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.