Celtic v Rangers, Scottish Cup semi-final.

Whatever Kris Boyd says I usually think the opposite. But here we are agreeing on something. Whoever wins at Hampden on Sunday will win the Scottish Cup. For Celtic it’s the treble. And for Rangers, well, I’ll leave that to Kris Boyd.

Martin O’Neil got in the act. Standards in Scottish football have dropped, he said. The team he took to Seville would beat the current Celtic team. One thing he picked up on is this Celtic team is smaller. Carter-Vickers may be described as a tank, but Bobo was literally head and shoulders above him. Bobo, of course, couldn’t play football. Any ball below the knee was hoiked up the park with a pair of size 15 flippers, pronto. Midfield giants Lennon, Lambert, Thompson and Petrov could all play football, but rarely passed the ball backwards to Bobo. Most balls were played up the line or in behind. The Motherwell forward, Kevin van Veen, in the recent Motherwell draw at Parkhead, held off Greg Taylor and went on to score. It was a poor goal to lose. But imagine John Hartson up there. Greg Taylor would still be running around him until this Sunday trying to get the ball. Nobody was better than Chris Sutton at holding off players. Every shy up the line was onto his chest and back into play. Kyogo is good, he’s coming up for 30 goals in a season. I’d say that’s a minimum a Celtic centre-forward should expect. Even Scott McDonald managed that. Larsson regularly hit 50 or more. He’d just about everything, including an ability to hang in the air for ten minutes, no other Scottish player with the exception of Eric Black had that uncanny ability. I think we know the Seville forward line would absolutely murder a backline that includes Starfelt who is a poor man’s Joos Valgaeren. But blessed Martin O’Neil concedes this Celtic team is a joy to watch. And if you look at the statistics, the players that take the most touches tend to be Carter-Vickers and Starfelt. They need to defend corners and free kicks in the way the Seville team did, but they are also expected to play the beautiful game from the back.

We know who is going to play in defence. Hart, Johnson, Carter-Vickers, Taylor.

Midfield is harder to guess. Callum McGregor is an automatic first pick. Reo Hatate, is the ace in the pack, one of the best midfielders in Britain. Far better than the Alan Thompson of Seville fame. But Hatate been injured. And for all his ability, he’s had some poorish games against Rangers and Alan Thompson always played great against Rangers. I don’t think Hatate will start, but hope he does.

Aaron Mooy too was exceptional before his injury. He came back into the team that beat Rangers at Parkhead, but looked off the pace. He was the worst man on the park. I don’t think he’ll start either.

Matt O’Riley has had a mixed season. He scored two great goals against Kilmarnock, but the rise of Hatate and Mooy meant he spent much of his time coming off the bench. Odds on to start this match. I hope it’s the flamboyant O’Riley that emerges and not a player that too frequently disappears against our Glasgow rivals.

Tomoki Iwata came on for Mooy in the last Old Firm game and steadied the team. He hasn’t the flare of Hatate or Mooy, more a defensive midfielder, but the former Japanese player of the year is a great passer and, with our injuries, I think he’ll start.

We know Kyogo will start. His record against Rangers is one reason we keep winning. Daizen Maeda is our bullet train for closing down, and he scores goals too. He’ll start.

That leaves the right wing up for grabs. James Forrest is injured. So what, you might be thinking. Liel Abada has also been injured. We’ve all heard the stories linking him with clubs such as Ajax. That’s not our concern now. The only thing that matters is winning on Sunday. Abada has a good scoring record against Rangers, but I think he’ll be on the bench. Often he contributes more coming on as a substitute.

Jota would start if he was fit. He’s our most gifted winger that does the old fashioned bit of taking full backs on and dribbling.

  Sead Haksabanovic started against Motherwell. We lacked width and penetration because neither of our wide men could take on the massed ranks of defenders. The Montenegrin has come off the bench and sparkled with some great goals and cameos. But on Saturday he was poor. His first few dinked passes failed to reach a team mate. Rudi Vata done more with the ball in his short time on the park. When it gets frenetic, Haksabanovic finds time and space. He’ll find more of that at Hampden. Here’s hoping he scores one of his wonder goals.

My ideal team includes obviously Hatate and Jota. And a fit-again Mooy. But I suspect none of this trio will start. Most pundits expect a high-scoring game. I think Celtic will win, 1—0. Kyogo to score. What’s your prediction?

Storyville: Nelly and Nadine—Ravensbruck, 1944, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, Director Magnus Gertten.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001lczg/storyville-nelly-and-nadine-ravensbruck-1944

Holocaust literature regularly tops the bestselling lists. Yet the story of Nadine Hwang, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, who fell in love with opera singer Nelly Mousset Vos on Christmas day, 1944, in Ravensbruck, a Nazi’s women’s concentration camp, couldn’t find a publisher. Siemens operated a factory from its premises. A perfect competition model of a free-enterprise zone. No rules or regulations. Labour was provided by mastermind of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler and the SS at minimal cost paid directly to his agency staff. The SS guards provided accommodation, a uniform and food. Babies were placed head to toe in the Kinderzimmer in Block 11 and starved to death. The sunniest place was behind the delousing block. By the end of 1944, Ravensbruck was so overcrowded, women arrived dressed in straw and there was nowhere to put them. Little or nothing to eat.

With the war ending, and the Allies closing in, inmates in Ravenbruck were moved to other camps. For many this meant a Death March.  Nelly Mousset Vos was packed into a cattle truck in which 17 died. She was taken to another concentration camp in Austria, Mauthausen. She counted the stone steps carved out of rock she had to walk up, and so many prisoners were thrown down to their deaths. Unloading a train, she heard the click of the guard’s gun as he prepared to shoot her, because she couldn’t go on, but did. She survived and was liberated and taken to Malmo in Sweden to recuperate by the Red Cross.

Nelly & Nadine set up home in Caracas in Venezuela. Nelly left behind her two children in France. Both women died in 1972. Their story is framed by Nelly’s diaries and Super-8 films of her exile in Caracas ex-pat and gay community, she bequeathed to her granddaughter, Sylvie Blanchi.      

Derren Brown: Showman, Channel 4, 9pm, My4.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-showman

Writer, philosopher, showman and a must-see, Derren Brown opens your mind, pokes about and walks away, leaving you baffled. Showman starts with Brown taking the piss. Horoscopes. He shows a horoscope for a Sagittarian (that’s me) and asks if it hits the mark. I thought it did. Others in the audience thought so too. Us Sagittarians stood together, smarter than most, bolder than most, risk takers. He whipped the feet from under us by showing the prediction was really for Aquarians. Oops.

He’s kinda done this before, but it’s a new format. He flings a Frisbee. A member of the audience brings down a note, which was a fiver. It goes inside a sealed envelope. A member of the audience, in this case an actress Cush, (coincidence or is he playing us again?) somehow after successfully predicting how a coin would fall—heads or tails—too many times to be coincidental, writes the bank numbers on the fiver inside the envelope, in the correct order she’s never seen, which are only revealed when Brown puts a board with holes over it. Magical.

Auto-suggestion or hypnotism? Derren Brown is top of the game. He makes people forget their name, but there’s no need to hypnotise me for that. And he also blocks out the number seven from their minds. Making them count their fingers and coming up with eleven fingers. They know it’s wrong, but can’t figure out why.

Brown goes through a spiel about how his dad died during lockdown (RIP). He segues into a set in which a dad writes three things he loves about his son. Meanwhile, his son tries to win a giant teddy. I felt smarter than most, knowing how it would end. We all know the son will get the giant teddy, which he does, but we also know that he’ll have a choice between two boxes, or in this case, two balloons to burst and he’ll pick the wrong one. Brown will make him, but we don’t know how. This trick comes from an old show on American telly. When there are only two boxes or balloons left, the audience (suckers) believe it’s fifty—fifty, and they should stick with what they have. Statistically, that’s wrong. The odds are stacked on switching boxes when you’ve a chance. Brown knowing that put the box/balloon in plain sight, holding it higher than other choices. The boy gets it wrong. The audience it wowed. The boy gets his giant teddy as a memento anyway. Nice.

Mary, my partner, went to a psychic night in my local last week. I asked how it had gone. She said the clairvoyant she got was completely rubbish. She asked if she recently had a problem with driving. Funnily enough I’d a nuisance phone caller telling me the same thing. She wasn’t clairvoyant, just fishing for the thousands of folk each year that drive and have accident. Mary doesn’t drive. No accident there.

Brown’s ability to read his clients from the clues they gave him verged on the superpower. If he’d went to my local and been able to tell so much from a single piece of scrabble, a metal insignia, a pregnancy test, and something else that slipped my mind, was up there with Sherlock Holmes being about to pick out the right kind of tobacco from 1000 brands.   

Showman that he is, he ended the show with a kinda Billy Connolly moment, when the joke he told earlier finally gets the punchline it deserves. A fish really does go to heaven. Alleluia, atheist, moral philosopher and religious debunker, Derren Brown.   

Rebecca Humphries (2022) Why Did You Stay? A memoir about toxic love self-worth.

I didn’t know who Rebecca Humphries was. Look at the title. What does it mean to you? Listen for the semi-ironic tone. The cover is a portrait of an upper-crust lady in a peacock coloured dress on a chaise lounge, pondering. In the background, a dour-faced gentleman in black, barely visible. A chapter titled ‘Brave’.

Blurbs from Emma Thompson. ‘Fierce. Game-changing. Urgently necessary. Brilliant, brilliant and did I say brilliant?

Marian Keyes: ‘Dazzling, absolutely sparkling.

Glamour: ‘A magical, magical book.’

Rebecca Humphries sounds like Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize twice. I wondered what she’d done. Well, it’s a long story (404 pages) and mildly entertaining. It begins with Author’s Note:

‘I never wanted to write a book.’

Millions of people on Amazon never wanted to write a book, but somehow it pops up on their feeds. They’re authors by default, but not their fault. Every celebrity that’s eaten a Curlywurly tells you how difficult it all is. 177 000 people post on my blog site every year. We somehow never intended to. This post is a mental tic, nobody can read into it. And few than a handful bother, which I’m grateful for, because without at least one reader, writing has no end product. No purpose.

Rebecca Humphries great unsecret is her boyfriend was cheating on her—and he got caught out. She doesn’t name him. Or she does. He’s named in uppercase like God. Him. Or should it be hmmmmm? Chapters alternate between: I stayed—why I did and—I left.

Rebecca Humphries is an actress (actor). Her boyfriend (Him) is a well-known comedian. I looked for a picture of her in the back of the book. None. I don’t know her name. Actors are like writers less than a handful makes a living from acting. I Googled her. I didn’t know the well-known comedian, a Londoner with a funny spelling name, Seann Walsh either. I don’t watch Strictly Come Dancing. But the Strictly curse of two fit youngish people shagging doesn’t surprise me. Anybody that has watched old movies, or read biographies, knows that the stars weren’t in the sky but in each other’s rooms at night.

Cut to Seann Walsh, a bit like Rod Stewart singing ‘Baby Jane, I can’t even remember your name,’ and moving on from blonde to blonde, until age caught up with him. Rebecca Humphries didn’t have an identity. She was the other woman. Framed by his shame.

9/10/18  09.27

My agent calls to let me know he has been contacted by more or less every interviewing body on television and radio from Woman’s Hour, to This Morning. ITV news want to do an interview special. I am asked if I want to have a meeting with a documentary crew who are interested in presenting a programme about gaslighting. We agree to say no to everything.

9/10/18  09.59

My name is the top trend on Twitter…

9/10/18 10.08

I have been emailed by all the same tabloid papers again. All of them would like to discuss a higher fee than yesterday’s should I be interested. A right-wing Sunday magazine has offered five figures (mid-range) to do an exclusive feature. I politely decline.

Fuck. I’d have taken the money. I like Rebecca Humphries. I like her style and self-modesty. Recounting her childhood as an outspoken little girl in Norwich, when she was a bit too loud. But she’s not a game changer. Her boyfriend? Who cares? Not me. We all know that Piers Morgan defends him as having the right to be an arsehole in public and private. We all know what we think of Piers Morgan. Whatever he says, I think the opposite. She’s cute enough to know ‘Brave’ doesn’t cut it. But I wish her well. Read on.

Celtic 1—1 Motherwell

As Van Morrison knows: There’ll be days like this. Callum McGregor scores a 24^th minute goal. Kevin Van Veen equalises in the 55^th minute, holding off Taylor and beating Joe Hart too easily. The Celtic keeper had little to do. But I’ll qualify that. In the first minute, he came out and punched a ball poorly into the danger area (in my day keepers caught balls like that). And immediately after scoring, McGinn found himself clear from a corner at the back post, when he should really have scored and put Motherwell ahead. Statistics suggest we’re the best defensive team in the league, but the old failing of throwing balls into the box is one that pays dividends for teams like Rangers.

Oh, had perhaps the best chance of the second half, fellow substitute Vata getting to the bye-line and putting it on his head. The South Korean should have scored.

In comparison, his fellow striker, Kyogo, had very few touches in the first half. Scotland’s top scorer created his own chance by swivelling his hips and just putting the ball past the post, which would have put us two up and on easy street. Then it would just have been a matter of how many.  

Startfelt had a decent chance with the last kick of the ball to win it. Vata again getting to the touch line and playing him in. The Swedish stopper had another few decent misheaded chances. His fellow central defender, Carter Vickers also missed a similiar chance at the back post.

As expected, Celtic dominated possession, with over seventy percent in the first half. The equaliser was a shock. Motherwell were offering little threat. After their equaliser they wasted time like Porto did in times past. Motherwell keeper, Kelly, led a squad of players that rolled about and went down far too easily. He also had to save from a Kyogo as the Japanese international attempted to chip him. Usually, we finish with a flourish, but it was flat today.

Brendan Rodgers (remember him) once quipped we’d a million wingers. We’re down to the bare bones now. Vata was probably the pick of the bunch. He created more chances when he came on than either Haksabanovich or Maeda did for seventy minutes. Both had half-chances which they didn’t take.

Tomoki Iwata started his second game and helped set up McGregor’s goal. He’s certainly a good passer of the ball and it allowed McGregor to get forward more. Before his goal, he tested the range, curling a shot just the wrong side of the post from outside the box.

Substitute Mooy still looks off the pace (for some reason) but we’re waiting on Hatate as some kind of saviour. O’Riley, after his double last week, seems to be a first-pick again. He’ll need to play better than he did today and does when we play Rangers. Dropping two points today doesn’t matter much. The biggest game of the season is next Sunday. Win that and the treble is pretty much guaranteed. Lose it and its devastation. We’re still Champions whatever happens. Now is as good at time as any to gift two points to the Fir Park side. No freebies at Hampden. Here’s hoping Hatate and Jota are fit, because they’re both got great records against Rangers and most other teams. Vata would be an outside bet to start. But it looks like Haksabonovich and Maeda. Both will need to up their game. Here’s also hoping Hart makes a save when he need to.   

Andrew O’Hagan (2008) The Atlantic Ocean. Essays on Britain and America.

‘Make death proud to take you.’ A quote from a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, but also a starting point and end point for O’Hagan’s bestselling book, Mayflies. The tragedy of making America proud to take us is they already have, with the rise and lies of Brexit and market solutions to every aspect of life. O’Hagan’s essays were written before the rise or the moron’s moron and 42^nd American President. But in an essay on dim-witted Cowboy George (Bush Junior) who really did steal an election, but written in September 2003, he tilts his hat to Bedtime for Bonzo, director John Ford, and how Presidents mimic ham actors from Westerns, hanging tough and taking down the bad guys.

‘If you want to understand the early history of American liberalism don’t look at the experience of the parents, the immigrants, but the aspirations of the children, the ones for whom America offered a tricky answer to the problem of belonging. The parents wanted a better life, they got on a boat. The children have a better life; they can’t find a boat that will take them back to themselves. American patriotism isn’t quite like any other patriotism: it’s born of hysteria and Ford’s cowboy films map the violence of unbelonging.’

Hurricane Katrina, an essay written in October 2005 shows how this plays out. The author takes a road trip with two good old blue-collar workers from North Carolina. They load up a van and go to help. The back of their truck carries a generator, a chainsaw and a toolbox. Two black men on the road. Determined to be would-be heroes and help some of the poorest in American society, mostly also black men, women and children. But they don’t know that. It’s the heroics they like. Maybe they’ll get a pussy along the way. It’s an adventure they’ve bought into. When they get there, the National Guard is deployed. Not to help, but to hinder and shoot mythical would-be looters, who ransack stores for water and rancid food. Helicopters fly overhead, but nobody knows what to do, or takes charge. President Bush drops in and flies away again. Our two heroes turn around and go home. They did the right thing, while achieving nothing more than stories they can tell their numerous kids.

England and The Beatles, May 2004, has shades of George Orwell’s essays about England.  

‘There’s something very English in the marriage of boredom and catastrophe, and the English that existed after the Second World War appears to have carried that manner rather well…’

John Lennon’s remark that the all-conquering Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ met a predicable response in America. In Memphis, for example, threats to shoot them and setting fire crackers off outside their concert venues. The Ku Klux Klan burning Beatles records. Crewcut kids joining in and standing proud and patriotic with the KKK.

The Glasgow Sludge Boat, September 1995, is a misnomer. This is my turf. It should read The Clydebank Sludge Boat. Or The Dalmuir Sludge Boat. He went with pensioners from a parish just up the road from me Our Holy Redeemers (the chapel my da attended as a kid, now dilapidated with most of its parishioners gone) on the Garroch Head. A ship, with no sense of irony, named after the underwater dump ground, where the eight hatches are opened and Glasgow’s waste lets it all hang out ninety fathoms down, half way between Bute and Arran. It carried 3500 tons of sludge five days a week. Their sisters ship the Dalmarnock, 3000 tons. In 1998, a directive from the EEC, made this practice of dumping millions of tons of human waste unlawful. Interfering busybodies. Too many regulations. They also made, for example, slopping out in Barlinnie unlawful. What seemed like a solution to human waste ended. I remember the stink of the sewerage works, and woman in Dalmuir hanging out their washing, but taking it back in again. Now you can hardly smell a thing. Progress indeed.     

Write what you know. In his 23 essays, ranging from Poetry as Self Help to 7/7 and On Hating Football, the boy born 25^th May 1968,  just across the water, near Saltcoats, in deindustrialised Scotland, learned a lot about looking over the next horizon. This shows in his novels. He always returns to his roots. Read on.      

Patrick Radden Keefe (2021) The Snake Head. An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream.

Patrick Radden Keefe starts with the long-playback-shot. 6^th June 1993. A routine police patrol near Coney Island. National Park Police Officers doing the graveyard shift. A volunteer auxiliary force. They had to oil their handcuffs because of the sea air and lack of use. But they spot a ship on the sandbars and hear the screams from the water. Breezy Point, notable for keg parties, has become a graveyard, crime and rescue scene involving Coast Guards, helicopters, firefighters and a scramble to put a media spin on the story of why there were so many Asian refugees in the water.    

The ship was called the Golden Venture. Radden conducted 300 interviews between 2005 and 2008 with, for example, FBI agents, police and immigration officers, but also those that were in the water that Sunday night, and members of the American Chinese community.

Those undocumented migrants in the water came from Fujian in China. In 2000, 58 Fujianese suffocated in the back of a truck destined for London. Stowaways were discorded shipping containers throughout the 1990s. Little Sister Ping operated out of restaurant in Rotterdam. She was advertising, taking on the moniker of a central figure in the book and Snakehead operation, Sister Ping, Undocumented migrants were and are business opportunities. The heroin trade also made super profits, but the market was saturated. People smuggling was supply inelastic which pushed up prices. The product could also walk and no conditions were too primitive or risk too great.

A documented American Fujianese community leader noted: ‘it was better business than drug trafficking. More profit. Less risk. You get caught and plead guilty right away and you only go to jail for six months.’

The CIA suggested there were 50 000 to 100 000 illegal immigrants arriving every year. The US immigration service was dealing with 100 000 new applicants for legal status. Around 2.6 million illegal migrants were already in the US. That number was greater than and exceeded the next twelve countries listed together.

New routes followed the path of bribery, corruption and least resistance. ‘Geopolitical black holes’ like Guatemala.  In the 1990s, for example, Fujianese Snakeheads worked with Mohawk Indians. They smuggled thousands the reservation with the migrants ending up in New York. Authorities estimated the smuggling ring made $170 million before it was dismantled. Sister Ping, an unassuming Fujianese migrant to New York in the 1990s, who spoke little English, her fortune from people smuggling was estimated at $40 million. She painted herself as a modern-day Robin Hood figure, helping the poor huddled masses of her home village get to the promised land of unlimited riches and opportunity. From 1991-1993, she helped bring in a minimum of 5300 Chinese, many from her home province, using 34 different ships flying flags on convenience like the Golden Venture’s 90 passengers stowed below deck, paying around $30 000— $80 000 a head, a multimillion dollar cargo caught on a sandbar, but adding an estimated $7 billion to the Fujian Chinese economy.

Radden Keefe suggests the notion of ‘acceptable risk’ is part of the transaction. Ten dead from the Golden Venture and the other 80 arrested and incarcerated for up to four years seems like a terrible deal. But those sent back to China were persecuted. One migrant, for example, having both his legs broken in prison and taunted that he would run away again. Economic migrants could also be refugees fleeing persecution; one did not and does not cancel out the other, but the political climate penalises both equally. Many of the migrants deported from the Golden Venture found their way back to New York.

The acceptable risk model has led to the anti-people political parties that spread hate as a working model. The irony of dog whistle politics from home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman is their parents are immigrants. Members of the National Front take the same kind of approach to people of colour, like them, as the Hitler Youth did to Jews. Sainted Margaret Thatcher, for example, suggested sending Ugandan immigrants to an unspecified island, not Britain, of course, because we’re not that sort of island. With an immigration backlog of 140 000 still waiting to be processed, the imaginary island grows bigger. Stopping the small boats and sending migrants to Rwanda doesn’t make economic or moral sense. Patrick Radden Keefe’s argument for dealing with migrants is mirrored by arguments for dealing with the effects of global warming in which tens of millions, perhaps billions, will be on the move in the next twenty years. He suggests international cooperation and suggests we’re only as strong as our weakest nation. With most of the world’s wealth projected to be in the hands of a handful of individuals by 2030, a more radical approach to levelling up would be taxing the rich. Snake heads come in many forms. Just look at the moron’s moron and former 42^nd American President. His mother and father were immigrants. Snakehead Trumpet is far more toxic than Sister Ping ever was and on a much larger scale.                   

Storyville: Deborah James—Bowelbabe In Her Own Words, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001l5q0/deborah-james-bowelbabe-in-her-own-words

Deborah James, mother of two children, died recently from bowel cancer. Hence the title Bowelbabe. The second part of the conjunction Babe was how she promoted her charity work, with a tie-in with The Sun. She helped fundraise over £11 million for her work. She was made a Dame before she died, the Princess Di of bowel cancer. This documentary focuses on the last five years of her life, but also offers footage from when she was a child.

The image of a roller-coaster was used for transitions, but it wasn’t needed. Deborah James was relentless and evangelical in promotion of herself and her disease. A rallying cry for life and more time with her kids, while knowing her body clock was ticking faster and faster. She is the heart of the story with relentless costume changes of a diva.

Our NHS comes out well. James claimed that her mum or nan used to collect token from The Sun to get a caravan holiday for a week.  Good story. I saw no evidence of this. In glam and glitz hers is an upper-middle class family. She was a Deputy Head on the fast-track, despite stating she was dyslexic, and spent little time with her kids. James, after being diagnosed, worked as journalist for The Sun. Her boss Rupert Murdoch doesn’t believe in our NHS or global warming, or the truth, even when it does cost him over $1 billion, but that’s another story. Babes are there to be looked at. Perhaps shed a crocodile tear or two over. Not taken seriously. Sham reality.  

I felt momentarily sad when my neighbour’s pal Val died suddenly leaving three kids, or when my stepson’s sister-in-law Lorraine died, leaving two kids aged eight and five. Tragic. It’s the kids I feel sorry for. The destroyed families I feel sorry for. I didn’t know Deborah James. In the same way Captain Tom’s fame was based on his great age, her disease helped make her famous, and even more glamourous. It’s like one of Grimm’s fairy tales, with an unhappy ending. Celebrity tears…   

Kilmarnock 1—4 Celtic.

No longer a must win. Celtic were 4—0 in 18 minutes, and it was just a matter of how many we would score. Kyogo benefitted from a slack back pass from Fraser Murray to skin the defender and beat the keeper for the first goal in the opening five minutes. He also took a penalty on 28 minutes after Taylor had been fouled inside the box, but he hit the post. Maeda was first to the ball, but couldn’t score to make it 5—0.  The Japanese international winger had already scored from a Johnnston cross to make it 2—0. Matt O’Riley popped up with another two goals, both top class finishes from just inside the box, and also offered a man-of-the-match performance. It looked like one of those days when the score at Tannadice, when we hit nine, could be surpassed. But it didn’t happen.

With the game won, the intensity and fluid passing stopped. Just before half-time, our skipper Calum McGregor tried to take the ball past Liam Donnelly and was pushed aside. His shot was saved by Joe Hart, after another rebounded shot by Armstrong, the ball came back to Donnelly who put it away. Hardly game on, but half-time substitutions were inevitable.

Kyogo scored the first, missed a penalty, but the biggest cheer was for his closing down, rushing back sixty yards to put a tackle in. Oh replaced him. It was the South Korean’s chance to impress the watching Jurgen Klinsman. His national side’s new manager. Oh was booked for a high boot, had a half chance from a cross, but didn’t see much of the ball as Celtic had a poorish second half. Turnbull and Mooy and seventeen-year-old Rudi Vata came on in 70 minutes for McGregor, Maeda and O’Riley. The countdown to the league title continues. Nobody will remember this victory at Rugby Park tomorrow, apart from another seventeen-year-old Ben Summers who came on for Haksabonovic with two minutes remaining to make his debut. The game that really matters is the one at Hampden in two weeks’ time, which tells us whether it’s going to be a double or treble-winning season. Nobody at Celtic would say that, of course.  Yuki Kobayashi’s crisp passing from the back may get him more game time, but it won’t be against Rangers, and we know it will be Starfelt and not Carter-Vickers that will drop out. Tomoki Iwata strolled it, but O’Riley may have done enough to get in front of him for a first-team jersey. Mooy came on and was poor on the plastic pitch. The Australian has been sensational, but he’s dropping down the first-team-picking order, especially when Hatate comes back. Sead Haksabanovic didn’t score and didn’t do enough to take Jota’s position, but he’s a great player. Most of the best early play tended to come down Maeda’s side. He flashed a ball across the six-yard box in less than two minutes. That pattern continued until half-time. At full-time it was time to get away and move onto the next game against Motherwell at Parkhead next week. It’ll be interesting to see who Postecoglou starts with.     

Carl MacDougall 1941—2023.

SONY DSC

Carl MacDougall was moving house at the end of 2018. I offered him a bookcase from a house clearance, which he accepted. There’s probably a metaphor still lying about in the rain somewhere. He was my tormentor, appointed by Scottish Book Trust. An author of fiction and non-fiction, whose work Scots The Language of the People, was also a four-part BBC television series in 2006 which he presented. He wrote the introduction and edited, The Scottish Short Story, The Devil and the Giro, which will probably never by bettered for its breath and depth.

He lectured, wrote for theatre, and was President of Scottish Pen. We met four times near Glasgow’s Central Station which was convenient for both of us. Those were the good old days. I normally only passed two beggars on the way to meeting him for tea and a bun. I kept a pound handy for each hooded figure sprawled on the pavement or unpoliced doorways. I blamed Thatcherism. Carl’s dad had been a waiter, so he knew what it felt to be relying on handouts and palmed off with bits of chocolate gateau and frozen promises. I did too. I’d almost been arrested for aggressive begging in Clydebank Shopping Centre by a policeman who was drunker than me, but let me off with a mumbled warning since I was collecting for Amnesty International. 

The first few pages of my manuscript, Grimms, had been sent to Carl before Christmas, but he wasn’t taking anybody on. Beggars squat outside Waverly station on a blanket meditating. International visitors think they’re a tourist attraction, part of the Fringe. The top pitch spot, but I’d need more than a quid. Asking for directions cost more. Edinburgh has more beggars-per-square mile than any other city apart from London. Scottish Book Trust has its headquarters in the old posh part of the city. We met in a fancy café nearby. A cake was so expensive I only chewed half of it and slipped the rest into my pocket to show my wife. We could both stare at it together.

Carl was a wee guy, twenty year older than me. He dressed in black like Johnnie Cash. With his tousled grey hair, he cocked his head and gave me the thousand-yard stare. I was unfazed. Big families. My elder sister Jo used to stare at me like cross-eyed when she accused me of picking my nose. Someone Always Robs the Poor was Carl’s last short-story collection. He was aware that even your sister could turn out to be a closet Tory. Life was funny that way.

 When Carl was born, The Brain Trust was on the Radio. Radios were sturdy creatures with four carved legs, Bakelite buttons and panels. They could be rented from Radio Rentals in the same way our family rented our first television, with a slot for coins. Transistors hadn’t yet been invented. Kids left school at fourteen, but many had been working legally since they were ten, illegally before that. Teenagers didn’t exist. The Kitchen Front was for women at work and at home. Vera Lynn, Sincerely Yours, was for men and women. Those dating would go to the cinema and have a slap up feed of mushy peas and vinegar. On the same year as BBC News announced the Clydebank Blitz, three people were killed in a Tramcar Crash after crossing Nitshill Road, near Darnley Fire Station. Hitler’s Deputy, Rudolph Hess, in parachute harness and tangled in a tree was found by a ploughman outside Glasgow . He told him he couldn’t park his Messerschmitt 110 plane there, even if he did have a personal message for Winston Churchill.

Carl had a gripe with working with retired English teachers that were set on writing the great Scottish novel. He asked a few questions that established I wasn’t Rudolph Hess, hadn’t as far as I’d known taught English, or been admitted to any great establishment. He wanted me to tell him ways in which I thought he could help me in the same way National Service hadn’t helped him. All writers are liars and can talk about their work as if it actually exists. I waffled on hiding the not-so-great secret, which was your Carl MacDougall. You can help me get published. Full stop. But perhaps not a full stop with uppercase capitals?

He demurred, but Carl was good at that too. He said my work showed a great sense of place. He tapped at the page at the bits he liked, which weren’t many. Chaz and his henchmen and the fake Crombie. Perhaps Carl got buried in his black version of that jacket from the seventies. I’ve got a coat very like that in my wardrobe. I often lost the plot. Not having one helped. Neither of us favoured happy endings. But I wanted to ask him to write a blurb for Grimms, which I’d renamed Beastie. Spellbound had agreed to publish it. Writing is the easy part. Selling the hard part would have been my selling point to him. A bit like people smuggling, word of mouth goes a long way. I was hoping Carl would help me get my novel into the main stream, the radio, or even the telly on the BBC. Dream big. Dream stupid. He’d written in his short-story collection, Elvis is Dead.  Carl was always ahead of the game. He’s dead too, like Elvis, but not like Elvis.  RIP.