I thought he was dead...

So to give a bit of background to this picture of the back of someone's head...

Hibs have won The Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years and everyone connected with the club in any way shape or form has headed back to Leith for the party to end all parties that everyone had dreamt would happen.

People are raving on the Zebra Crossing outside The Harp and Castle while buses and cars are getting covered in every carbonated alcoholic beverage from Babycham to Prosecco and while I caught my breath, I tried to have a chat with one of the police officers who had arrived en masse with their batons drawn just in case the #exuberance got a wee bit too #exuberant for Police Scotland's liking or The Rangers released another statement, whichever came first.

Later on we head back to a mate's hotel for a bit of a private party where I developed a taste for a bottle of maple flavoured Jim Beam that had been brought along for the occasion. I never normally drink whisky or bourbon straight but the maple took the edge off just enough that I was able to do my best Tinie Tempah impression by drinking from the bottle.

There's an internationally known author in the bar who I'd met once before in Sweden after Hibs were knocked out of Europe by Elfsborg. I remember him because he told me to cheer up (not to mention I've read his books) but he doesn't remember me and he hasn't read my blog. I know this because my mate's later told me that I asked him.

At some point during this exchange I've gone to the toilet and gotten locked in there. In the dark. I've done my best to get down on my hands and knees (by falling off the toilet) to find the pieces of the locking mechanism that I'd heard scatter onto the floor behind me as I came in. I finally had to admit defeat when my mate tries to talk me through the intricacies of putting the lock back together before he finally kicked the door in after I allegedly admitted to being scared of the dark, which is where he found me with my trousers round my ankles, the toilet seat in one hand and the remaining parts of the locking mechanism in the other.

I've gone back to the bar after this and struck up a brief conversation with the author again before the maple flavoured Jim Beam has the effect of rendering me unconscious. The author asks my mate if I'm OK after I've slumped to the floor and my brother announces to everyone that they should ignore me as I'm just attention seeking before I'm gently kicked into the recovery position which is where I remain until sometime later when I'm helped to bed (albeit, apparently, with a brief stop after half a dozen stairs to allow me to 'rest').

I wake up a few hours later and the first question that came to mind when I woke up wasn't 'Where am I?' or 'Who am I in bed with?', it was 'Where are my shoes?'. I eventually found them at the foot of the bed after returning from the same toilet I'd wrecked the night before for an early morning wee.

The effort of getting out of bed, going down and then climbing back upstairs proved to be too much for me and I realised that I was going to throw up. What was worse was that I also realised that I wouldn't make it back downstairs in time so I did the only thing I could and carefully took aim at what might be the smallest piece of porcelain masquerading as a sink and emptied the remainder of my stomach down the drain.

After getting back into bed I realised that throughout this entire event and all the commotion I'd made, the person I'd shared the bed with who I had never laid eyes on before in my life, has never moved a muscle. I'm pretty sure he hadn't taken so much as a breath and I started to think he was, in fact, dead. On the other hand I was merely dying so I made my peace with the situation and got back into bed to try and recover in time for the Cup Final Parade down Leith Walk.















*As it turned out the gentleman in question wasn't dead but was in fact the heavy sleeping actor Tam Dean Burn who had a small part in Scottish soap opera 'River City' and is a long-time friend of internationally known author Irvine Welsh who kicked me into the recovery position and still hasn't read my blog.

The Eternal Battle Between Spiders and Humans

I was sitting at home the other night playing Fallout 4, the latest instalment in the post-apocalyptic wasteland computer game. My wife was at work so I was free to waste some time and immerse myself in the building of a settlement or freeing a farm from the clutches of gangs of raiders or super mutants.

The last thing I remember doing was making sure that the two pink plastic flamingos adorning the grass outside my ramshackle house were just right because immediately afterwards and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the carpet and watched as a relatively large spider scuttled across the floor and cunningly attempted to camouflage itself against the floor to ceiling wall unit we have. Spiders don’t have the ability to camouflage themselves against floor to ceiling wall units or any other types of units to the best of my knowledge (which I hope remains that way because the alternative is a terrifying prospect) so perhaps it had momentarily stunned itself or was admiring my pink flamingos.

Either way, now that I had the spider in my sights I began plotting to catch it and free it into the wild via the window but given the sheer size of the arachnid and the fact that I’d recently read that the changing seasons meant spiders were moving indoors and were horny, I didn’t want it to know that I knew it was there, so I pretended to continue playing the game while I kept one eye on the spider’s movements and another on trying to find things in the living room that I could use to catch it, lest it suddenly find me attractive and try to mount me.

With the glass that was next to me in one hand and a bit of cardboard from the back of a Deadpool comic in the other, just as I stood up the spider seemed to recover its senses and made a move for the relative safety of the darkened corner of the room. Maybe it’s because I’m 6ft 5”, walk on two legs instead of eight and weigh about 17 stone depending on which way the wind is blowing but my lunge with the glass was too slow and I succeeded only in trapping one of the spiders eight legs. I didn’t know what to do next as I was no further forward than when I started. There was nothing I could use to capture the remaining 90% of the spiders body and legs against the curvature of the glass and I know I wouldn’t like it if someone had pinned one of my legs so I let him go and watched him scuttle into the corner he’d been trying to reach all along. I pretended to go back to playing Fallout 4  but I kept my wits about me because I knew this wouldn’t be the last I saw or heard of my 7-and-a-bit legged friend.

It seemed a reasonable assumption that if the spider was going to come out of the corner and lie in wait before trying to catch one of us unawares, the most obvious place would be in the shadow of the blanket that was draped over a chair in our living room, so the last thing I did before leaving for work the next morning was fold the blanket thereby removing the shadow and denying the spider a hiding place. As I hadn’t actually told my wife about the large, horny spider in our flat I thought that if it was going to come out of its hiding place and make itself comfortable (the spider that is, not my wife) then at least she’d maybe get a head start if she had to run away from it.

We exchanged these messages on WhatsApp the following day

"By the way" she said "I killed a massive spider in the flat today, I moved the game chair and it got crumpled underneath it. Like, HUGE".

"YASSS!" I said "I tried to catch that fucker earlier in the week but it got away. I did injure it though which might have helped you catch it and I've been keeping an eye out to go round two with it ever since".

"Are you fucking joking? she asked "It could've got me!".

This isn’t the first time I’ve ran into a spider who didn’t miss leg day at the gym. A few years ago now I stayed in a flat on Slateford Road in Edinburgh and one morning I woke up in a daze (to be fair, I wake up in a daze most mornings, who doesn’t?), went into the bathroom for a wee and out of the corner of my eye saw a large, unfamiliar presence in the bath. I did the only thing I could; pretended I hadn’t saw it, finished my wee and tucked myself back into my boxers before turning on the shower, hoping to flush the spider down the drain.

Imagine my horror as I watched the spider spread its enormous legs over the plug hole, brace itself and then start power scuttling towards the opposite end of the bath. “I’ve just tried to drown my spider flatmate” I thought. “If he makes it to the shower and turns it off he’s going to ask me to leave. I’ll be out on the street at 8am in my boxers because there’s no danger I’m hanging about for that conversation. There’s only one thing for it, I'll need to fight him to the death”.

In an effort to cheer myself up and fill the long, lonely hours at home after breaking up with my girlfriend, I’d been watching a lot of war films that I’d picked up on DVD out of ASDA; Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket, We Were Soldiers, Kelly’s Heroes and Where Eagles Dare to name but a few. None of these helped in actually defeating the spider since most of them were about defeating Ze Germans or the Vietcong but I did have Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from Apocalypse Now in mind as I turned the shower up, closed the plug and started water bombing the spider into submission with cups of water that I filled from the sink. “You can run from some water” I said, chillingly “but can you run from ALL the water?”.

Daa-da-da-da-DAA (SPLASH!)

Da,da-da-da-DAA (SPLASH!)

Da, da-da-da-DAAA (SPLASH!)

Da, da-da-da-daaaaaaa (SPLASH!)

Instead of standing outside in my boxers looking every inch the embarrassment to the top of the food chain I was, I danced around the flat paraphrasing Robert Duvall’s character from the same film. “SPIDERS DON’T SURF!” I shouted “I LOVE THE SMELL OF TOILET DUCK IN THE MORNING, IT SMELLS LIKE LEMON FRESH!”

After a while the spider stopped moving but I continued to watch it intently just in case it had been watching over my shoulder when Owen Wilson’s character from Behind Enemy Lines plays dead under a pile of bodies in a mass grave.  Satisfied that I’d won (and if you wanted to get really philosophical, are there ever any winners in war?) I opened the plug and watched the spider make its final journey.

And then swiftly closed it and every other plug in the flat for the next three weeks.

Punching babies in the face

***Originally posted on the Hibees Bounce website in response to a discussion about a 5 day old baby getting punched in the face by a 63 year old man in a branch of Tesco in Manchester - felt I had to share it with a larger audience***

I read about this at work yesterday and laughed in spite of myself. Then I told someone else at work about it and they laughed in spite of themselves too.

It reminded me of a situation recently where I was tempted to clout a wee shite on a train or plane I was on. They'd been causing all kinds of grief on my particular mode of transportation and I thought "Fuck this, I could just skelp the wee fucker. No-one will be more shocked than the bairn or the parents. No-one will believe what they've seen and with the right amount of confidence I could probably get away with it. Skelp your bairn? Fuck off. Who does that?" It'd be like the flashy thing in Men in Black but a balled fist of punched your bairn in the face induced amnesia instead. 

See if the old boy had stuck with the "I never punched your baby" line, it could have been one of those stories he told on his death bed "Pull your chair closer young man, let me tell you about the time I punched a baby and got away with it". Instead he's probably going to die old and lonely because he punched a baby in the face.

It's not funny but it really really is.

Disclaimer: I do NOT condone punching babies in the face.

The Naked Attraction

The Naked Attraction is a minefield of a show and I've absolutely no idea what to make of it. Culturally speaking I can't decide if it's a good or bad thing for television, dating, society, men, women or anyting else for that matter. Not that anyone would actually listen if I could.

It is, however, a great opportunity to see folk in the scud that you wouldn't normally have had the opportunity to. That's the attraction of the show (pardon the pun), the free pass for everyone sitting on the sofa to have a gander at whatever Channel 4 have served up for your viewing pleasure. Big knobs, wee cocks, shapely breasts, big tits, labia, scrotums, nipples, the whole shooting match. Only the people with a thing for bleached arseholes or otherwise miss out.

I understand the premise of the show, you strip away everything until all you're left with is a physical attraction and a desire to fuck the naked person standing opposite you with none of the other things that make us reject potential partners getting in the way. Which is fine but no relationship will ever be sustained that way because it removes the key element that can often see two people bumping uglies  - a decent bit of chat. Yeah, Channel 4 get them dressed and send them all on a date to the same bar they sent all the other 'couples' to but the only way any actual fucking is taking place is if these people get along.

Maybe it's the enforced nakedness causing some nerves, maybe it's the cameras leaving people tongue-tied but some of the chat on offer doesn't leave me with a lot of room left to wonder why these people have resorted to enforced nakedness to try and get their Nat King Cole. What's the last of your last resorts, folks? Payment?

Tracy, a mother of two and 'contestant' on the show, hasn't been in a relationship for three years and described the dimensions of her vagina as being a bit of a jam jar. I don't care what you look like (blonde, pretty, nice smile), how fake your tits are (credit to her surgeon, good job) or how big or small your vagina is (strawberry preserve apparently), if I'd been one of the two well hung gentlemen she'd whittled her choice of a date down to, I'd have simply walked the fuck off the show because that sort of chat is absolutely brutal and I wouldn't want to put my cock anywhere near her (from a visual point of view) self-described "beef sandwich". 

21st May 2016 - The Wait is Over!

114 years of waiting came to an end for Hibernian Football Club on Saturday 21st May 2016. 33 ½ years of waiting came to an end for me.  Anyone that says I’ve not been a hibby since I exited my mother’s birth canal singing “Glory Glory to the Hibees” is a liar.

There is arguably no competition, no trophy in the sporting world that meant as much to someone as the Scottish Cup did to Hibs and their fans. It’s been so tantalisingly close yet always so agonisingly out of reach from having the team name engraved on the trophy for the third time. Hibs might win the competition again but you’ll never see celebrations the likes of Saturday’s ever again.

We few, we privileged few witnessed something so incredibly unique that no-one alive has seen it. Take stock of that for a second; no living person had seen Hibs win the Scottish Cup until Saturday afternoon. We witnessed history being made in front of our very eyes. This was the moon landing for Hibs. This was our “Where were you when you heard JFK was shot?” and while I wasn’t the second gunman on the grassy knoll, I’ll never forget where I was on 21^st May 2016 when David Gray bulleted home the header that clinched it for the cabbage. I was stood at Hampden with my mates and my brother watching a 114 year old curse being laid to rest.

When Stokes sent Hibs second goal into the roof of the net I turned to my right and practically threw myself at my brother David who was sat on his seat, head in his hands, tears falling from his eyes and we fell to the floor. “It’s fucking 2-2” I shouted in his face “Get your shit together, we’re still in this!” and I went off to reassure my pals he was OK. It reminded me of that famous footage from the 1990 World Cup where Paul Gascoigne has just been booked (a booking which ruled him out of the World Cup Final if England should have made it) and Gary Lineker motions to Graham Taylor that Gazza’s having a wee bubble to himself, only everyone’s wearing Hibs tops and it didn’t go to penalties.

My brother has put up with some amount of shit watching Hibs. We all have in some shape or form at one time or another but most of us can at least conjure up one memory, one period, one group of players to give you a wee bit of a lift and remind you that it won't always be this bad. David’s not had that, he’s had relegation, disappointment, managerial merry go rounds and a raft of bang average players to contend with and it’s pretty much all my fault. His dad was a jambo that never went to games so when David saw me coming home absolutely buckled from trips to see Hibs he thought to himself “I want a bit of that”. Thus, it fell upon me to take him to his first Hibs game, a drab and bad tempered affair against a John Hughes Falkirk side where Hibs had a couple of players sent off and lost 1-0. Welcome to Hibs, pal.

When we were at the League Cup Final a few weeks earlier, it would become apparent that my brother thought (and we all wished) that this would be his moment.  The older but not necessarily wiser heads among us retained that feeling that it could all go tits up having been there and seen it happen on so many occasions before. Needless to say Ross County took the lead after 25 minutes but Liam Fontaine managed to snatch one back on half time which was just enough for the floogdates on the emotion of the day to swing open and David burst into alcohol induced tears.

In the end, it’s the hope that gets you because lo and behold, Hibs succumbed to a late winner from a Dutchman wearing what appeared to be a sports bra. Being a Hibs fan just isn’t fair at times and the tears were replaced with an impotent rage because there’s nothing you can do in that kind of situation. You have so much passion and fire and nowhere to channel it because you’ve got chocolate ankles and never donned the famous green and white of Hibs.

As the fourth official held up his board a week past Saturday to signal four minutes of added time there was a roar from the Hibs fans. The Rangers seemed quite happy to run the clock down at 2-2 and take it to extra time but Hibs had other ideas and David Gray challenged Dean Shiels, forcing a throw in from in front of the dug outs.

If you watch the replay you’ll see Liam Henderson and Fraser Fyvie surge forward. David Gray throws the ball long for Fyvie who drove at the Rangers defence before slipping in Stokes who beat Tavernier (was there ever a time where he didn’t beat Tavernier last Saturday?) and flashed a shot across the goal, forcing the Rangers ‘keeper into a save. Liam Henderson delivered an almost identical cross from which Hibs scored their second and when David Gray connected with that beautiful forehead of his and the ball rippled against the back of the net, Hampden went ballistic.

After 114 years and ten previous appearances in the finals since winning it last, we knew, we just knew that this time we’d done it. The Holy Grail was coming back to Leith and the remaining few minutes were a mere formality. At the final whistle I hugged perfect strangers who responded in kind and we exchanged knowing glances with people who looked at us as if they were acknowledging that our singing and banging on the roof of the stadium had somehow contributed to the result. My brother, meanwhile, was now lying flat out on his back looking in utter disbelief at the same roof I’d been leathering with the palms of my hands for the previous 90 minutes.

My brother looked at me the day of the League Cup Final against Ross County and shouted in my face “You’re the reason I’m a Hibs fan, you’re the reason I’m here”, so full of hope and expectation (and Peroni) that the years of grief and disappointment and shite football and Matt Done's of the world that he’d endured would finally be worth it with a cup win. He couldn’t have known then but Hibs would keep him waiting a little longer for the succour he needed.

As much as I’m the reason David’s a Hibs fan, he’s a big part of why I’m still going. After Hibs had lurched from the ‘Players at Petrie’s hoose’ debacle to John Hughes, Mixu Paatelainen and Colin Calderwood and never actually getting to the root cause of why Hibs were so fantastically and routinely pish, I’d had all of Hibs I could take. I love Hibs but because I’m so pig headed and because they continued to hurt and disappoint me in ever new and imaginative ways, I couldn’t stand to be miserable anymore and rather than be the guy who said he wasn’t going back to Easter Road or wasn’t renewing his season ticket without following through, I simply stopped going.

When Hibs beat Hearts 2-1 at Tynecastle with Leigh Griffiths and Ross Caldwell goals, I was up Ben Vorlich with another mate (who has since started coming to Hibs games and saw Hibs lift the Scottish Cup within about 6 weeks of going to his first game) and only found out the score afterward in a bakers in Callendar where we stopped for post-Munro bacon rolls and carrot cake. That’s how far away I’d gotten from Hibs. I cared enough to check in on the score but not enough to be anywhere near Edinburgh while they were playing. 

Gradually I began going to see Hibs again and sat in the East Stand with David who convinced me to get a season ticket with him. I was there for Fenlon’s ill-fated tenure and realised I’d fallen in love with the team again on the day of that Cup Final despite coming home and my fiancée telling me I looked like I'd been told someone had died.

Being a hibby isn’t just about winning and silverware, it’s about community and camaraderie and one of the things that struck me as I looked around a sea of faces displaying a myriad of emotions last Saturday was that it was about so much more than simply winning the Scottish Cup. It was about sharing that moment with the people closest to you and perhaps most importantly of all, remembering and thanking the people who didn’t live to see it and had probably gotten you the ticket for this 114 year old journey in the first place.

Football has a funny way of throwing up strange coincidences. One of my best mates was married in 2007 shortly after Hibs won the League Cup so it was a strange quirk of fate that Hibs would reach the League Cup Final the same year I was due to be married and we exchanged a wry laugh when we realised I might emulate his slightly unique honour. I would never have dared imagine that the trophy Hibs would lift in my wedding year would be the Scottish Cup.

It’s been a long time coming, Hibs. You have given us all an irreplaceable memory, something no amount of money can buy so you can do whatever you like for the next 114 years and it won’t matter.

 

GGTTH

Mass Hibsteria League Cup Final Special - The Unpublished Article

I've been fannying about with old blogs I never meant to publish and likening them to Oasis' B-Side album 'The Masterplan' when I should in fact be writing something for the Mass Hibsteria League Cup Final Special.

I've no idea why the powers that be allow me to do this because all my writing to date has been a random collection of pish that I continue to force upon friends, family and a small circle of Hibs fans I've never met but befriended on social media anyway. The poor bastards probably wish that Hibs don't make a Cup Final because they know as soon as the Semi-Final whistle is blown and the Cup Final Special is announced, I'll be keener than Adam Johnson with a fans phone number and a signed shirt.

If nothing else tonight's wee flurry of activity might have actually forced me to get the finger oot and get writing. I've been trying to get something, anything down on paper for a few weeks now but various other things have gotten in the way; basically everything that doesn't include writing. Hey, look, a squirrel.

For everyone else submitting an article there are 96 hours (give or take) until submissions are due which in reality is 24 for me because I'm at the Hibs game on Wednesday night and fly out to Berlin on Thursday morning for my stag do so if I don't do it now then there'll be no appearance of the Clown Prince in your MHLCFS .

There's a teeny-weeny part of me that thinks "fuck it, dinnae bother because the last time Hibs were in the League Cup Final you weren't in Mass Hibsteria either" and I'm really superstitious about not doing anything to harm Hibs chances which in itself is a powerful incentive to re-insert my index finger back up my rectum.

The other selfish (so, so selfish) part of me thinks "You could be in Mass Hibsteria when Hibs win the cup in the same year you get married" which is the same bastard that said "You could be in Mass Hibsteria when Hibs beat Hearts to lift the Scottish Cup" and we all know how that worked out.

I've spent as long thinking as it's taken me to realise that absolutely nothing I do will impact on the outcome of a Hibs game. Not the music I hear, the route I walk to the ground, the 'lucky' green socks I wear or the programmes that I refuse to buy because a Hibs losing run ended when I stopped buying them and haven't bought since.

The only thing that will matter is that a good Hibs team takes the field on Sunday 13 March 2016 and plays full tilt, baws oot, Cup Final fitba. If Hibs can do that then we're all going back to Leith, baby!

'Mon the fucking Cabbage!!!