Secrets of the Bay City Rollers, STV 9pm, STV Player, directed by Chris Boudim.

https://player.stv.tv/summary/secrets-of-the-bay-city-rollers

I grew up with the Bay City Rollers. My older brother, Sev, was meant to look a bit like Les McKeon, the lead singer. The latter died in 2021, aged 65. My brother about thirty years before that.  My sister Phyllis had Bay City Roller pictures on her wall. All the girls did. Wee Emily, my brother’s girlfriend, had the cut-off tartan trouser and scarves and even a kiss-me-quick hat with a tartan band.  Rollermania was a normal part of life. My mate Jim McLaren sometimes murders Shang-a-lang in karaoke. It’s an instant take-back, a madeleine moment, to a time when we were kids. Nicky Campell takes us back to the seventies when, hard to believe, but the Rollers were one of the biggest bands in the world. It was all over by 1978, when the band split, and had a million comebacks, with copyright disputes over the right to use the name, Bay City Roller. Tales of lost millions pointed towards their manager, Svengali, and serial paedophile, Tam Paton.

Underneath the tartan scarves and the daft, but catchy numbers, Nicky Campell sets out on a personal quest to link the physical and sexual abuse of young working-class Edinburgh boys, many of them in the local-authority-care system, to sexual abuse by staff members of Edinburgh Academy, the upper middle-class establishment which he attended.  I wasn’t sure if he’d been sexually abused, because he danced around that, but he knew somebody that had. He acts coy in front of his daughter, while saying nothing very much. Cut to images of trees in the twilight.

Staying on the safe side. 1975, the Bay City Roller had their first UK number 1.Campbell reveals that the first chat hit had been promoted by a BBC insider, Chris Denning. The price of fame to get fucked by an old guy. Nobby Clark, the frontman for the band, before Les McKeown wasn’t for naming which band members—if any—answered the call from Paton to step forward. He refused, with the implication, that’s why he was booted out.

He interviews the one that got away, Gurt Magnis, a Danish kid that played in a support band with the Bay City Rollers. He told the viewer in fractured English how Tam Paton worked. His modus operandi. Promise the pretty boy, he’ll be promoted and put in the front line of the Rollers. Paton ordered Gurt to come to his room. He didn’t go. Other thirteen or fourteen-year-old boys like Pat McGlynn joined the band as a replacement for another fresh-faced teenager, Ian Mitchell, who’d burnt out. McGlynn told how Paton had raped him before he joined the band and raped him afterwards when touring. Plying him with drugs first.

An anonymous source face wasn’t show. He’d attended parties at Paton’s Place. He was thirteen when he was raped by Paton and other celebrities that were attending his parties. His job then became to recruit other youngsters living in care homes nearby. To bring them to Paton’s Place to be raped. He’d be left alone—but sometimes not.

Careful editing shows Campbell asking who else was at these paedophile rape parties. No surprise, Jimmy Saville gets mentioned.  Celebrities, well-known faces, but none other named.

Les McKeown fills the gap. The big reveal, with Campbell simpering over the former Roller’s wife, Peko and their son, Picko, was Tam Paton raped him too.

The programme finished on a high note. Woody has got the band touring again. Another version of the million previous versions of the Bay City Rollers, Shang-a-langing along, and singing their greatest hits. Even an elderly man has got to make a living. I’m left with a lingering regret that those child rapists that haven’t died like Tam Paton are still out there. Nicky Campbell does a travelogue into the tartan past with his daughter, and I’m not sure what she brings to the show—there’s stacks of them on telly—but with no real sense of closure.     

Massimo Carlotto (2006) The Goodbye Kiss, translated from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti.

Georgio Pellegrini has an epiphany. He’s like to open a decent Italian restaurant. One that would allow him to blend in with those that doesn’t worry about money, respectability, or the need to pay the cops to keep them off their back. He’ll just need to pull one last heist.

Pellegrini has to factor in being double-crossed. Formaggio, and the insider who provided details of the armoured truck, and how much loot it is carrying, can easily be murdered before the operation. The Croats, Romi and Tonci, who’ll take out the guards with their telescopic sights, and high-calibre weapons, will be trickier. The Spanish trio, including the beautiful Francisca. They’re left-wing anarchists and want to take out the Croats for their ethnic cleansing and murder of unarmed innocents. But it’s all about the money.

Pellegrini told them he’s a grass and it working for the cops. He’d done his time. Up for a series of robberies and the murder of a night watchman, he’d fled to the Central American jungle and joined the movement. He’d have to prove his loyalty by murdering his friend, the (other) Italian.

‘The alligator was gently bobbing belly-up. It’s been picked off because it started to get too close to the camp, and nobody wanted to lose an arm of leg. The sweetish stink of decay mingled with the sense of the jungle. The first cabana stood about a hundred feet from the clearing. The Italian was calmly chatting to Huberto. He felt my presence. He turned and grinned at me. I winked, and he resumed talking. I came up behind him, took a deep breath and shot him in the back of the neck.  

  No witnesses. The Widow of an ex-Mafia chief who has been turning tricks to make a living knows the score when he uses her place to lie low. She suspects she also might not make it. Pellegrini convinces her she is wrong, but not very hard. He might even have fucked her if she was younger. The way the Croats want to rape Francesca. They got a taste for that in their war. Anneda, the cop, has his boot on Pellegrini’s neck. He’s running the show, and has left his mark on him. Their plan to take out all the others and split the loot is risky because Pellegrini is unsure he won’t be another corpse. Anneda, the last man standing. The loot split one-way. But he can live with that.

Pellegrini has done a lot of growing up since his stint in the jungle, when he was in his twenties. He’s hitting forty. He’ll do what needs to be done.

A crime novel, where the criminals are in power. Pellegrini wants a piece of that citizenship. Massimo Carlotto shows a grainy snapshot of Italy. Corruption is woven into the civic structure. Morality doesn’t come into it. Money is what matters. End of. Read on.  

Scotland 2—0 Georgia

Celtic Captain Callum McGregor usually racks up more hours playing time than any other non-pub player in Europe. He never stops. Add another four hours to that total. And an opening goal after six minutes. A second goal added by Manchester United goal machine, Scott McTominay, four goals in five games for Scotland. An absolute sitter missed by John McGinn after about two-and-a-half hours, and just before half time. A fresh air swipe near the penalty spot by the Bannkie. Seria-A and Napoli star Kvaratskhelia missed a penalty in the last minute of abnormal time after the referee adjudged the ball of have hit Hickey’s arm.

Scotland just seem to keep winning games. The fourth on the bounce. 12 points out of 12. Even Scotland with a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory—and with two places up for grabs in what seemed like a difficult group—look fated to qualify for Germany.

Ryan Porteus was unlucky with a header, but he should have perhaps scored. McGregor bent a shot around the wrong side of the post. Kvaratskhelia’s ball across goal forced Gunn to palm the ball out. It wasn’t a particularly good clearance. I thought Mikautadze had scored, but he’d somehow hit the side netting. It was almost as bad as McGinn’s miss.

Man of the match, the groundmen.  I don’t usually shout at the telly unless Celtic are playing. But I had to remind them the commentators had run out of the things to say about a game that had lasted six minutes. If you look at the replays, you’ll see the guy leaning on the brush. I was lip-reading. He was saying to his mate, ‘This is fucking great. Double time. Slow down mate. We’ll get at least four hours overtime out of they stupid cunts. They Georgians want the game abandoned. Fat fucking chance of that. This is Glasgow. It’s always fucking raining. This isnae even real rain. This is just a shower. I’m taking my jacket aff. Look at that rain tan! Slow doon, mate.’  

Return of Brendan Rodgers.

I was going to write about the story of antidepressants. But I’ll just tell you what you already know about Brendan Rodgers. The placebo effect is one of the best known but least documented occurrences in medicine. Neil Lennon was a placebo manager. He came in and got us over the line when Rodgers jumped mid-season to Leicester. Many of us expected Rodgers to go, but it was the way he did it and the lies he told. If Sainted Brendan did what Postecoglou done, and waited until the end of the season, some Celtic fans wouldn’t have been happy, but most of us would have understood.

I was in the Smiddy Bar when my mate Mark Purdie told me Mo Johnston wasn’t signing for Celtic. He was going to Souness and Murray’s Rangers. This was when phones took coins. Ten pence got you long distance. Two pence got you a whopper or Anton Rogan. Before Murray sold Rangers Football Club for a pound. And a guy called Green bumped him for the money. I didn’t believe my mate. I thought he must have been drunk, because I was steaming. As we know, Mo Johnston would never sign for Rangers. Brendan Rodgers will never return to Celtic. You know who his fist signing is going to be—Mo Johnston.

His second signing will be Ilkay Gündoğan. You’ve probably never heard of him, because he’s a free transfer. Jonny Evans is an old guy also on a free. I’d sign him too. Ange- ball no longer exists. We’re going to be playing Brendan-money ball. Shopping in a different market.

I’m going to give this new guy a chance. He knows his remit is to beat Rangers five out of six times a season (we’ll allow an away draw) and do something in Europe. Imagine you’d won the lottery. Brendan Rodgers has already got that kind of money. If it’s not working for him, he’ll walk, or we’ll push him. His mental health will be on the up and up. So we better keep the young secretaries away in the sweetie jar, lid closed. Rodgers is as guaranteed as the bookies can make it that he’ll win over 95% of domestic games. In Europe, well, emm. Who knows?

But we’re in Europe. In the Champions League. That’s a major attraction for someone of Rodger’s ego. It means Zadok the Priest. Bags of cash and prestige. Full houses at Paradise. All the good things the ex-Leicester manager missed.

Dermott Desmond’s wooing of Rodgers has also been good for us. Many of us probably couldn’t care less if Gavin Strachan and John Kennedy fucked off with Ange. But they know the players and the players know them. Continuity.

Rodgers throwaway line that ‘we’d about a million wingers’ still stands true. But he must have been reassured that he’d be given money to spend on transfers. We’ve also got a million midfielders. What we need are better defenders and another goalie.

If we lose Kyogo, we’re in trouble. But I always argued a Celtic centre should hit 30 plus goals a season. I’m also a big fan of Reo Hatate. The guy oozes class. I hope we get another season out of both players before they’re gone. Nothing stays the same, but our love for Celtic.

Brendan Rodgers has been here and seen it before. He’s signed a three-year deal for what most of us would consider a fortune, but few of us would put chump change on him seeing it out. What matters isn’t what happens in three years. What matters is who we play next and winning the league again in the coming season. Perhaps even doing something in Europe. As for Ange, I don’t give an Australian flying fuck. He’s history. Hail, Hail, Brendan Rodgers.    

Alex Kane (2023) Janey.

Local author, Alex Kane, (a pseudonym) tends to write what you know. Janey slots into the genre of Scottish Noir also known as Tartan Noir. Writing is a verb, not a noun. This is Kane’s ninth book. She does her talking on the page. Lets the gods of Amazon decide. Most writers tend to be women. Eight out of ten readers are women and they prefer heroines rather than heroes. A virtuous circle. The protagonists in Kane’s novels tend to be women you might know or have met. Janey Hallahan is described as being like Queen Elizabeth II. Her faithful husband, Carian, gets the bumbling role of Prince Philip.  But in noir fiction, a crime has been committed. Sometimes it may be a crime against humanity. And we’re not just talking about royalty or would-be royalty, with the royal ‘we’, instead of I. Think Maggie Thatcher. Instead of the Iron Lady running Britain, and Scotland into the ground with experiments such as the Poll Tax—as shown in Dougie Bain’s Booker winner, Shuggie Bain (with its boyish image of crucifixion on the title pages setting the tone) and his follow-up novel, Young Mungo—Janey Hallahan imports and exports illegal drugs. Her face is on the cover. She runs a criminal empire from Ireland in all the major British cites, but she’s inherited a problem—Danny McInroy. He wants to be Glasgow’s drug king.

The godfather of Tartan Noir, William McIlvanney’s books featured working-class characters. In particular, his series of Laidlaw novels, Detective Laidlaw didn’t set out to solve a crime, but to solve humanity. Taggart on STV was Laidlaw’s bastard child. And it allows me to re-use one of my favourite lines. Everybody in Glasgow was an extra on Taggart, even if they werenae, a murder had been committed and you were suspect.

Plotter or pantser? The latter is the technical term that smug writers use. The queen of Scottish Noir, in terms of money and sales, Val McDermid, for example, is a plotter. Each of her characters has a file on them. She knows where they are going. And what they are doing and why. Like metre in poetry, it allows for innovation. Words matter. But as an ex-reporter, she knows how to write copy and how it will all end.

McIlvanney, I suspect, like Alex Kane, was more a seat of his pantser. Plots were turnips grew. Characters led. The author follows taking testaments and waiting to see who will be crucified.  

Alex Kane’s characters are familiar to most Glaswegians and Bannkies. We know who the drug kings are, the cars they drive, and even where they live. Gangsters are a collection of stereotypes. On the knotted file card in my head, I’ve got a gangster who told me his cock was sore, he was sick of shagging. He’d four different birds on the go, including what he called a Chinky one, whose dad he supplied, but the old guy didn’t know. The gangster went to Sunday Mass, and Communion, but not to Confession to wash away his sins. He laughed, he couldn’t trust anybody. No revelation about love or death. He didn’t see himself as a bad guy. He supported local charities.

Janey Hallahan, in the same way, views herself as successful business woman that will do what it takes to keep on top. The opening scene is set near Old Kilpatrick, where I live. Old Dalnottar Crematorium and Cemetery. My mum and dad and brother have a headstone there, but I’ll avoid having one for a wee bit longer, hopefully.

Cancer kills more than half of us, mostly auld yins, and in Janey more than any serial killer. It might even grow into what might be called a theme. Geo McInroy, Danny’s stepdad, dies of it. He ran Glasgow, but what most folk don’t know is he ran it for Finn and his daughter, Janney Hallahan. I’d guess he’s modelled on Arthur Thompson. And like Arthur Thompson, his son, Arthur Thompson (junior) also called Fatboy, couldn’t hold his dad’s legacy together. But Danny isn’t Fatboy. He’s a pretty boy. Women are drawn to him. And he is street-smart.

At his stepdad’s funeral,     

‘Danny wanted to smash Janey’s face in. He knew he was trying to push his buttons. And it was working, but he wasn’t going to allow her to see that.

Janey was the most powerful women he’d ever known, and it grated on him because women had only ever let Danny down in his life. Women didn’t deserve to have power and control. Especially not women in their fifties, although Danny didn’t know Janey’s exact age. He guessed early fifties.’

Matricide and misogyny versus Janey. But the reader knows who’ll win, or the book would be called Danny.

In McIlvanney’s novels police and civic corruption are rare beasts. In contrast, Massimo Carlotto, The Goodbye Kiss, the prettyboy protagonist and sociopath banks on the cops being as corrupt as him. Here Prettyboy Danny has five senior detectives (DCIs) on the take. He pays Councillor Derek Liddle of Glasgow City Council over a thousand quid a month. They are at his private-member’s club, Club Envy (owned by Jenny Hallahan) and he’s set each of them up with an escort. But Danny wants his money’s worth.

The ‘Wee Man,’ Paul Ferris walked free from alleged murder of ‘Fatboy’ from the High Court in the eighties. He claimed  civic and police corruption was rife in Glasgow. Ferris named The Licensee, Thomas ‘Tam’ McGraw as being a police grass, and Thompson senior of setting up his rivals in a quid pro quo with DCIs.

Danny takes this pro-quo a bit further. He gets DCI Stephens and his best mate, Rory, to dig a shallow grave and help bury his murdered girlfriend and his past.

Danny’s still rising. The reader is about half-way through 356 pages. There’s always space for change. The Carbeth huts, where the body is buried, is a beauty spot. Ralph Glasser, Growing Up in the Gorbals, is a book I always return. His journey from boyhood to manhood and meeting fellow travellers on the hills. An old bus converted into a store. Talk of the Wobblies, Communism and world revolution. The world turned upside down. A grand setting for Janey to stash her drugs in the lockups and take back what was hers.

Audio versions of novels are a growing market. I’d think Janey would take about a working day, or eight hours to listen to. A female narrator. If I’d the job of editing Janey, I’d lose about 15 000 words. That’s another story. Read on.            

Tiffany McDaniel (2023) On the Savage Side.

Tiffany McDaniel dedicated her book to the Chillicothe Six. On the dedication page, she names the victims.

‘Charlotte Treggo, 27. Disappeared May 3^rd, 2014. Still missing.

Tameka Lynch, 30. Disappeared May 2014. Body discovered in river.

Wanda Lemons, 37. Disappeared November 4^th, 2014. Still missing.

Shasta Himelrick, 20. Disappeared December 2014. Body discovered in river.

Timberly Clayton, 38.  Disappeared May 2015.  Found shot to death in the weeds, May 29^th, 2015.

Tiffany Sayre, 26. Disappeared May 11^th, 2015. Body found near river.

McDaniel’s creates six factional victims. For example,

Office of Ross County Medical Examiner

Chillicothe, Ohio

Report of Investigation By County Medical Officer

DECEDENT: Arcade Doggs                  GENDER: Witch

OCCUPATION: Archaeologist/             BODY TEMP: As cold as her house.

Sister/ Finder of the horses.

HAIR: Red as a flame.

WOUNDS AND MARKS:

Daffodil tattoos in back of hand, inside of arms, wrists and shoulders. Green stems. White petals. Gag around mouth. Leaves stuffed into her throat. She couldn’t scream. Body was dragged for some time. Skin along backbone scrapped off. Spine exposed. Heart had already stopped pumping when kick marks on face and rib cage were made. She was beat for a long time after death. There was anger for her. Numerous fractures to the left and right side of the chest, consistent with heavy objects being placed upon her. Daffodil tattoos on the back of fingers.

…There are daffodil tattoos on the skin. Unsure if they are things that have been given. Or things that have been taken. A crown of twigs and leaves upon her head. The last queen of Chillicothe.

PROBABLE CAUSE OF DEATH

Living on the savage side.  

Arc and Daffy live on the savage side. Identical twins. Daddy died from an overdose. Mum is following daddy, needled by needle. Her work as a prostitute keeps the habit going. Aunt Clover is on the game too. Mamaw, their beloved granny, gets hit by a car. She dies. A john, the twins nickname The Spider, uses their mum for sex. But when he spots the twins, and how pretty they are, they’re fair game. They’re ten when their repeatedly raped. Aunt Clover walks away. The Spider is a cop. She doesn’t want trouble. That’s living on the savage side.’

McDaniel asks the question: What is a life?

Her previous books also set in Ohio, The Summer That Melted Everything and Betty are triumphs of savage lives. Incest, murder, rape and love grow bold on the page. I ponder if authors write the same story over and over until they get it right. It’s a weakness of mine. Betty, in particular, was so right.

On The Savage Side is not wrong about the world of poverty, or the mythology of women being the keepers of light. I wonder if I’ve grown immured to her poetic license. Superimposing black-and-white images of the river, and allowing it to speak directly to the reader, doesn’t work for me.  

Men in her other novels are grotesques. The more upright they appear the greater license to unravel and show their fucked-up world we live in. The narrative switches between when Arc and Daffy were ten, before The Spider raped them, to when they were twenty and selling their bodies in the Blue Hour. They buy junk like their mom and fade away. Society classes them as junk. Disposable. Barely worth a fuck.

Highway Man, ‘dipped in evil’, The Spider, Welt, Violin Man. Men as misogynists who inflict pain on women because they can. They are all suspect in ‘River Man’ serial killing of women. McDaniel’s puts forward a good case that the real crime here is poverty and addiction. Nothing to see. Move on. But I wonder if the author too has crossed that line. Characters become caricatures. With the rapist, moron’s moron, and 45^th American President once more running for President, that can seem unlikely as his fellow narcissist sociopath, Jeffrey Epstein, handing out sweeties to small children. But I hold a higher standard to factional fiction. Read on.      

Alan Warner (2023) Nothing Left to Fear From Hell.

Alan Warner’s debut novel Morven Caller was adapted and made into a film. He’s one of Scotland’s most successful writers. Nothing Left to Fear From Hell is a step away from the usual write-what-you-know school. A short novella. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight through the Highlands. Most readers know about his escape to France. So we know the ending. We think we know the plot. Why bother?

Warner addresses these issues in Afterward. This could and should be read as a stand-alone document for most would-be writers such as myself. I’m saying that because I agree with the points he makes. I’ve often thought the same thing. Once been told by a creative writing tutor that the seventies wasn’t really historical. Aye, it fucking is.

Warner puts it this way.

‘These episodes, which we visualise in our heads and call ‘history’, really happened to  living breathing human beings. This is the challenge of ‘historical fiction’. Yet I wonder if all fiction writing is in fact historical fiction. Even if I set my novel last week, it is still a form of historical fiction.’

The following extract switches the point of view to the maid of Kiribost.

‘Recognising as what she thought of as one of her own dominion, Mrs MacDonald’s maid gives a stern eye to the shocking, overgrown serving woman walking, along by them, accompanying Factor Kingsburgh. Kingsburgh was a canny man of proper high standing, and with him for his walking companion was a sober seeming Mr MacEachain. But the maid was affronted by the display of that… Irish servant thing, it was said to be, clearly with expectations beyond her scrawny gifts. Even on a Sunday, the sniffen thing carried its skirts shamefully high in both hands. Crossing the low ford at Romesdale stream, it wholly leapt, like a hopping ewe, slapping its knapdallicks – with her starved dancer’s legs, all a-showing in glaured and messed stockings, petticoat swishing, like a pintle-seeking-tumble-me-now-pox trembler in a godless port city, rank with sin.’

In other words, the way the sonsy wench, in the way she’s dressed and behaving, has turned the world upside down. She’s acting like the equal of these good men. You’ve probably guessed the Irish serving wench is Bonny Prince Charlie. After Culloden,  S/he is dressed in drag to escape the English patrols and acting as Miss Flora MacDonald’s maidservant, but with little guile. The Bonny Prince can’t help himself.   

Alan Warner captures the times and the place by going sideways here to the heart of the social order. Everyone knows their place and where they stand. Bonny Prince Charlie’s actions challenge divine providence, but only God knows if he’ll succeed. He seems to lead a charmed life the way he keeps escaping being captured. Others, including Kingsburgh, aren’t so lucky. How do we read fate? Read on.    

Celtic’s Next Manager?

The Champions League Final was rotten. Inter Milan played like Rangers. And like Rangers they could have stolen it in the end. Here’s the thing, commentators started talking about luck. Manchester City were the better team, but we get the kinda crap we hear all the time after beating Rangers. We rode our luck.

Manchester City were lucky. They took off one of the best players in the world, Kevin De Bruyne. They brought on one of the best players in the world, Phil Foden.  And Foden could and perhaps should have finished it. Made it 2—0 for City. But he didn’t.

We’re familiar with that in Scotland. Every Scottish team sits in, and I’m including Rangers in this. They hope to win free-kicks, corners. Like Livingston they whip balls into our box. Successful teams bully our backline. They score, in the same way, Inter nearly got an equaliser.

Two years ago, we were a mess. Rodgers had fucked off for the big payday, lying that he had to go immediately. Lennon had stepped in. Every signing we made was money wasted. Need I remind you about Barkas? Rangers had finished 25 points ahead. All the pundits were predicting Stevie G’s team would dominate for years to come. Eddie Howe kept dithering before rejecting the chance to manage Celtic.

Ange Postecoglou was the answer. Ange who? Remember that pre-season friendly in which West Ham won 6–2. It could have been ten. We lost at Tynecastle. Most of us weren’t convinced, but willing to give this Australian bloke a season in which to turn it around. Edouard, finally, left after missing yet another sitter at Ibrox. Christie left. Ayer, who couldn’t header a ball, was talking as if he was saving his career by moving to Brentford (where he’s on the bench, if he’s lucky and not injured, again).

We got plaudits but not much more out of European football. Rangers proved themselves to be the worst team in Champions’ League history. I know that’s irrelevant, but I’m just reminding you because we hate them. We won five domestic trophies out of six under Postecoglou.

There were rumours he was going that reached a crescendo before the cup final against Inverness. Postecoglou talked the talk, then walked the walk, we’ve become familiar with.

Now the bookies aren’t taking any more bets on Brendan Rodgers returning. Let me put it this way, there won’t be 15 000 supporters clamouring at the entrance to meet and greet him this time (if it’s true). Another payday and using our club as a stepping stone, while trotting out the Julie Andrew’s number about climbing every mountain and some shite about his love of all things green and white.

We’re pragmatists. Jock Stein signed Alfie Conn. Rodgers takes con to another level. But he knows the club. He’s not anti-football in the way that Davy Moyes, for example, plays. We’ve got a champion-winning team. We’ve got Champions League football. For now, we’ve got Kyogo and Hatate.

I’m not wearing that one that Postecoglou won’t raid his old club. We’re a selling club. I’ve no interest in how much money we make from selling players. I want to keep our best players. And with Callum McGregor, they are our best. I’m assuming McGregor won’t go. But if Postecoglou asked him, he might. We just don’t know.

I know no more than you. But I do know that after the Eddie Howe debacle, they’ll be no hanging about. A new manager will be in place. The heavy money is on the new manager, being that old manager. I can live with that. The downside is an outsider like Postecoglou had a list of players he was going to bring. A new old manager won’t have that. So if we get a new, new manager, we can expect, he’ll have a shopping list.

We have time on our side. The new manager will be in place for the pre-season. We don’t need to be up to speed for the Champions League qualifiers. But we need to be up to speed for the league and the Champions League proper. We’re still in a virtuous cycle in which money goes to money, and we can afford the best managers and the best players. Pep should leave City and the Saudi’s sport washing and come manage a proper team. He can bring De Bruyne and Phil Foden with him. We’ll give them the freedom of Glasgow.  

Iain Kelly (2022) The Barra Boy.

The Barra Boy is a whodunnit split into three parts. Beginning (Part One: Ewan Fraser). Middle, (Part Two: The Barra Boy of the title). End (Part Three: Laura Robertson).  What happened in Barra is split into two time frames. Ewan Fraser, a successful London solicitor, thinks he saw Billy Matheson on the other side of the window on the crowded Tube station in 2022. But Ewan is in his fifties. Yet Billy seemed to be the same eleven or twelve-year-old boy he’d known on Barra.

In returning to Barra, Ewan returns to his childhood in 1982. A thirteen-year-old boy sent to live in Barra, because his mum in Glasgow is dying. Maggie Thatcher is Prime Minister. Argentina has invaded the Falklands. Scotland have qualified and are playing in the World Cup. And Argentina lose the first game of the tournament to Belgium. More importantly for Ewen, he meets an islander, Laura Robertson, a girl a year older than him, and he’s smitten. First love.

The back-cover blurb reads:

‘But a dark secret that connects Laura to the mysterious outcast Mhairi Matheson and her son, Billy, is hidden beneath the tranquil surface…’

Yawn. I hope clichéd language such as that doesn’t put you off. The book creates worlds and is much better than the advertisement suggests. Read on.   

Neal Ascherson (2014 [2002]) Stone Voices. The Search for Scotland

Everything has a past, even the future. Let Scotland be Scotland it the cry here, but what type of Scotland and who’s Scotland are we talking about? He takes a page out of Hugh MacDiarmid’s  On a Raised Beach:

‘…We are so easily baffled by appearances

And do not realise that those stones are at one with the stars.

It makes no difference to them whether they are high or low,

Mountain peak or ocean floor, palace or pigsty.

There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined

      stones.’

Ascherson asks us to be honest about our past, while avoiding the use of the word ‘authentic’. He notes, for example, how this idea of authenticity had been weaponised. This book was written before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or the rapist moron’s moron election as the 45^th President of the United States (who unfortunately has a mother born on a small Scottish island, Skye).

Americans like Senator Lott of Mississippi, for the South, also liked to claim Scottish heritage and ‘Confederate Tartan’. Like Margaret Thatcher giving us the poll tax, mangling the Sermon on the Mount and claiming essential Scottish virtues, Senator Lott claimed the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) prefigured The American Declaration of Independence (1776).  What we have here is Braveheart. Mel Gibson’s film was so successful, he made it twice. In one he painted his face blue. In the other he shot at different but the same English soldiers that needed to be sent home to think again. And they might take our liberty, but they’ll never take our Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!

The Declaration of Arbroath was propaganda. Its purpose was convincing the Pope in Rome that Scotland was indeed a kingdom and not a wee part of England. The rhetoric was asking the divine Pontiff not to support Edward II’s claim to be rightful ruler of a land that was his by God’s design, or Edward I’s successful conquest. Bernard Linton, Abbot of Arbroath, put his quill to papyrus. He claimed Robert the Bruce, and William Wallace before him, were directly descended from 113 Scottish kings arriving from ‘Greater Scythia’. Culminating in the crowning of King Robert I at Scone.

The crowning glory was the subterfuge in undermining the arguments for the divine right of Kings as little gods with little or no need to consult with the little people in their power.

‘By the Providence of God, the rights of succession, those laws and customs which we are resolved to defend even with our lives , and by our own just consent, he [Robert] is our King…Yet Robert himself, should he turn aside from the task that he has begun and yield Scotland or us to the English King and people, we should cast out as the enemy of us all, and or subverter of his right and our own, and should choose another king to defend our freedom: for so long as a hundred of us are left alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion. We fight not for glory, not for wealth, not honours; but only and alone we fight for freedom [libertas] which no good man surrenders but with his life.’   

We the people demanded sovereignty in the fourteen century and escape from English rule in the same way we do in the twenty-first century is a simplification. England has not invaded our borders as Russia has invaded Ukraine’s. But neither have we voted for or supported Thatcher or any type of Tory rule from Westminster. The SNP mirrored Jim Sillars’ language and used to the derogatory term of Labour’s ‘feeble fifty MPs’ elected here in Scotland, but had no power down there. Times have changed but not much, after the elections of 2011, with the SNP having the equivalent of the feeble fifty in Westminster, while also dominating Holyrood.  

But the purpose of the Scottish National Party is in the name. A separate nation with the ability both to raise and spend its own taxes. To make its own decisions. Ascherson supports independence. I also voted for it, but as we know, to no avail.

It’s not that I hate England or the English. Rather I hate Tories and petty nationalism trumped up not only as a virtue, but neoliberal necessity. We’ve been here before, of course. The standing stones of the Covenanters signalled a call to freedom, but only on theocratic terms understood by the elect. The Talibanism of Scottish cultural life. We hoped for more. We hoped for better. Instead what we got was David Cameron and George Osborne sucking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. Boris Johnson dancing on the head of the law, while claiming not to. It’s not surprise I want to separate myself and my nation from such Tory scum. We the people demand better. Or I dae anyway.