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.