The Transparency Conundrum

"They wanted transparency so we gave them transparency and sent the Invisible Girl over to Lawwell's country retreat, Schönhausen" said Chris Graham, sitting looking louche on a leather armchair, playing with a cigar which he'd lit ten minutes ago but had yet to taste.

"What she saw there has left her traumatised and it takes a lot to shut up our Gail" he said, talking to Graham Spiers who was sitting opposite him and when I say Graham Spiers, I mean me.  Or the other Graham Spiers because there's now two of us.  Yes, it's quite unbelievable and when I tell people about it, especially fellow journalists, they all put their heads in their hands and sigh which just goes to show that they're now doubly intimidated by my superior knowledge and wit.

"What did she see?" I asked while I spied on myself having an off the record chat with Mr Fantastic of the Rangers Standard.

"Here's the thing Spiers," said Graham, examining the end of his cigar and casually flicking ash onto my lap.  "Gail's quite blind when she's invisible, light photons pass straight through her without interacting with her retinas so she can't see a damned thing; when she was sneaking around Schönhausen, by the time she reached anywhere of any importance she had to become invisible and so couldn't find her way around without being seen.  She knocked over two chairs and a fish tank before Lawwell eventually realised something was awry and called for the guards.  Nobody paid any attention to the French windows creaking open by themselves so she got out okay although granted, she fetched up in a pond before giving up and re-materialising and hopping over a fence before the hounds were released."

I knew these hounds well, hadn't they almost had my arse off before I was pulled to safety by the safe hands of Chris Woods of all people?  My mind wandered back to those halcyon days when everything seemed so simple and innocent, the days before Lawwell's diabolical machinations began to bear fruit when Celtic didn't have a free run at five championships in a row, before the SFA were run by Celtic and before the media capitulated completely to Lawwell.  This was a mistake, letting my mind wander, as Mr Fantastic's specialist power was to stretch his intellect until it entered your mind and once in there, psychic tendrils spreading, he could make you do pretty much whatever he liked.

"I want you to take out Peter Lawwell' he said, fixing me straight in the eyes.

"You want me to kill Peter Lawwell?" I shrieked.

"No, I want you to take out Peter Lawwell for a nice meal and allow us to rummage around Schönhausen in his absence.

"Oh, that's better then,' I said, relieved because as all Scottish journalists know, if you're going to take on anyone at Celtic then you'd better make sure you're going at them from a position of strength or you'll end up on the rack; flayed, beaten and begging for Peter Kearney to put his clothes back on.

"So what's in it for me?" I asked casually, realising the conversation was coming to an end from the way Graham had got up from his chair and was halfway out the door.

"How about three hundred quid?"

"Aye, that'll do."

To the End

Graham Spiers sat in front of Peter Lawwell, a rictus idiot grin spread across his face, his head nodding in time to every order enunciated by his master.  He looked pathetic; fawning and flattering, looking for any way to ingratiate himself with Lawwell, in fact it made me want to vomit; now I knew how neutrals felt when reading the rot, the anti-Rangers bile he passes for journalism.  It pained me to my very soul to witness this because, well because I am Graham Spiers.

So how did I fetch up spying on myself as I agreed to yet another Lawwell agenda in the heart of the Daily Record building which had been annexed by Celtic at the beginning of the season; Parkhead and Hampden not being enough for Lawwell to lurk and plan, thrash and punish?  Well I blame it on Lawwell’s time machine which turned out not to be just a time machine but a device to transport us across realities, through the thin curtains between universes.  When we returned to this earth we all assumed we’d arrived home but what Lawwell didn’t tell us was that for each and every one of us: Lawwell himself, Souness, Donald Findlay, Tom Devine and me, there was another one of us out there already.  It turns out everyone else figured this and made it work to their advantage: Souness teaming up with himself to menace various Celtic puppets in Harper MacLeod, Devine to plough into as many demented Celtic Minded trollops as possible, and Findlay to move in more shadows than normal, gathering information and plotting against Rangers’ enemies.  Me?  I sloped through life not realising, never meeting myself and missing an opportunity to have a threesome with myself and Gordon Matheson in the back of his car.

And so the season came to an end, Rangers survived and won the third division which was enough to see Celtic fans take to the internet in their thousands and Erskine bridge in their hundreds to either harass journalists into always referring to Rangers as a new club or to launch themselves off the bridge because they couldn’t live with the target of so much hatred and venom having made it through times when most thought (hoped) they would perish.  Of course I was smart enough to pander to the bigots and stab at Rangers often, referring to them as a new club on Twitter and in print – they lap it up, the Celtic fans, and I’m often invited to Celtic functions at supporters clubs, Parkhead itself and BBC Scotland where I’m lauded and only occasionally spat on. 

Celtic of course won the SPL championship but nobody noticed.  Then they apparently won the Scottish Cup which even I might not have noticed had the Daily Mail CSC not devoted an entire paper to it, Stephen McGowan and John Greechan running up and down Buchanan Street in their Celtic tracksuits handing out free copies of the paper so people would know that Neil Lennon is the greatest manager since Alex Ferguson hung up his Chateauneuf du Pape.  Talking of Lennon, it had been a quiet season for him with no sign of demonic possession, rising from the grave, having his head sewn onto a Frankenstein’s monster or being kidnapped and replaced by a robot.  No, it seems that without Rangers to occupy his every waking moment, Lennon can behave himself.  It also seems that without Rangers he can also win a league.  Granted, he did have a few blips and misbehaved but Lawwell had his man Vincent Lunny working tirelessly behind the scenes at the SFA to punish him with half match bans and other comedy penalties.

Who needs to work on behalf of Celtic behind the scenes at the SFA though when Lawwell’s other man, Stewart Regan is there, picking up wage rises every year for doing nothing more than ensuring Rangers remain hamstrung.  Even I, a purblind idiot if ever there was one can see that Regan only pops his head above the parapet when he can scent Rangers blood.  All the rest of the time he lies under Lawwell’s desk scratching his ears and occasionally whining for food.

 

And so as the season came to a close, it was with great disappointment that I realised not only would there be no end of season drama with Rangers and Celtic punching it out till the last minute for the league title but also that there was no action played out in the background either.  Past seasons have witnessed Celtic Armies marching on Walter Smith’s outpost, Lawwell launching a nuclear missile at Ibrox and the following year revealing himself to be the devil.  Then this season came to a close with a whimper.  Or so I thought until I was snatched from Byres Road, hooded and tied and then driven to the Daily Record to witness myself listening to Lawwell give me orders for this season’s final outrage.

Ring of Bright Water

The breeze on the Boulevard St. Germain was light and only noticed when little puffs of seeds floated down from neighbouring trees and settled on tables and in the hair of tourists sipping coffee and trying to impress the patronising waiters with their own insouciance.  I was there thanks to Mark Twain who once said that travel is fatal to prejudice and Alex Salmond having chanced upon this quote decided that the press should have a Scottish Executive financed jolly to Paris to rein in some of their wilder excesses.  So while I sat outside Les Deux Magots cuddling my Hemingway novel and sipping cafe creme while watching the beauty of the city stroll past, my fellow journalists propped up the bar in the pub across the road following some new obsessive on Twitter who was revealing all sorts about Rangers.  Of course with the Rangers boardroom leaking like Hugh MacDonald's bladder, there really was no need for another anonymous Celtic fan to spend his time pretending to be a girl while damaging Rangers, the Rangers boardroom can see to that itself.

On our return to Glasgow we were greeted by a representative of the Scottish Government who asked if we still harboured bigoted thoughts towards Rangers and their support and some oaf at the back of the crowd who'd drunk a little too much duty free shouted 'Of course we do, we're Celtic supporters you clown' which got a huge cheer then John Greechan pushed him out of the way and we bundled onto a chartered bus and sang the Fields of Athenry all the way to Hampden to check in with Peter Lawwell.

 

When we got there we found Lawwell still injured from falling on a dildo during the disastrous league reconstruction meeting but even although he was sitting with his arse in a soothing bucket of cold water, he still exuded an air of menace that had us file into his room and line up for the usual thrashing.  Lawwell frowned on seeing this and waved for us to sit down on some chairs he'd had brought in for us which were wrapped in barbed wire and he smiled as we lowered our own backsides onto the barbs and only when we were all sitting with rings as bright as his own was he satisfied enough to call for Stewart Regan.

Regan was brought in on a lead and once let off he began to scamper around our feet and then something awful happened: Tom English mistook Regan for a common pest and took a spade to him, bringing it down on his head with a sickening crack.  We sat there appalled, heartbroken at the tragic end to a splendid week but Lawwell reassured us that Regan had suffered worse injuries than that and he'd soon be recovered sufficiently to completely ignore the Hearts and Dunfermline situations and concentrate instead on laying into Rangers again over some perceived wrong doing which he hadn't quite made up yet but which shouldn't take him too long considering Rangers seemed hell bent on providing him with another excuse.  Then Lawwell whistled and some men came in and dragged Regan's limp body out of the room and only after the blood was cleaned up did Neil Lennon come in and do some juggling to cheer us all up.

Grouse Shooting with Peter Adam Smith

I was with young scud, Peter Adam Smith in Perthshire at the weekend, shooting by day and knocking the tops off bottles at night when I had an epiphany about this youthful pretender.  It was the Sunday morning and we'd been tramping up a hill looking for some game when we rested on top of some heather, settling down with our guns at the ready lest something fly our way.  While watching the birds evade our learner shots the day before I'd noticed that some of the grouse had a green hue about them, others a distinct red white and blue and I pointed this out to Peter which seemed to weigh on his mind a little, a worried look spreading over his face and I swear his neck looked jaundiced.  I soon found out why.

 

The first bird to fly our way was blue and Peter took an enthusiastic pot at it and hit it.  Feathers exploded in a mess of red white and blue gore.  'Beauty!' shouted Peter, a huge smile on his face and before I could congratulate him another bird flew past and he instinctively raised his rifle and let loose another shot sending the blue bird falling dead to the ground.

'How about that then, Spiers?  Put that in your pipe and smoke it!'  He did seem to enjoy this easy game.  He'd only just reloaded when a green bird flew past and he aimed, hesitantly then brought his rifle down.  'What's wrong?' I asked and he shook his head and said, 'The green ones, Spiers.  They're not for me, I've heard those bastards hit back.  If you miss them they'll attack and give you a nasty bite, if you hit them then they'll still give you a nip and I can't risk that.'  Then another blue bird flew past and he downed it with glee.

'The blue birds not worry you?' I asked nonchalantly.

'Nah, not at all, you can fire at those with impunity.  Watch this' and he let off two shots and hit two blue birds who went down like Stephen McGowan on a Tuesday night in the Polo Club. 

Later, having watched Peter Adam Smith safely shoot at the blue birds for an hour I thought I'd indulge myself in a little mischief and waited until he was slightly distracted before calling out to him that a blue bird was flapping out of the grasses and without thinking he raised his gun and fired.  The green bird took the full blow of the shot and disappeared into the trees in a bloody green white and yellow haze.  'Fuck!  What the fuck have I done?' he wailed.

'Crikey,' I said.  'That was a green bird, whatever is Lawwell going to say?'

'I know!  I'm totally fucked!'

Then he realised his mistake and his face flushed as I looked at him and smiled.

'Hold on Peter, what's Lawwell got to do with anything, we're shooting birds here; what, did you think they were a metaphor for something else?'

 

He harrumphed and marched back to the hotel with me bringing up the rear, chortling to myself and I didn't see him again until later after I'd got myself a drink and had a loaf around the balcony to take in the sunset and there he was, in the grounds shooting his gun into a barrel.  There'd be no green fish in there, I pondered, sitting down with my gin and tonic as the sun dipped behind the trees and the distant mountains twinkled in a purple haze.

It's in the Trees, It's Coming

We had sheltered in a little copse of trees to get out of the stinging rain and ceaseless wind and we hoped that it would spare us some protection from the nameless thing that had stalked us across the moors for hours which was ironic considering we were there in the first place hunting the Roadkill Beast. We were lying side by side: me, Donald Findlay and Tom Devine, flat on our bellies behind a small stone dyke on the edge of the woods, peering through the darkness trying to make out any movement. We’d been aware of it following us for a while from the snuffling and grunting noises but although sometimes it sounded like it was right on top of us, we never saw a thing so decided to hide up in the copse and take stock. Findlay shivered to my right, his service revolver tight in his hands and Devine lay cursing to my left as he realised his hip flask was empty which was damned odd considering the thing is the size of a barrel. I was struggling to get a signal on my phone and was waving it in the air until Findlay grabbed me by the seat of my trousers and hauled me down, hissing ‘You bloody idiot, you’re lighting up the woods – do you really want to give our position away and bring that thing down on top of us?’

‘But Donald,’ I stuttered. ‘Tom English is up there in a hot air balloon and can help us out of this, if only I can get him on the phone’ and at that my phone vibrated. It was Tom.
‘I’m right above you my dear’ he said and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard him say that. ‘But how many of you are down there? I thought it was only you, Findlay and Devine?’
‘It is,’ I said, the hairs rising on the back of my neck.
‘You’re lying side by side about three trees into the wood?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that’s us.’
‘Then my thermal imaging shows four of you.’

I was up and haring across the field before my companions had a chance to ask me why I’d squealed and vaulted the wall and as I tripped and stumbled downhill towards a reservoir, I heard a gunshot and then the bellowing of my friends as they sprinted after me. And to think, all this could have been avoided if only I’d kept my thoughts to myself about the Celtic fans’ behaviour at the Glasgow Cup Final on Monday night.

I’d been on Twitter you see, trying my darnedest to stick to the three line whip coming out of Parkhead that the crowd trouble was an ‘old firm problem’ and not exclusive to the Celtic support, the Green Brigade in particular since the under-17s on the park were roughly the same age as most of ‘em. The thing is, about a three line whip from Celtic park, it’s slightly different from a parliamentary whip in that Lawwell gathers us up in three lines and then slices us to ribbons until he gets what he wants. This week it was me and a few other journalists and remarkably, Vincent Lunny whose arse took the brunt of Lawwell’s pounding with his horse whip until he agreed to go after Kenny Shiels. Then Tom English and I were given our instructions before limping to Ashton Lane to catch up with the Pacific Quay CSC in the Chip to discuss some document those scallywags had just had leaked from Ibrox or forged themselves, whatever it was they were saying at the time – I can’t remember too much about it as Tom got me frightfully drunk on Furstenberg and I vomited on my shoes before being carried home.

A few days later I was falling down a hill in the middle of the night, chased by some unseen horror and wondering why I always follow Lawwell’s instructions as all they do is get me into trouble and reduce my already fading reputation as a journalist to tatters. Then I fell into the reservoir and was splashing around in blind panic until I was fished out by Devine and pulled up onto a boat, an old rowing boat and in it we sat: me, Tom Devine and Findlay – three men in a boat. I was about to make a joke about Montmorency the dog but decided against it after seeing the anger on Findlay’s face.
‘We’re safe here,’ he growled. ‘It can’t come into the water. If I know my beasts’ and he shot a look at Devine who blushed. ‘And I think I do, then they can’t swim. We hold out here until dawn.’ And we did.

Morning came and there was no sight of the monster that had chased us onto our boat but there was certainly sight of Tom English’s hot air balloon, bobbling around above us, shining in the haze of the sunrise. I’d dropped my phone in last night’s panic and so was just about to start waving at Tom to come down and pick us up when Devine cried out, ‘By jove, would you look at that!’ It was an airship and it was heading straight for Tom. Long and silver it moved fast and was coming our way, pausing briefly to get out of the way of a plane approaching Glasgow Airport which missed it by only a few hundred feet.
‘I’ll say this about the boy Lawwell,’ said Devine, looking proud. ‘He’s not afraid of danger, not afraid to take chances.’
‘What do you mean Lawwell?’ demanded Findlay looking shaken.
‘Well who the hell else do you think it is?’ snapped Devine.
‘Graeme Souness?’ I ventured.
‘That’s not Souness,’ puffed Findlay. ‘That’s Souness!’ and he pointed behind me and there was an autogyro buzzing straight for Lawwell’s zeppelin. I pulled out my binoculars and just had time to notice the irony of the name of Lawwell’s airship, the Reconstruction before Souness let off a missile which struck the silver bullet and it erupted into a ball of fire.
‘Oh the humanity!’ cried Devine as Lawwell’s Reconstruction crashed and burned.

Later as we sat in the Swan drinking whisky to warm us I sat on my own by the fire, ignoring Devine and Findlay who seemed to be getting on well in spite of their obvious differences and since both of them seemed so happy I decided not to tell them that as we climbed out of our rowing boat I had noticed an escape pod flying out of the flames of the falling airship. Reconstruction had failed in its mission that night, whatever that mission was but Lawwell’s not defeated so easily, he’d escaped and taken with him no doubt, plans for another day.