In Dreams

I was on a beach and it was very early in the day, the sun still low above the Galloway hills and Ayr twinkling in the distance from within the white haze of the morning haar.  Before me, children played by the shore and screaming with delight, waved as a single rider brought her steed galloping through the shallows.  One of the children came running towards me, laughing and delighted that I was photographing the scene with my camera, "You got that daddy, didn't you?  You got that?"

 

"You got that?" shouted Lawwell.  "You got that, Greenslade?  You're first, then Thomson wades in after you and by that time I'll have the rest of those provincial monkeys in the Scottish press all over it.  Oh, and Roy?  Stop playing with yourself under the table, we can see you, it's made of glass."  My daydreaming over, I felt I had to say something so I blurted out "What about me?"

"Yes, you..." considered Lawwell.  "You can just go and take a fuck to yourself on a golf course somewhere."  So I did.  And that's how I missed the whole Armed Forces Day scandal at Ibrox.

 

The dreams continued though, and every night for the past few weeks I've been waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming about another life - a peaceful life without the horrors of Scottish football, living in an idyllic country retreat, a pastoral paradise with children who take me long walks from the braes to the sand dunes; I find myself aware during these dreams that they are just that and I long never to wake up.

 

"Wake up!"  I opened my eyes to see who was talking and there was Souness.  "Wake up," he growled, slapping my face.  My mind raced to remember why I was being held by the 80s Rangers Squad Commandos this time but it remained blank.  Then I saw the seat I was being dragged towards by Graham Roberts: it looked like a normal coffee house chair but it had a hole cut in the seat and since I seemed to be naked, I figured something might be left hanging through that hole.  "You're going to experience a whole new world of pain here, Spiers" grinned Roberts.  "You think Lawwell's horse whip hurts?  Wait till you've had your balls booted off by a European Cup winners medal holder" and he tied me to the chair and to my horror, in front of me, Souness was lacing up his football boots.  "The simplest tortures are often the best, don't take this personally Spiers" and he ran up to me and took a swing with his right foot at where my sacks should have been hanging.  I felt nothing.  "Eh?" snorted Souness, confused.  "Where are his bollocks?" and he looked under the chair where my balls should have been dangling through the hole but there was nothing there.

 

The leaves are still green on the trees yet our little line of cottages sits on the side of the hill wreathed in the reassuring light blue fug of wood smoke as the village piles high the fires and prepares for winter.  I wave to my children from the garden gate as they appear out of the edge of the forest, arms full of firewood.  I strain to see if any of them have brought some kindling.  "I have them here, daddy" says one.  " I have them here."

 

"I have them here," said Lawwell, holding up a glass with my balls in it.  "I've had them since 2009, Spiers, haven't you been paying attention?"  He was right, I hadn't been paying attention - my mind is wandering more and more these days.  Sometimes I drift on a sea of fantasy, imagining the life I really want to live and when I wake up I find that I've been writing my column before even knowing what on earth I'm going on about.  That would explain my defence of Tam Cowan then.   Poor Tam, if only he'd stuck to laying into Rangers then he'd still be working for BBC Scotland but instead he dared to write something for Lawwell's Daily Record about women's football and that was a step too far for the painfully PC BBC.  It's the hypocrisy that gets me though, here's a man who's paid to be a course oaf which to be fair, comes naturally to him as that's precisely what he is but the moment he says exactly the kind of thing a course oaf would say without it pertaining to Rangers, he's dropped quicker than the knickers of the girls at the Drum.

 

I was dozing on the swing chair on the porch that looked out over the sea towards the sunset, it would soon be time to give up these evenings as Autumn was here and even the blankets I had wrapped around me wouldn't keep out the cold as the days grew shorter and the children had less time to play in the daylight.  Right at this moment though, they frolicked in the garden until they noticed I was waking and came up to me.  "You need to go back now, daddy, don't you?"  They seemed sad and concerned but I didn't know what they meant so I asked, "What did you say?"

 

"What did you say?" rasped the cowboy, the brim of his hat low over his face casting a shadow on features he wanted kept secret.  His arms were buried deep inside his poncho that hid twin six shooters he could have pointed at your face in the time it takes you to make a split decision, his silver spurs jangled as he walked; yup, nobody knows the importance of image better than Bill McMurdo.

"You do realise that he's naked under that poncho, don't you?" whispered Jack Irvine.

"What did you say?" I gasped.