Erebus and Terror

Although Tom Devine had reinforced the hulls and keels of his two yachts, the Saint Bernard and the Voice of Reason, faced with the kind of pack ice that we encountered on our ill-fated journey to King William Island, it was only a matter of time before our vessels collapsed from the pressure of a million tons of ice bearing down on them.  Stuart Regan and Neil Doncaster almost mutinied when Devine said that we should take to the ice but faced with being left alone on a splintering ship with Alex Thomson, they decided to follow us after all.  We made camp in the shadow of some pressure ridges and prayed that Lawwell would send out a rescue party, after all we did have Gerry McCulloch and Hugh Keevins with us and with them missing for too long, Radio Clyde Super Score Board might not reach the same levels of Rangers-bashing that it would with Gerry at the helm and Hugh squeaking in agreement with every Celtic-Minded lunatic who phoned up to talk about Rangers.

We were here in search of the Rangers side letters we'd been told by Lawwell we'd find in a cairn on the interior of King William Island, Lawwell having bugged Donald Findlay's office and being in possession of a recording of him mentioning this.  I pointed out that I could hear giggling when Lawwell played back the tape for us to hear but so desperate is he these days for any old rumours to be true, he believes everything no matter how ridiculous.  So we set off with Devine in what was obviously a Findlay ploy to get us out of the way for a few months but for what reason?  No one knew, especially Regan and Doncaster who said they were just happy to get out of Scotland for a while now that HMRC had the scent of Rangers again and as usual, was leaking like a sieve, and Lord Nimmo Smith was trying to figure out a way to appear independent while still punishing Rangers lest he fetch up in Lawwell's torture pits again.

Then a storm arrived and we were stuck in our tents for a week with the temperature outside a deadly minus fifty which could frost bite your nose off if you left it out more than a few minutes.  We found this out the hard way when Gerry McCulloch went outside for a piss and took so long about it that his cock fell off.  Later when we patched him up, Alex Thomson volunteered to go out into the storm and look for the penis.  'I'm going out to look for Gerry McCulloch's penis,' he said.  'I may be some time' and he stepped outside into the whirling maelstrom of snow and wind only to reappear five seconds later saying 'Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I'm not paid enough to get that close to danger' before snuggling into a corner and crying.

Later as we discussed what to do about Gerry, Tom Devine who had practically emptied a barrel of rum by himself, coughed and spoke up,  'I'm just surprised he had a penis to lose - I've always thought he had a little fanny.'

'No Tom,' said Keevins.  'You mistake what we told you; we said Gerry McCulloch is a little fanny, not has a little fanny.'

Three days later the storm abated and I ventured outside to see if I could get a signal on my iPhone so I could tweet a love letter to Tom English and as I wandered round in circles, my phone held in the air, I thought I heard a noise from behind me, near the pressure ridge.  Straining to see anything through the snow and in the darkness of the constant Arctic night, I could make out a figure standing in the spindrift between two seracs.  It's Souness, I thought.  It's always Souness, he's here to rescue us as he always does.  But the figure wasn't Souness, too short.  I could see that now as it stumbled towards me, clumsy in the many layers of woollens and inner and outer slops designed to keep out the cold but which never succeeded.

'Help me,' said the man as he collapsed into my arms.  'I've been hiding out here for months and have run out of food and lost my tent in the storm last night.  I'm in grave danger and so are you if we don't get out of sight and into your tent.'

'Why, who are you?' I asked.

'I'm the Rangers Tax Case Blogger' he said, then he fainted.

Later, inside the tent, we sat and stared at our new and unexpected guest while Devine huffed in the corner and complained about our rum rations not including any new arrivals.

'You do realise this man's presence puts us all in danger?' said a stern faced Keevins.

'Danger?' squealed Thomson, pulling out his laptop and trying to book into a hotel far enough away but close enough to claim he was in amongst the action.

'Why would we be in danger around the Rangers Tax Case Blogger?' asked Devine.

'Because everyone's after him!'  I almost cried.  'Rangers want him because his blog helped scare off investors, Celtic want his hide because he made them believe Rangers were guilty and they lost hundreds of fans over the side of the Erskine Bridge when it didn't pan out that way and I hear the police have a cosy cell waiting for him if he ever shows his face in Glasgow again.  Do we really want to giving succour to a man like this who could endanger our entire mission?'

'I hate to break it to you, Spiers' spoke up the Blogger.  'But I am your mission.  Findlay fooled you all into thinking the Rangers side letters were here but they're not, they're not anywhere - the damn things don't exist, I should know as I've been looking for 'em for three years.  No, Findlay just wanted you to blunder into my path knowing that with you idiots around something stupid was bound to happen to me that would necessitate my return to Scotland.  Well here we are: my tent blown away in a storm, my supplies scavenged by a polar bear so that all I had to eat was a tiny morsel of meat I found outside your tent a few days back...'

'Oi!' screeched Gerry McCulloch.
'And now I'm stuck with you fucking morons waiting for rescue instead of being safe and sound in my tent, far from Lawwell and all his works' and as he said this, a great cracking noise erupted outside our tent and the ice shook.  We all screamed and untied the tent flaps, rolling out onto the snow just in time to see the ice break and a huge iron tentacle reach out of the sea.  Only one craft had the strength to break up ice this thick: Richard Gough's Nautilus.  Then we were all scooped up and dropped into a hatch which slammed shut behind us, leaving us in darkness in dank hole that stank of fish but maybe that was just me.

'Oh fucking well done,' groaned the Blogger.  'Months I've been hiding out here, no one able to reach me due to the ice and storms and five minutes in your company and I'm grabbed by a metal fucking space ship or whatever the fuck this thing is.'

'It's Richard Gough's submarine,' I corrected him.

'I don't care what it is,' he cried.  'It's fucking stupid and now I'm on my way back to Scotland, to jail, or worse!'

'Talking of fucking stupid,' piped up Tom Devine.  'I hear Scott Brown's the captain of Scotland now' and as we sat in silence, digesting this latest madness, the Nautilus dived beneath the ice and sailed home with us in its belly, heading towards an uncertain future.