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!!!

Shopping trip

Was in Lidl earlier for a couple of bottles of Crabbie's Ginger Beer and vanilla essence and ended up coming away with pretzel rolls, bananas, cashews and chocolate chips as well. The cashews at 95p per 100g were the most expensive item and it turns out that two large scoops is about 469g. Much cheaper than cocaine but not nearly as good a night in (so I'm told).

I've got a really bad habit in supermarkets of looking at what people are buying because it allows me to imagine the kind of lives they lead. I observed a guy recently who bought two 100g bars of chocolate, two bags of kettle chips, two bottles of pepsi max, two french sticks and a single punnet of cherry tomatoes so I imagine he was single, a virgin, probably an internet troll and if not diabetic now it was definitely in the post.

I got to the checkout and started loading up my essentials and impulse buys when I notice the woman ahead of me is midway through packing her shopping so I discreetly had a look at what was in her trolley; milk, bread, cleaning products, small boy of around 7 years old, carrots, pizza....what the fuck, a small boy of around 7 years old? She must have got the last one because I didn't see them anywhere.

Poppies

Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one. Whereas in the past these arseholes didn't have a medium through which to express themselves nowadays they have cheap and easy access to the internet and social media in particular.

Maybe I'm becoming less inclined to entertain bullshit the older I get but it seems to me that whenever you log on to Facebook or Twitter for a bit of lighthearted relief you find that where there used to be videos of monkeys falling out of trees after smelling their own shite, someone has shared a Britain First post. It's all become a bit tiresome* so thank goodness for blog writers, am I right?

The big debate as we approach Armistice Day is poppies. Why we should wear them and those who choose not to wear them justifying their reasons. National treasure (I.E. Used to be on the telly but no-one gives a fuck about you anymore) Barbara Windsor thinks you can "sod off" if you don't wear one. And now that that's been cleared up we can carry on with our lives.

Except it hasn't been cleared up. All it does it create unnecessary division between people and forgive me for saying but, isn't that how wars start and lives are lost?

I don't wear one and I haven't worn one for some time but that was more to do with the fear of stabbing myself in the finger or chest than any ideological point of view I might have. I did have a small and simple poppy that I'd donated some money to the salvation army for and had left sitting in my car as an almost permanent reminder but it had started to curl at the edges quite significantly, so when the car went in for its M.O.T. I binned it (the poppy, not the car). Shame on me, eh?

I reckon my abandoned poppy is probably doing fine though because everywhere you look these days poppies are bigger, brighter and more elaborate than ever. That didn't happen by accident, so poppies have obviously become self aware and created a support network that'll show an abandoned poppy how to iron out its curls and find a new car to sit in. It might even have advice on how a poppy can become one of those enormous poppies that are so big that they dominate the fronts of cars and vans, so much so you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a Comic Relief Red Nose and that they feed on exhaust emissions. Curiously, they do seem to be bigger on Volkswagens.

It seems to me nowadays it's not enough to show your respect, you have to be seen to be showing your respect and what better way to do than with a poppy so large and deep and round that if you lay on your back in the mountains of Puerto Rico and pointed it at the sky, it could double up as a radio telescope and scour the universe in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Yes, lady in Costa coffee this afternoon, in the highly unlikely event you're reading this I'm talking about you.

Wear one or don't wear one. It needs no more discussion than that really.

*I say this fully aware that during the referendum campaign I saturated Facebook and Twitter with pro-independence articles and opinions and I was a tiresome bore also.

One liners

There's a guy at my work who was prescribed codeine for a cough that he'd developed along with his cold. The doctor said "One of the side affects of taking this medicine is constipation". The guy from my work replied "As long as I get a full nights sleep I couldn't give a shit".

I was talking to my fiancée the other morning and we were discussing the boiled eggs we'd been taking to work with us for our lunch. She said "Have you noticed they leave you quite full?" and I said "Well, when you think about it, you're eating a whole chicken".

And I was talking to a girl at work today about films and games and comic books, how I'm going to the Fallout 4 midnight launch and I'm really excited to have learned that Deadpool will be shown on IMAX. She told me she loved The Big Bang Theory and recently visited Forbidden Planet where she discovered comic book stores were much like what she'd seend on TV. I agreed with her and said "Yeah, you'd be surprised at the number of sterotypically socially awkward nerds that go there...and that's just me".

Only one of these got a laugh; can you guess which one?

Medium coffees

I worked in an office years ago that had so few people in it we could boil one kettle and make a cup of tea or coffee for everyone without having to refill it. The only problem was that the inconsiderate bastards I worked with drank tea and I preferred coffee hated the stuff.

I really couldn't stand tea but for reasons I've never quite been able to put my finger on. The best way I could describe the taste of a cup of tea to me then was lukewarm and bitter which was the complete opposite of a cup of coffee that was piping hot and full of flavour.

In contrast with my colleagues I was not an inconsiderate bastard so it made sense (to me at least) that if they were going to make four cups of tea they might as well make five instead of four cups of tea and one coffee. That's another thing about making tea, it's a bloody cumbersome process of letting the hot water soak into the teabag, giving it a squeeze with a teaspoon and then fishing it out so you can chuck it in the bin. Contrast that with giving your cup of Carte Noire instant coffee a quick but vigorous stir and you can see why I wouldn't want to go to all that extra hassle of making something bitter and lukewarm.

Since then however I've grown quite fond of tea and it's probably got a lot to do with the time I spent in that office. It's better for dunking biscuits in for a start (not that I don't dunk biscuits in coffee but tea is better suited)  and you don't have to worry that it'll keep you awake all night if you drink a cup an hour or two before bed.

I still enjoy a good cup of coffee though and one of my favourite things to do to is just go out and drink a cup while I let my thoughts and the world drift by. It was while I was out having a cup recently that I got to thinking about the size of coffees. Costa do three sizes; Primo, Medio and Massimo while Starbucks call theirs Tall, Grande and Venti. All fancy schmancy names for small, medium and large.

Small is probably what you get at home, medium is probably more than you need and large is probably going to give you an irregular and irreparable heart rhythm if you keep chucking it down your neck in those kinds of doses.

Imagine for a second though you went into a coffee shop and asked for a medium cappuccino / latte / americano then found yourself a seat and sat down ready to let your thoughts drift when you hear a small voice that says:

"Sir, can I have your name please? There's a woman sitting right next to you"

There's no-one else in the coffee shop except the staff so you say "I'm sorry, did you say something" to the barista behind the counter. He says no so you carry presume you imagined it and go to take a drink when a little more impatiently this time you hear the voice again and it says "Sir, I'm talking to you, yes you with the puzzled look on your face, what's your name? There's a woman sitting right next to you who wants to talk to you". The cappuccino you ordered is unmistakably and inexplicably TALKING TO YOU AND ASKING YOU FOR YOUR NAME.

"Uhh, my name's John" you say a little hesitantly as you realise you're talking to a cup of coffee.

"Great, now, you've lost someone recently who wants to talk to you and let you know they're OK and that the dog you lost when you were four years old is in one piece now even though the bus that hit it left it splattered all over the road".

"Hold on" you say "You're a cup of coffee, why are you talking to me about dead people, much less talking to me at all?"

"Well" it says knowingly "you DID order a medium coffee".

What women say...

"Do we have any more kitchen roll?"

And what women actually mean...

"Go and get the kitchen roll that I know is in the cupboard".

Just get to the point already, it's not hard.