that!  Wait till I tell him it wis his ain cousin he nearly took the heed aff!'

And so it went on, previously mortal enemies drinking together in the pub and discussing their ninety minutes of madness in the afternoon when they were allowed to vent their tribal allegiances.  I suppose no one got hurt, the whole battle was one of thunder and bluster and although perhaps a few idiots around the country had a little too much to drink later and got into the odd fight, that happens every weekend anyway and couldn't possibly be blamed solely on the Battle of the Kyles.  Then one of my bar room orators said something that stuck with me.

'Mind you,' he said.  'We'd better hope the papers don't make a big thing about it as the last thing we need is for it to be all over the front pages and for Alex Salmond to think he should be seen to be doing something about it and before ye know it, it'll be illegal to have a full scale naval battle off the west coast of Scotland.'

Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale

Although I'm an Elton man, there's a song by Paul Weller that makes me giggle, including as it does, the line, 'fuck those fuckers in their castles, they're all bastards too.'  You can imagine him venting when he wrote that.  Now imagine football fans singing it but change one word, 'castles' to 'chapels' and watch Strathclyde Police wade in and start arresting people for singing a song.  Changing one word in a song is the difference between going home after a game of football or spending the weekend in jail: a ridiculous state of affairs, don't you agree?  I certainly do but it wouldn't pay for me to voice this opinion in public as to do so is to guarantee a one way ticket to one of Lawwell's underground torture chambers; he has three now: Parkhead of course, Hampden since he annexed the SFA two years ago and now a new one under the Daily Record where he keeps Alan Rennie as a pet.

I was reminded of these underground chambers the night Donald Findlay led me to an enchanted tower where I counted 380 steps on the way up but on noticing he was abandoning me and running downstairs, I eventually got to around three thousand before giving up and wondering what fresh madness this was now.  I sat there sobbing for an age until the smell of cigarette smoke told me I wasn't alone and who had been standing there in the dark all that time as I cried like a girl?  Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter of course; if ever there's supernatural goings on then you can depend on the Hammer making an appearance and blowing smoke in your face.  Which he did before opening a door by my side - which I swear hadn't been there before - and leading me out and taking me home.  'You owe me now, Spiers' he said as we stepped over Brian McNally who was still living under the stoop outside my flat, and then he was gone and I was left alone listening to Paul Weller and wondering how we got to the point where Celtic fans preferred to stay at home monitoring the songs sung by Rangers fans than attend their own games.

Once I'd got over my spooky experience in the tower I sat down and penned a column for the print edition of the Herald which appeared on Saturday but nobody noticed.

Then I attended the weekly press conference at Celtic Park where Lawwell has us stand in a line with our trousers at our ankles while he thrashes us with his horsewhip just to remind us who's in charge of Scottish football.  It was while this was going on that I was surprised to notice David Longmuir standing forlornly in a corner watching, grimacing with every lash, blinking as the occasional spray of blood splashed onto his jacket.

'There you go Longmuir,' panted Lawwell, as we pulled our trousers back up.  'This is how I roll, so off you pop and remember what I told you, you can either live in a world of pain or join us and reap the rewards of being a member of the Cabal' and as he said it, Longmuir bowed his head, a beaten man, and walked slowly out of the room, avoiding the piss on the floor where Hugh MacDonald had wet himself.
'The rest of you,' shouted Lawwell at us.  'Can go take a flying fuck to yourselves and remember, I have eyes everywhere so no fannying around on this subject, okay?'

And so we shuffled out and on the way out of Parkhead who should come puffing up the corridor having been late for the whole thing but Keith Jackson.
'What did I miss?' he asked.
'Oh nothing,' I replied.  'Although I wouldn't go in there if I were you, he's naked again and is holding his horsewhip.'
'Great, thanks Spiers,' he said.  'I owe you one.'

Maxwell's Demon

Our coach was making heavy weather of crossing the Eaglesham moors from the borders of Ayrshire to Eaglesham village itself. Donald Findlay had picked me up in his favourite mode of transport: a hansom cab and so we had trundled through woods along ancient paths until the trees and all signs of life had disappeared and we were on the moors just in time for the fog to come rolling over us. The cab’s lanterns shone brightly in front of us and we could see the fog coming at us in waves; here along the ground and there at head height, like nimbus drawn towards the ground for respite from being tossed around in the wind. Either side of us the grass stretched for only a few dozen yards until it disappeared in the white haze and clumps of grass shone in the lamp light looking for the world like so many dead sheep – you’d almost think James Delahunt had been here.
At last we descended from the heights and stopped at a local tavern, the Swan where we took a table by the fire and Findlay ordered up some bread and cheese with a couple of ales and we both sat in silence, letting the cold leave our bones. Presently there appeared a tall man in a stove pipe hat and black cloak, he sported a set of grey whiskers that had Findlay bristling with envy and then to our surprise, he pulled up a seat beside us.
‘Have you ever heard the story of Maxwell’s Demon?’ he asked, his head bowed so that the brim of his topper cast his eyes into shadow and all we could make of his face was a long nose which poked out between the hat and the whiskers.
‘Let me put it this way, if your Government was plotting the destruction of a great sporting institution for political gain, would you really want to know?’

Later, as we left, puzzled by the tale we’d just heard from a complete stranger, I asked Findlay about it as he grunted and heaved himself into the hansom. ‘All I know, he puffed. ‘Is that he never stood his round’ and no more was said of it until we’d left the village and were once again trundling through countryside, enveloped in fog. After a while, Findlay leaned in towards me and in almost a whisper, started speaking.
‘Not so long ago, society here was reaching an equilibrium where sectarianism and tribal violence were on the decrease and then Lawwell came along. Oh he wasn’t alone; he had others in similar and even greater positions of power than his own, all willing to stir up the country and happily watch the old hatreds and resentments come bubbling once again to the surface but Lawwell, although a mere CEO of a football club, had a reach greater than any Members of Parliament, be it Westminster or the Bubbly Jocks one at the bottom of the High Street. You see, Lawwell had tens of thousands of psychotic, paranoid and aye, bigoted followers all willing and ready to do anything to further the causes of their club and by extension, their religion, their tribe. While rational people got on with their lives, other less rational people were plotting together to destroy the Rangers Football Club; some to rid the country of the last bastion of immediately recognisable Unionism and others to destroy a club that represented certain aspects of Scottish society anathema to them. Am I making myself clear, Spiers?’
‘As clear as that other fellow from the pub,’ I ventured and Findlay sighed and sat back in the darkness of the cab, briefly illuminated by a match as he lit his pipe and sat in a fug of smoke for a while. He emerged again and slapped my knee with his glove.
‘I want to show you something, youngster. I think you’ll appreciate it’ and he tapped the roof with his cane and the driver pulled the horses into the side of the road and we got out.

Findlay led me though a gate and into a field where we walked through the fog until suddenly it parted to reveal a huge tower. I’d never noticed this before and said so.
‘It’s not immediately seen from the road, boy’ muttered Findlay. ‘But it’s up there you need to go to find your answer.’
‘Answer to what?’
‘To just how low the Scottish Establishment would plunge to support certain agendas. Go on, climb the stairs and count ‘em. Count ‘em all then count ‘em again on the way back down. That’s how low they’ll go.’

He was talking in riddles now but he promised to wait for me so I creaked open the door and climbed the steps of the tower; I counted 380 by the time I got to the top and pretty heavy going it was too. I was just catching my breath on the belfry when I noticed the fog had gone and I could see Findlay getting into the cab and the driver whipping up the horses and off they went, rattling down the road, leaving me behind. I ran for the stairs and carefully but quickly, descended, taking care to count the stairs on the way down. I descended and counted and after an hour I stopped and wondered what the hell had Findlay done to me, I was still nowhere near the bottom; so I took off again, step after step, counting, ‘1211, 1212, 1213…’

The Curse of the Moon Shadow

'What do you mean, there's been dissent in the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos,' exclaimed Donald Findlay. 'I want to know who exactly and I want to know why they feel they can walk away from such an important role in Souness’s elite squad.’
‘Well that’s the thing you see,’ replied Watson. ‘There’s only one and that’s Souness himself.’
I was with Findlay when the news came in and watched bemused as he tugged at his whiskers and almost turned purple with apoplexy.
‘That’s the thing about we Rangers,’ he said, throwing his pipe in the fire in his rage. ‘We’re never united, never! Too much of a broad church, don’t ye know?’
I did. Although the way I tell it, there’s nothing broad about it and they’re all mad Protestant bastards; all the better to deflect from the strange Catholic fundamentalism going on over at Celtic Park these last few years during the reign of Lawwell. Talking of whom, I was over there with him earlier, watching in admiration as he tore strips off the editor of the Daily Record.

‘What we need,’ he hissed as he held his horse whip under Alan Rennie’s chin, such as it was. ‘Is something to take the heat off our fans’ behaviour at Dens Park: are there any gullible Catholics playing for that other lot just now?’
‘There’s Sandaza,’ whimpered Rennie.
‘There you are then, simply report that he’s been ordered by Rangers not to cross himself on the pitch and resulting shit storm will knock our riot off the front pages. Christ, do I have to do all your thinking for you? You’re no BBC Scotland that’s for sure – they’ve been sitting on this story for days and will continue to do so in perpetuity unless I say otherwise. Honestly, they make me proud those boys; it’s almost an editorial policy to blow me twice a week over at Pacific Quay, a lesson you could learn well.’ He eyed Rennnie most salaciously and then continued, ‘Although it gives me no pleasure as I like the lassies as much as the next man – as long as the next man ain’t Spiers, eh Spiers?’ and he snorted at this. ‘But you need to know where you stand when it comes to dealing with Celtic so get your lips round it and suck and remember Chris McLaughlin’s advice: I like little nibbles every couple of minutes, just to prove you care.’

It was no surprise to discover later that Professor Tom Devine had been at Dens Park; the level of public drunkenness and urination, well these were his modus operandi, usually in west end pubs but save for the odd slashing and attacking women – he always left that to Lawwell’s people because Devine prefers to work below radar, scheming, plotting and vomiting on interviewers live on BBC Scotland Election programmes – it had his fingerprints all over it which made a change from them being all over Angela Haggerty or Janette Findlay or any number of bitter old Celtic Minded trollops for that matter.

Apparently Devine had called O’Hara at Pacific Quay and demanded that he ignore the Celtic fans’ antics in Dundee but O’Hara hooted at him and asked if he wasn’t aware of the BBC Scotland editorial policy on Celtic, otherwise known as the O’Hara Policy and then hung up on him. This slight sent Devine into a rage and it took three pints of port and a fumble with Jim Spence’s missus at the back of a returning Celtic Supporters’ bus to calm him down.