Dolly Mixtures anyone?
It had been no contest; Clumphy’s head versus a violently swung hockey stick. The hockey stick lost – lying like a choice of Gordon Smith strategies – in splinters! Mind you despite five hundred years of Darwinian selection ensuring that short of a nuclear attack nothing could actually breach the thick, lead-headedness of the “peepil’s polis’ napper, he hadn’t escaped entirely unscathed. He stirred a little sensing a roughness on his lips.
“Hmmmmm. Bertha……” his mind was still a bit confused as the roughness of the concrete stirred the faint memories of his youthful winchin of Bertha Boggle behind the ludge in Bridgeton;
“Ah yer sum burd.” He mumbled in a sort of ‘coming out of anaesthetic’ sort of way and then for some reason started humming ‘two little boys had two little toys’ as Bertha’s image diffused into one of her big brother – Bert. Clumphy sweated a little after all Bert’s lips had been similarly contoured. He squished his eyes shut and whispered
“Aaargh, go away, go away…..” shaking his head from side to side trying to obliterate the mental image of that youthful indiscretion. To this day he crossed the road whenever he seen Bert coming out the pub drunk, the bookies skint or even going into the building society armed.
Meanwhile back on the cell block H…(un)…. floor, a wave of nausea hit him as the taste tickled his tongue buds. Blood and spit! …”Mind you, there wis a lassie like that as well…right clatty she wis, but inventive…..”. But then the disgust swept over him “FFS, soap and disinfectant!”
His last memory, now about an hour old had been one of a fleeting shadow cast by the ceiling lamp, then pain and blackness. He gingerly felt his head, recoiling as a sharp pain ricocheted as he fingered the bruise and broken skin.
“Feckin skelf” he grimaced, not sure if it had come from the hockey stick or his head.
He pulled himself up against the wall as the bruise turned a sort of Ibrox shade of blue first and then deepened to sort of gentian blue while Harvey, Carmel and Al fussed around him offering all sorts of useless suggestions and generally conforming to the caricature of the ‘dumb copper’.
Lourdes sat quietly still at the interview table torn between weighing up the contrast of the apparent success of her cunning plan with the idiocy taking place around her. She pushed the thoughts of how successful she might have been to the back of her mind especially since she really required confirmation and instead focussed on the farce of watching Strathclyde’s finest analyse the clues to solve the mystery of Clumphy’s assault.
Strathclyde Polis are if nothing else trained to look for the quirky, the odd, the lateral view that might give them an edge in dealing with Jimmy crook; and quirky, odd, and lateral were definitely the least ridiculous descriptives of what was happening. Al was examining Clumphy’s head… “Hmmmmm, interesting injury that. The colour is very reminiscent of the weans wae cold sores when I wis wee. Remember that blue/violet stuff they had plastered all over their lips. How things change eh? It’s the strangest events that bring back the oldest memories indeed.”
Carmel sighed wistfully “Gone the way of so many familiar things. Too many familiar things in fact are no longer with us. You never see a wean in callipers now, or club foot, or best of all remember the squinty eyes where you got a pair of free glasses wae an elastoplast over the good eye, so as you had to use the weak wan to strengthen it up.”
“I hud a pair o’ them, that’s how I learned how tae wink…..I said ‘wink’ ffs ” said Harvey. “Do you know, it may be that they were the forerunners of Nike trainers today – If wan wean hud a pair, everyone wanted the same. Unfortunately for those wae the weak eye, the treatment didnae work and fur those who were just slaves to the fashion scene, the bullies in the playground waited till you were blind-sided and pinched yer play-piece.”
“I vaguely remember wan guy a couple of years above me in the secure unit, I mean school, who thought he would go wan better and have an elastoplasts over both glasses”.
“Don’t believe that for a moment. Naebody would be that daft”
Clumphy blushed and interrupted the gash that was being talked.
“Will youse listen to the absolute gash yer talking. Its ma gash that should be concerning us here, who gave me it, why they gave me it and ……and why I’ve no got that wee bottle that you..” he pointed pointingly at Lourdes …” that you brought in here. They must have been after that.
Lourdes sat quietly wondering how long it was going to take before he got round to the point.
“I knew there was something about you. I mean it was a tad suspicious that when everyone didn’t seem to know what was going on, you seemed to know eeverything. Hmmmmmmmm! I think it’s about time you spilt the beans. Don’t you?”
Lourdes was about to answer when Harvey’s phone rang…..”in the penny arcade….” The coppers all done a wee jig, a boomps a daisy and a high five. Harvey finally answered it.
“Sur. Pat Murphy has been kidnapped. Someone has just called in. Kidnapoped outside Celtic park!”
“No again! That happened a year and a half ago and remember the bother then. Mind you it got us all a promotion. Maybe I could get head of the met on the back of this one. Lourdes you telt us he was up to something. What wis it. What is going on.”
Lourdes knew a lot but she didn’t know everything and was loathe to give them any more info that she had, but Pat wasn’t supposed to be kidnapped. He was just supposed to be the tethered goat that would draw the conspirators out into the open. It was a new ball game now.
Eight Months earlier
Somewhere in the Gorbals – October 24th 2010
Under the shelter of the bright yellow awning, sheltered from any untoward buffeting by sudden inclement weather by sturdy windbreakers, Spartacus and his revolutionary comrades sat around the tasteful green and white tiled garden table on his back patio. The shelter was essential after all it was a beautiful autumnal Glasgow day, with the rain bucketing down, the wind pulling trees up by the roots and the heater blasting out at full jet-propulsion force.
Calgacus who seemed fascinated by the patio heater and was the green conscience of the little grouping took his turn at the circulating long and dangly foul smelling roll-up.
“You see that heater, it is contributing significantly to the likelihood that one day soon penguins and polar bears will have to adapt to being tropical animals and Greenock will be the centre of the Vine growing and wine production industry.”
Everyone ignored him just as he ignored the rest of reality as they sat in the despairing silence of the condemned cell, inwardly contemplating the disastrous result earlier that day.
‘Spartacus’ coughed them to order, his eyes demanding attention. Attention was granted and the newly prescribed opening ritual for this first meeting was
Slap! Slap! Slap! …six slaps.
Like musketeers the seven left hands, wrists decoratively adorned with the green white and orange tennis sweat bands, created one suspended deck over the centre of the barbecue table. Spartacus scanned the others around the table looking deeply in turn into each of his companions’ eyes. He was looking for weakness; he was searching for falsehood; he was testing for betrayal.
And then he softly spoke.
“The first convention of the honourable co-operative of the ‘Green Jungle Comrades’ is now in session”!
Each hand in turn was withdrawn and the assembly sat back, attentive waiting for direction.
“From this moment on we not only swear to total secrecy and acceptance of the penalties for breaking the vow, we also when in session – and only in session, refer to each other by our adopted revolutionary names, mine being Spartacus. Do we so swear?”
“Aye, we so swear” came back the unified response.
“Good, and so to start business let us take a wee swally in honour of our new member, Countess Constance Markiewicz.”
Each of those present picked up the wee sherry glass from the table in front of them, some affecting sophistication, their wee pinkie sticking out, sipping genteelly from the nectar. Others grasped the glass like a navvy taking his first drink and gulped the liquid down.
It was sweet, intoxicating, and smelt nostalgically almost of an old woman’s corset drawer.
Tony broke the ice of darkness and silence.
“Like a funeral cortege it was. The biggest mourning queue I’ve ever seen. All the way from the forge to Glesga Cross….”his voice tailed off.
But this was no ordinary evening. This was a watershed in the little groups association with Celtic and Scottish football. The pleasantries over they got down to the serious business of how to attack the perniciousness of a world-wide masonic conspiracy which had infiltrated every known echelon of government, sport, media and industry; A masonic and orange – codenamed ‘Hun’ conspiracy to ensure that under the ‘red herrings’ of the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding rough shod over Afghanistan, Iraq, South America and all points of the compass visiting plague, famine, pestilence and death on the unwary, their secret agenda could progress undiscovered.
The evidence was all there and Tony and his mates were about to blow the whole thing apart by showing that their real aim was not world domination, but to ensure that Ranger’s won the league every year possible and that referees were properly briefed to ensure that this state of affairs – with the occasional levelling decision thrown the Tim’s way for balance – continued into the foreseeable future.
But they needed a plan. A cunning artful and unstoppable plan that would see this little pilot light in the back-garden of a Gorbals suburban home – wife swapping parties by arrangement (See T.Sheridan for details) – would develop into a mass conflagration that would see the world of the devious reduced to ashes of failure.
It was time to take things in hand.
Tony had a quick check to make sure that they were not being overheard and that sufficient drinks were available for the undoubtedly intellectually stressful hours that lay ahead. As a final step he assembled his skins, tobacco and a little bit of highly rated Lebanese black that he had accidently fallen into his hands.
An hour or two of giggling paranoia later, Tony took control of the situation and rapping the table with a metaphorical gavel and steeling himself to remember exactly why they were there and why he was standing on his feet, he opened the covert session.
He silently stood at the head of the table, composing possibly the most important oration in his life. The words at first tombolaed inside his head but then finally reached his lips as a chilling but possibly cryptic reminder.
“Remember this….my friends in Celtic, It IS the right thing to do. We have had chances in the past , glimmers perhaps, half-chances maybe, but …….I wouldn’t have minded a half chance at a younger Goldie Hawn I’ll tell you that” his mind was wandering now. He swallowed and stared at the faces around the table for a clue to what the hell he had been talking about…..There was no inspiration there as they licked the plates and headed off to raid whatever crumbs were still in the fridge.
It came back in a fleeting shadow of a word which he grabbed a hold of and shouted at himself a couple of times to solidify it into the heart of a sentence.
“As I was saying…chances have been wasted but as the horned suppurating homunculus passed briefly into the cross-hairs of our rapier like condemnation we hesitated to slip the hair-trigger. In that instant it was gone.
“But this time it is different. We have a plan….well we will have at the end of tonight. ……After all” he continued “The black beast of the lagoon survives as a parasite on the berries of the smallest trees, the weakest of the animals in a herd, the youngest of the plants in a land’s natural orchard. We must cut off its supply from Mother Nature’s bounty and not only will it be weakened and slowed but as it struggles for survival it will undoubtedly either limp wailing into the sights of a thousand eager pursuers, or it will fail, fall and perish where it stands, releasing our land from its tyranny forever.
“And so we must venture forth and cut down the trees, cull the herd of their runts and pluck Herod like the new sweetest fruit from the orchards.
“It will be soon enough that the monster will succumb and the land ring out in righteous praise and thanksgiving for these wonderful deeds carried out so selfishly on their behalf by we avengers of injustice.”
He looked around at the obviously adoring rapture in which his audience had found itself totally absorbed.
“Are you with me comrades, are you with me?”.
Wee James stood up.
“Always big man, you know that, always……but whit the fuck were you talking about?”
Tony harrumphed as he wondered at the cross he had to bear leading the band of eejits. He pandered to their opacity.
“Did you no’ listen to whit a said. Did you no listen to ma plan?”
“Could you jist gee us it again wan more time. Jist so as we’ve got all the details right. It wis the bit aboot pluckin ‘herod like’ that got me.”
“A fhriggin boycott fhellow bhoys. A fhriggen bhoycott of all away games between here and the day that they finally admit to our accusations.”
Wee Eddie had been listening intently to the whole thing, but his head had swum a few times as the joint had been unevenly loaded and he had got the full force of the oily leb black. He took a deep breath and started on his views.
“Ah actually understood everything you said Tony and ah huv tae congratulate you on your perspicacity……although I would suggest that Cheryl Gillespie would be a better option than Goldie Hawn. Ah always had a thing for Pan’s People masel…….”
Wee james got up and started singing “the summer of sixty-nine” for some reason.
Eddie pulled on another Toke and then continued to a table of totally disinterested mates.
“Suppose it disnae work. Suppose something goes wrong and that though the monster frae the blue lagoon does perish it is only after the trees, the herds and the orchards rebel and destroy us – the hunters of truth and justice. Suppose it is us who breath our last.!!”
Eddie had a wee sniffle at the thought of their early demise. James put a consoling arm around his shoulders and hugged him in a manly but comforting bear hug.
“Whit dae ye mean”
“Suppose the plan disnae work”
“How can it no work, ya wee shite”
“Nae need fur that big man. Jist trying metaphorically speaking of course tae be the black crow of doubt who sits owl-like on yer shoulder like a banshee of impartiality and advocate of the devil. ” He drew breath marvelling at his own invention of a new language that only he understood.
“Whit dae you think there’s a better way then?”
“Well jist mibbe. But afore we have a look at that, perhaps we need to look at where your master-plan might just have a weakness or two”
“Tony slumped bak in his chair. He’d let Eddie ramble on. No wan else was listening. He would have his boycott.
As Eddie started on his analysis, Tony’s thoughts turned to Goldie Hawn, a Goldie Hawn made of ice cream and fudge and toasted cheese.
Eddie stood up and with a wee skip and stagger he opened with.
“Right imagine you are a sheep……….
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