Celtic 0—4 Bayer Leverkusen.

None of my mates thought we’d win tonight (perhaps I should use mate, singular). A draw would have delighted us. We can’t score goals and concede at every opportunity. One win in six games. Against a Dundee United, mid-table Scottish team, we looked vulnerable. Against a German team with far better players, we feared we could face the West Ham scenario again. We feared a thrashing. The return of our captain, Callum McGregor a godsend. Kyogo Furuhashi leading the line an unexpected blessing.

In the first few minutes it was end to end. Leverkusen had a goal disallowed for offside. Kyogo rounded the keeper, Hradecky, and looked sure to put Celtic one up. Tah came in on the Japanese international’s blind side and put the ball out for a corner. The Finish keeper was hard to beat all evening—only something exceptional would get past him.

Tom Rogic has a shot that the keeper puts over the bar. Adam Montgomery plays a ball across the Bayer box but Liel Abada doesn’t get on the end of it. Twenty minutes in and even, the much maligned Carl Starfelt, has a descent effort that the Bayer keeper is forced to save.

Twenty-five minutes in and Parkhead is silenced. David Turnbull is caught in two minds clearing a ball on the Celtic touchline. Bakker nips in front of him and plays a diagonal ball across the six-yard box. Hincapie beats Hart, but Montgomery gets a foot to it, but directs it into the net.

Celtic punch-drunk. Commentator Chris Sutton remarks some of our home town players were hiding and it was difficult to argue with him. Unfortunately, Ralston wasn’t hiding. He gifted Bayer the second goal ten minutes after their first. Dithering on the ball in front of a static back-line. Wirtz one-touch finish made it all look too easy. Celtic on the ropes until half-time.

Celtic went for it at the start of the second-half. Kyogo almost pulled a goal back, holding off a defender and bending a ball in at the post. Hradecky got his fingertips to it. Bayer’s keeper followed that up with a good save from Jota. Ten minutes into the second half and Celtic look as if they might have a goal in them.

Thirteen minutes in and Turnbull goes down in the box, after a challenge from ex-Celt Frimpong. Not a penalty. Frimpong didn’t have the easiest night. He created a couple of gilt-edged chances, but Celtic’s best player, Jota, generally, got the best of him—when attacking.

Seventeen minutes into the second-half and it is game over. Leverkusen get a penalty, when the referee decides the ball hit Cameron Carter-Vickers’ arm and booked the central-defender.  Alario makes it 3-0.

Bayer with a game against top-of-the-table Bayern, at the weekend, bring on around six or seven subs (I lost count). Kyogo finds time to miss another sitter, before he’s taken off. Abada misses a good chance too.

Giakoumakis makes his debut for the last fifteen minutes, but barely gets a kick. Hart makes a world-class save from a downward Shick header with a few minutes remaining. The Bayer substitute the ripped Scotland to shreds can think himself unlucky not to score.

Amine Adli scores the fourth goal, four minutes after the ninety, running beyond a static Celtic defence and hammering the ball into the top corner past Hart.

Celtic were simply outclassed, found wanting all over the pitch. Hart and Jota get pass marks. Kyogo? That’s a tough one. Four chances, no goals. Turnbull sold a goal and just didn’t play. Ralston also sold a goal. You could see his effort, but sometimes effort isn’t enough. Hradecky showed him how it should be done. Sheer class, attacking and defending. We want to play like Manchester City, but we can’t defend and aren’t scoring. This was as close to our first team as you’ll get. Certainly, Christopher Julien is better than Starfelt. I’m better than Starfelt. But the problem doesn’t lie with the Swede international. Good teams find it easy to score against us. So do mediocre teams. Livingston, bottom of the Premier league at the time, beat us 1—0. The good news is I’m sure we’ll beat Aberdeen at Pittodrie. Not totally sure, but pretty sure. They’re wide open as well. And if we can score three or four, we might get better than a draw. If we can hang on to Rangers’ slipstream we’ve an outside chance of the league because they too are stuttering, just not as badly as us. In the Europa league we’ll be lucky to pick up more than a point.

Celtic 1—1 Dundee United

Two similar goals in two minutes were the story of the first-half—and the second. Jota looked to be Celtic’s most dangerous player. A cross from the right and the smallest man on the park, Liel Abada, nicked across his marker and headed it into the net, for the opening goal after sixteen minutes. Two minutes later Dundee United equalised. Ralston lost a tackle. The ball was whipped into the box by Niskanen. Ian Harkes got in front of Startfelt and left Joe Hart no chance with his header.

Albian Ajeti could consider himself unlucky not to score after eight minutes. A ball fizzed in by Ralston and the striker headed it over the bar. He had a similar chance from a Rogic cross in the second-half of a largely anonymous performance. The non-scoring striker missed a sitter from two yards, a minute after United had equalised. The ball played across the goal by Abada and somehow Ajeti scooped it over the bar, when it was easier to score. He skied another chance after being played  in by Jota, but that wasn’t unexpected.

Carter-Vickers bundled into Clark two minutes after Ajeti’s sitter. A clear penalty that wasn’t given.

Josip Juranovic went down injured after twenty-five minutes. Adam Montgomery replaced him. I like the nineteen-year-old Academy prospect, but his first few passes were wayward, and apart from one driving run in the second-half, he offered little. Perhaps, quite simply, like this game, I was expecting too much, too soon. We picked up another few injuries with McCarthy going off at half-time for Soro. More worryingly, goal-scorer Liel Abada also required treatment after a horrendous challenge from the United keeper at the end of ninety minutes. Our two winger’s performances offered supporters hope today.  

Jota, in particular, lights the team up. He whipped a few balls across the six-yard box with no takers. And he looked to get the Celtic win with two shots on goal in the dying minutes of the game, one of them looping onto the bar. The other a weak effort, easily saved.

David Turnbull also hit the bar, just before the half-time whistle. With ten minutes of the game to go, the woodwork denied Rogic. A cross for Abada, a downward header from Jota,  Rogic gets on the end of, and another chance gone.

In the four minutes of extra-time, added to the ninety, United went up the park and had a two-in-one inside the box. Better teams would have scored. A few United players tried to chip Joe Hart in the first and second half, because he played so far out of his goal. Hart also did a fancy half turn to beat a United player closing him down. I hate that kind of stuff. Terrible result, but not unexpected. I’m getting the kind of queasy feeling playing Bayer Leverkusen that I got when West Ham came to play us in our pre-season friendly. Ironically, I predicted Aberdeen, our opponents at Pittodrie next weekend, would finish mid-table because they were too open. Previous manager Derek McInnes took the Walter Smith mould up North. Ten men behind the ball at all times. Celtic are also there for the taking, but with better players. I expect the Germans to win on Thursday, but hope to be wrong. But, on the bright side, I think we’ll be good enough to beat Aberdeen and end our away-day malaise. I certainly hope so. Rangers are stuttering, but we’re falling further behind. That tells its own story.   

Bernard MacLaverty (2021) Blank Pages and Other Stories

Many stories I read blend into one another. Some of them I can vaguely remember. They tend to be—by that measure—the best. I’m thinking here of George Mackay Brown, Celia, which is arguably the best short story in The Devil and the Giro, edited by Carl MacDougall. I met Carl a few times and he was great, but not great enough to get in the collection of the best of The Scottish Short Story. Bernard MacLaverty short story A Time To Dance is a standout. That was great. Carl talked about another of MacLaverty’s short stories. A young Catholic Irish woman that cleans a big-wig, Protestant guy’s house and he’s always pestering her for sex, offering loads of cash. But she’s loyal, even though her husband beats her and spends all the housekeeping money on booze. Then she’s not loyal. Or loyal to herself. Carl couldn’t mind the title of it. And neither could I. But remembering it means something has stuck. That’s a long-winded way of saying Blank Pages and the eleven Other Stories won’t stick around very long in my memory. They’ll go the way of another Irish writer, Frank O’Connor, who writes on similar themes of Irishness and Britishness and never the twain shall meet, until they do.

In Blank Pages, the narrator is a writer. It’s not Bernard MacLaverty, of course, but it is Bernard MacLaverty. Stephen King does that. When he can’t think what trade the narrator will be, his fall-back position is writer. I guess we’re in Midwinter Break territory, but the narrator’s wife is dead. She left the cat, Lui, she chose when it was a kitten, or the kitten chose her. A freebie from a farmer’s wife on the edge of Loch Lomond. There’s not much kittenishness left, but there are fleas.

‘For ages after Kathy died, the cat was in mourning. She knew there was something very wrong. A place was missing and the man was no substitute.’

Kathy had left box files for Frank: ‘PENSIONS, TAX, HOUSE, ROYALTIES, BANK’.

The reader knows therefore Frank, to be frank, is a successful writer (with Royalties), much like we imagine Bernard MacLaverty, but it’s the cat in mourning, not the man.

But he can’t write, but still goes through the motions of sitting down at his desk (like many of us do).

Teresa has dropped in to help clear out Kathy’s old clothes. Donate it to charity. It seems sudden, but it’s been two years.

‘The writing comes and goes,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it always?’

‘I suppose so.’

She pats his arm. And there’s a moment when the old man could have been Nelson, in A Time To Dance, when he could have done something stupid and destroyed everything.  

The collection of short stories begins with ‘A Love Picture: Belfast 1940.’ There are other stories with dates and place names. ‘Searching: Belfast 1971’ (Cal territory). ‘The End of Days: Vienna 1918.’ ‘Blackthorns: County Derry 1942.’ The opening story is the most memorable.

Soup Mix had the narrator forced by his boss to go to a face-to-face meeting in his home town, and seeing his mum and a crocodile of other old women out for a walk, but continuing on the Home, and buys her a spray of flowers to score Brownie points, to be seen to be doing the right thing. A feeling I know well.

In Wandering, the narrator is a teacher, another would-be writer, another feeling I know well. Her mother is very much with her. And she wonders if the Zimmer in the Hall is the equivalent of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own plea for would-be writers, with the pram in the hall killing the muse, just as effectively? Discuss.

Memory, like writing, is a strange beast. MacLaverty knows better than most when to pick up the beat. When to let silence do its work. What resonates with one reader won’t resonate with another. Read on.

Celtic 3—0 Raith Rovers.

Celtic play St Johnstone, the holders, at Hampden in the semi-final. I’m old enough to remember when Raith Rovers beat us in the League Cup in 1994. After the dismal defeat at Livingston, the most important thing wasn’t our performance, but quite simply we win.

 Anthony Ralston comes in, Josip Juranovic drops to the bench, as does Stephen Welsh and Bolingoli. Only Carter-Vickers retains his place in the back-line that lost at Livingston. The much maligned (by me) Starfelt comes back to partner the American international. Adam Montgomery, who I think is our best option, plays on the left with man-on-the-match Jota.

Jota scored in just under 30 minutes. A few minutes earlier, Turnbull had an early free-kick from the edge of the box, which hit the wall. A poor effort. But McCarthy played in Jota, inside the box and he took it on and scored his first goal for Celtic. McCarthy was a surprise selection. He was so poor on Sunday, he wouldn’t have gotten into the Livingston team. Tonight he got pass marks, because his passing was better.

Jota created the second, just before half-time, cutting in and driving it at goal.  MacDonald palms the ball up into the air and Abada in 40 minutes, nipped in and headed the ball into an empty goal. Against a lower division team that had seen little of the ball this should have been game over—and so it proved to be.

David Turnbull picked up the ball and drove at the Raith box, he bent the ball into the net, but McDonald was poor. Three minutes into the second-half, it’s just a matter of how man Celtic will score.

Zanatta booked after a foul on Rogic, and minutes later it’s from yellow to red as he chopped down Ralston on the touchline. Two soft bookings, but he’s off and with half-an-hour to go. We expect to see Giakoumakis—even for this Celtic defence, the game was over.

 But Liam Scales made his Celtic debut. He comes on alongside Josip Juranovic, for Ajeti and Abada. Bitton and Soro replace McCarthy and Rogic. The game peters out with no Greek striker.  Ange Postecoglou explained why, in his post-match interview. Giakoumakis had injured his calf in the warm up, and left for hospital at half-time. Perhaps a cautionary scan and we’ll see him against Dundee United? Ajeti remains our only fit striker, and is holding the line. Playing Jota through the middle didn’t work as was shown here tonight. We lost much of our attacking flair with him in the centre, and he didn’t look comfortable. But needs must. The semi-final is at Hampden. I’m not sure that counts as an away game. With our recent record… well, you know as well as me. Wait and see what Celtic team turns up.  Hopefully, an all-green final before Christmas.  

Livingston 1—0 Celtic

Defence against attack and the defence won. Celtic dominated the first-half, with three Livngston players booked in the first 20 minutes, but we didn’t have a shot on goal. Tom Rogic was head and shoulders above every other player on the park in the early jousts. But yet again, a simple ball into the Celtic box, Stephen Welsh, in for Starfelt, allowed Andrew Shinnie to get in front of him and fire past Joe Hart into the roof of the net. Celtic, one down, after 25 minutes with Livingston’s first attack.

And it could have been 2—0 to the home team. Just before half-time, Fitzwater outjumps a static Celtic defence and heads towards goal. Hart gets an instinctive hand to it and gets the ball over the bar.

Turnbull who had a free kick which was easily saved by the keeper in the opening minutes, should have scored just before half-time. Rogic picked out Ajeti. The Swiss striker cushioned the ball for Turnbull to strike from eight yards, but under pressure, he knocked it past the post. Carter-Vickers had a few headers, which he won in the opposition box, but never looked like scoring. Livingston, who have only picked up one point this season, looked comfortable. Neither of our wingers doing much and Ajeti starved of service in the first-half, not having a strike at goal.  

An unchanged Celtic team came out for the second half. No place for Giorgos Giakoumakis, not even on the bench. McCarthy in for Soro seems a no-brainer. The Irish international, with 45 caps, misplacing three passes in a row and, generally, had a poor game was taken off. Soro on for McCarthy after sixty minutes. Neither the Ivorian or Irish midfielder looking fit for purpose.

And a triple substitution.  Rogic was replaced by Mikey Johnston. Stephen Welsh, the young Scottish international unlucky with a header from a Turnbull corner before being taken off, was replaced by Nir Bitton.

Ajeti looked lively. He had a few headers and shots saved by the Polish keeper, Stryjek. Turnbull had the most shots on goal, but never looked like scoring. Bolingoli got booked (who’d have thought he’d have been back in the team?) but he wasn’t the worse. In the 90^th minute, the Spur’s loan player, Carter-Vickers shot from 25 yards out, but it was wide of the post. Stryjek flapped at a Johnstone cross, and almost scored an own-goal, but Fitzwater cleared off the line.

Celtic lose again at the Tony Macaroni Arena. All the early season good will is sucked right out of us, by a defeat to a bottom-of-the-table team. Man of the match for me, Livingston’s captain, Devlin. That about sums it up.  Complete and utter fuck-up.  Celtic  still looking for their first away win since 14^th February. No excuses, please. Another winnable game—we lose.

Andrew Miller (1992) Ingenious Pain.

When you are asked to review books, a number of prompts are translated into numbers. For example, you are asked to award a mark out of ten for literary merit. I often cheat here. If I like a book, it gets nearer ten than one. After all, even the ingredients on the label of a brown sauce bottle have enough literary merit to get five.  

Ingenious Pain gets a ten, because his sentences sing and you can get your teeth into them. His characters have a bit of swagger.

Listen to the pedlar Gummer selling coloured-water placebos to a cynical audience of eighteenth-century market women and men who’ve heard it all before, and are willing to throw rotten fruit or whatever shit comes to hand.

‘Pain, friends, is from the devil. It is his touch, his caress. His venomous embrace! Who has not heard a man in agony cry out and curse his God…Or a woman in childbed, blast the unborn infants ears with groans or shrieks…The loving parent is transformed into an ogre. The child by pain is parted from his prayers, the good man from his goodness. It is a hell on earth! It casts us upon the flame while yet we live…And doctors! We know how much they may do! We know how their ministrations can double our suffering…And then they rob us when we are too weak, too much out of our wits to boot them down the steps of our house. Death is a sweet release. Think now, I ask you, think of your greatest suffering, a day, a night when some raging pain in your teeth or bowels, in your skull, in your leg…a burn from the fire, a fall from your horse, or one of the thousand noxious diseases that rend us from within. Remember, how each and every one of you, in your torment would have exchanged your skin with the most wretched in the kingdom, just but you might have a minute, nay, a half-minute’s relief.’

Score out of ten: content/subject matter/themes.

Ten again. The book begins in 1772 in a little village in Cow, Devon. Reverend Lestrade allows gentlemen surgeons to perform an autopsy on his friend James Dyer. Dyer was born unable to feel pain. The surgeons hoped to extract blood, viscous fluid or locate in his body this soul-like substance.

Contemporary accounts of those born unable to feel pain show it not as a blessing but a curse. Children burn themselves, but since they feel no pain, injuries are worse than children that cry and weep. Bones are broken, but still they use those limbs. Children with that gift die younger than their contemporaries. It’s in the book’s title: ‘Ingenious’ pain.

The book asks other questions of readers. Can we, for example, be fully human when we feel no pain? The obverse of this, can we experience the bloom of pleasure?    

I read, with pleasure, Robert Craven’s The Nine Books That Inspired Me To Write on my online gang hut— ABCtales.  https://www.abctales.com/blog/robert-craven/nine-books-inspired-me-write-5-9-5-ingenious-pain-andrew-miller

At number 5, #5, Andrew Miller, and Ingenious Pain. (I also purchased, but still have to read Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski. https://www.abctales.com/blog/robert-craven/nine-books-inspired-me-write-9-9-9-imperium-ryszard-kapuscinski.)

Structure/plot/pacing (where applicable). Ten. Ingenious Pain is straightforward in its plotting, it moves in seven sections back through time from the autopsy in the barn to the epilogue, with the burial of James Dyer.

But there are also journeys of the soul. At its heart is the journey successful, but disgraced, surgeon James Dyer makes from his home in Bath to London. A race against time and other English doctors, to inoculate the Empress Catherine with the small pox virus in her St Petersburg palace with the promise of fame and riches (this is based on true events).

A mirroring of other journeys. Dyer being saved from the pedlar of lies, Gummer by a rich gentleman, who collects curiosities and freaks, he himself having a woman’s breasts.  The gilded cage on the cover of the book offers a clue. Then there is Dyer’s time in Riga, entombed in a monastery by the weather. Where he meets his nemesis, ‘Mary’, who frees him from his curse, but offers no cure. Dyer in becoming more human, is no longer himself. His final journey finds him in Bedlam. Here he finds love, but he’s a curiosity of a different kind.

General Comments:  Being picky, Reverend Lestrade’s sojourn in Paris before he met Dyer could have been cut—I found it a bit boring.   

Enjoyment: ten.  For a debut novel, for any novel, in general, it’s a marvel. Fully formed and wonderful to read. A real page-turner.

Real Betis 4—3 Celtic

Celtic lose 4—3 in Seville to Real Betis, after being 2—0 up and conceding four goals in two, two minutes spells, before and after half-time. I didn’t know much about Real Betis. Usually, we struggle against Spanish teams, by Spanish teams we usually mean Barcelona. In the first thirty minutes, we saw more of the ball than we did in all the combined games against the best club team in the world. In fact, I thought we were Barcelona. We ripped Real Betis to shreds and they couldn’t get the ball off us. We played like Spaniards. All over the park, we were better. João Pedro Neves Filipe (Jota) was almost in on goal after only two minutes.

Jota, who played on the right, had a good case for man of the match, before tiring late in the game. He jinked past the full back and flung a ball in. Albian Ajeti nicked in front of his marker to bundle the ball into the net with his hip. It was three goals in two games for the striker.  But the referee blew for handball. A long wait from VAR before the goal was finally awarded with thirteen minutes on the clock. Ajeti had already tried his luck with an easy save from the keeper, but this one counted.

Hart made a couple of decent saves from Fakir before we scored out second goal. Ones you’d expect our captain to make. Ismaila Soro had been booked and he made another wild challenge—he should really have been taken off. Tom Rogic’s magic feet fashioned another chance for Ajeti before the Swiss striker won us a penalty. Bravo wiped him out. VAR checked for Ajeti being offside before he was played into the box by Rogic.

I’m not sure who the designated penalty taker is now that Edouard—the serial penalty misser—is away, but Josip Juranovic stepped up. Playing left back or right back, he seems unfazed. It was one of those penalties where the keeper had no chance. 27 minutes in and Celtic are in—I—wonderland.

Here’s the thing, playing superb, but I don’t think a two-goal lead is enough. We had our own two-minute spell. Jota is picked out again. Coming in from the right, he tries to dink the ball over Bravo, but it falls flat, he stick out a hand and easily saves it. 3—0 and that might have been enough. Even then, Ajeti is first to the rebound, but flaps and mishits. He sends the ball back towards the goalkeeper and not the goal.

A minute later, Juan Miranda hits the Celtic post. It’s a shoot-out we’re winning until we lose. Betis score two in two minutes. The ball ricochets around the penalty box, the Celtic defence fails to clear and Miranda finds himself six yards from goal, the ball at his feet. He beats Hart. 32 minutes gone and Celtic need to knuckle down.

Pellegrini’s team that haven’t been in the match equalise in 34 minutes. Juanmi scores a tap in.  Carter-Vickers fails in his attempt to play off-side, but overall it’s hard to blame the Spur’s loanee. He had quite a good game. I find it difficult to criticise any of the team, even though we lost two more goals.

 Rogic created the best of the early second-half chances. He picked out Ajeti in the area, but he took too long to hit it and was closed down.

48 minutes gone, Miranda is finding a lot of space down Ralston’s right. He sends a ball across the six-yard box. Juanmi slides in, but can’t get a toe to it.

Sergio Canales works down the same flank two minute later. Borja Iglesias is allowed to runs across the front of our defence. There’s enough pace on the ball, he flicks it with the outside of his boot away from Hart at the near post. Five-minutes into the second half and Celtic for the first time are behind.

Two minutes later its capitulation. Juanmi claims his second goal of the night. Everyone knows Celtic can’t defend corners. But I’d classify this as unlucky. The ball is cleared to the edge of the box. Juanmi takes a touch on his chest. He fires in off the far post through a ruck of players. Hart, the Celtic captain, is another who played well. He had no chance, and it was one of those shots he could have taken on 1000 times and only scored once—when it mattered.

There was no surprise with Soro being taken off to be replaced by McCarthy, but the game looked beyond us. But I’m a big fan of the dog’s chance. Ajeti met Rogic’s cross and flashed a great header into the net, but he was clearly offside.

But as with Jota in the first half, the Portuguese winger beat his man again and flung in a cross. Rogic catches it sweet at the back post. Juanmi’s effort goes in. Rogic’s comes off the post.

Twenty minutes remaining, Betis bring on three substitutes, and use their full complement of five. Celtic have no firepower on the bench. Jota plays on, despite showing signs of cramp.  

With two minutes of the ninety remaining, we get a consolation goal. We hope for more than that, but that’s what it proved. Turnbull flings in a free kick. Ralston attacks it and scores. Celtic score three goals, but lose four.

Disappointing, but not surprising. Celtic continue with their away losing streak, but this seems even more unlucky than at Ibrox. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. As the season continues we’ll be able to answer more fully. Still early days, but I can’t see us picking up many points in the Europa league. We’re too open, but we’re in a far better place than under Lennon.  We’re no longer stagnating and going backwards. It’s forward or burst.

Cathy Rentzenbrink (2015) The Last Act of Love.

Everybody has a cat or dog story. I’ve also read one about horses. Cathy Rentzenbrink is a reader like me, well, probably better than me. She read a book a day, sometimes two, after her brother died. She did a lot of boozing. Went a little mad, finished her degree and got married to a man she loved. Then she got divorced, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.

Her brother, Matthew, was perfect, but never lived long enough to unperfect himself. He was born on Sunday, 17^th February 1974. He weighed seven pounds and twelve ounces. He was a happy baby. He taught himself to tell the time aged four. He was senior Prefect at his Secondary School. He won the Headmaster’s Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement. He played football in the same village team from aged ten, and was regularly awarded Player of the Year (voted by other team members) and Top Goal Scorer trophies. 12^th August 1990, Two weeks before he got his exam results he was hit by a car. There was a lot of blood on the road, most of it coming from the back of his head. He had everything to live for, but he didn’t die.

The surgeon told Matthew’s parents, Kevin and Margaret, that he’d saved their son’s life, but wasn’t sure that was the right thing. They were sure it was the right thing. He would get better, he would get better. Cathy knew that too. There’d be a fairy-tale ending when he’d open his eyes and waken up. It was just a matter of time.

I remember a poem from school when a wife (I think it was a wife) called back her loving husband from the sea. And he came, in his drowned form. There was no sending him back. The plot in Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery turns on that enigma. In Duncan Williamson’s short story, Death in a Nut, Jack lived with his mother in a small croft by the sea, his father dead, when Death came for his auld mother, he put him in a nut, and every living thing stopped dying.   Henry Marsh (2014) Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery, after a life-time in surgery, admits he became more conservative. He wasn’t fixing things; his mistakes were written on his patient’s bodies. Samuel Shem’s (1978) cult classic, The House of God takes a more light-hearted look at medical interventions and our insatiable appetite for saving lives at any cost (well, as long as you can continue paying for more and more tests, more and more medical interventions).

The interns follow the advice of The Fat Man, Medical Resident in the House of God: ‘Life is like a penis: When it’s soft you can’t beat it. When it’s hard, you get screwed.’

The harder and wiser, Cathy writes a letter to Matty:

I met a woman that believes in an afterlife. She told me that I should think of you as being free. She wasn’t trying to convince me of anything…She also said that what helped her when she recently lost someone was trying to be grateful for the fifteen years they’d spent together rather than thinking of the empty present.

I asked the person who it was that she had lost.

She looked a bit awkward. ‘Well,’ she said, it was my cat.’

I came in the other day and my partner was in her bed. ‘You no’ well?’ I asked Mary.

‘You know what day it is?’ was her question.

I didn’t win any prizes like Matthew for telling the time when I was younger, but I guessed, ‘Friday?’

Well, she wasn’t pleased. I told her the story of how my da brought back a dog that had followed him home. And we’d made a kennel for it out the back garden. But then, when he was going to work, the dog dutifully followed him onto the train. When he came to Bowling station, he jumped off when the doors closed, leaving the dog on the train. I said, maybe it was still on the train.

She reminded me of the time, her son Robert, had phoned her saying he’d lost Max, his dog, which was our dog, because he couldn’t look after a budgie. At his funeral, I choked telling the story of Max. My sister said she’d never seen me like that. Greeting about a dog. I was raging, of course. Max was lost, and we had to go down to Dumbarton and search for him. Mary got into the van and we parked at Dumbarton Central. Max was sitting on the platform, quite the thing. That dog was smarter than Robert. Smarter than me. But it was the right thing to get him put down. He wasn’t my dog. It wasn’t my decision.

In Danny Weston’s The Hunter’s Moon, the foundling, and the shargie, Mhairi says we don’t find death, it finds you. Tony Marsh at Hillsborough, deprived of oxygen, brain damaged, and in a persistent vegetative state, didn’t find death, didn’t find life. Matthew Rentzenbrink followed his legal precedent. His family had to go to court to stop food (it’s always called nutrition, which is probably nearer the mark) and water being given to him. The Last Act of Love was to let him die. To uncork death from the nut. But that’s another story.

Celtic 3—0 Ross County.

We hoped for goals, but in the first-half we didn’t see any. Ross County came with the Rangers’ game-plan, win a corner and win the game. Celtic made several changes to the team that lost at Ibrox. No Kyogo, no Edouard, no Christie,  no Ralston and no Welsh. Taylor came back into the team, but was replaced in the second-half by Adam Montgomery. Kyogo’s goals in recent matches have given us the edge, so obviously he was a big miss. But Albian Ajeti hit two striker’s goals.

Ajeti had a clear sight of goal, a one-on-one with Ross Laidlaw, which he missed after twenty-five minutes. Turnbull also hit the side netting. Abada hit the bar twice and should have scored with a superb pass inside from Rogic. Jota cut inside, after 40 minutes and the keeper made a comfortable save from his shot.

In the first-half, the former Benfica player looked the best of the newcomers. Cameron Carter-Vickers looks comfortable on the ball and he’s a big boy, although not the tallest, which is how we’ve been found out in most of the games last season (and this season at Ibrox). Juranovic played on the right, and Taylor went back to the left-back slot. The Croatian, as he showed at Ibrox, isn’t fazed on the ball and is a quality addition. Starfelt, however, remains Starfelt.

Ross County, like Rangers at our last away game, had around twenty-percent-possession in the first-half, but created three chances—that weren’t corners of free-kicks—and required toe pokes into the net. Breakaways, usually down the left. Their game plan to frustrate Celtic was working.

Albian Ajeti’s first goal, a flying header inside the six-yard box, from an Abada cross on the seventieth-minute, put us 2—0 up, and made sure the game was safe.  

But in many ways, the game hinged on a deflected long-range shot from Cameron Carter-Vickers, which looped over the Ross County keeper, after sixty-four minutes, when the away team were beginning to look comfortable.

Then a save from Joe Hart minutes before our second goal. Ross County forward, Charles-Cook had switched from the left wing to the right wing. He got the better of Juranovic a few times (which hints at defensive worries) and he hung a ball up at the back post. The County forward should have scored, but Hart kept us ahead. We went up the park and got the second goal. Massive.

Hart took the captain’s armband from Tom Rogic—who’d be given it be McGregor—when the Australian went off. Hart wore John Thompson’s name on his back today, in remembrance of the Celtic keeper who died after a head knock from Rangers player Sam English at Ibrox, 5^th September 1931. The story of three captains shows who’s who in the Celtic pecking order.

I’m a fan of Montgomery and he created the third goal for Ajeti with five minutes of the ninety minutes remaining. A surging run from the young Scot, a ball into the box. Ajeti with a striker’s finish. He’s holding the centre-forward jersey now, and I’m trying on my old chant for size, ‘Ajeti puts the ball in the net-ti.’

We were exposed at the back a few times. And looked lethargic before the first goal. Jota faded out of the game in the second-half. Cameron Carter-Vickers won man-of-the-match. A good day for the debutants, overall—and Ajeti. Any victory is a good victory. We’ll be more tested in Seville on Thursday, Europa League duty, where, ironically, twenty-one-years ago we lost, but remember fondly.  

Matt Haig (2020) The Midnight Library.

An easy read. Like picking a magazine from a rack. Fling in a bit of philosophy. Sprinkle with maxims. Challenge yourself to live the best reading life you can.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Life begins on the other side of despair.

‘Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to other variations.’

Aristotle: Excellence was never an accident.

David Hume: A human life was of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

‘Humans are just one of nine million species.’

Henry Thoreau:

It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.

All good things are wild and free.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you imagined.