Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Scarborough, Yorkshire. The summer of 1983 - maybe even 82: A twelve or thirteen-year-old Ayrshire boy is on holiday with his mum, dad and younger sister. The family are entering some attraction or other - a swimming pool, a wax works, a roller disco, the Krankies Live!?? Whatever it is, there’s a queue behind the family and Dad is paying and there’s a nice cheery middle-aged local man giving out the tickets and chatting warmly with the customers as they enter. He spots the young boy is wearing a football top. It’s a newly-released replica strip, replete with avant-garde white pin stripes. The cashier winks and quips “Rangers? Who are they then? - never ‘eard of ‘em!”. The boy’s family all laugh warmly. The ticket man, naturally, expects a reciprocal laugh or cheery bit of banter from the youngster. The elderly Yorkshire gent is, however, left hanging out to dry as the pubescent prat before him looks right through him, raises his eyebrows in disgust, humphs and mumbles the phrase “for god’s sake …!” and animatedly diverts his gaze to somehwere, anywhere that might be found someone with less ignorance of and lack of respect for the greatest football club in the world (who are, at that point, in the middle of a run of nine years without winning their own league).

The elderly gent is flummoxed. He hopes he hasn’t offended and looks apologetically to the boy’s mother. “sorry, dear - I didn’t mean …” She, dying inside for the man, quickly and gently interjects in her most genteel Ayrshire twang; “NAE DANGER, PAL - YOO”vE GOAT FUCK-ALL TAE BE SORRY ABOOT - IT’S THIS WEE CUNT HERE WHO SHOULD BE FUCKING SORRY… AND HE’S FUCKING WELL GONNAE BE - BELIEVE ME!….”. And, with a “HOH! BAWBAG!”, she proceeds to garrot her son by the red, white and blue v-necked collar of his replica kit. She doesn’t wait til she has him in a quiet corner, away from public view. No. This huffy little ginger prat of hers has just been downright fucking rude to that most rare of things - a genuinely nice doorman: At some point Mater bellows the words which live with me still:

“Alexander!! - the man’s only trying to have a laugh with you! You and your BLOODY FOOTBALL!!”

The old guy wasn’t wanting any trouble. He wasn’t offended. He didn’t want to see me having the shit kicked out me right there and then. He was quite happy for my mum to do it later, behind closed doors, in the privacy of our B&B. But no. He’d been nice, I’d been rude and famiglia Eck had had enough of this “Don’t dis da Gers - not on MY watch!”shite. As Pater stamped on my head, mother kicked my nuts and my ten-yer-old sister aimed her little beach bucket and spade at my kidneys with surgical precision, all of them could be heard yelling “I mean, where does it say ‘RANGERS’ on your shirt”??? Nowhere! The man recognised the crest - he obviously KNEW it was a Rangers strip - you fucking piece of shit … you embarassment to our name … you scumbag …”

Yes, well. That’s how I remember it anyway, Mum! And, before you all report her to the social work (thanks, troops - sob! - you’re my REAL family you are!), I hope this little trip down memory wean has illustrated a mitigatory point about this blogster to you Dear Rangers Readers: I’ve always taken The Gers FAR TOO SERIOUSLY.

You get the picture. You know what I’m alluding to. My on-line reaction to Saturday’s howling and screaming at our own players by some of my fellow Bluenoses may have seemed depressing. It may have seemed depressed! But I’m afraid it’s just part of my make-up now. A bit like my make-up, in fact: I can’t go anywhere without some lippy and a bit of eye-liner and neither can I let any negative remark about The Rangers pass unpunished - or unexplored. In short, if it’s one-to-one and if you don’t have any UVF or IRA tattoos and I don’t agree with what you’re saying or how you’re saying it, I’ll run right through your Rangers opinons, attempting to scatter them with my self-important shrapnel of half-baked ripostes and blunted arguments. Basically, I’m a right royal pain in the fucking arse - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO THE TEDDY BEARS.

So when I’m at Ibrox and am surrounded by people who surround me at every home game and I hear them saying things which are sooooo against my personal grain it feels like someone’s taken a cheese-grater to my nut-sack, I find it very difficult to swallow (Not my nut-sack you understand; I don’t mean swallow my nut sack - now that WOULD be difficult). On Match Day I HAVE to shut up. I have to keep it to myself - as much as I can. But when yer known througouht therRetirement homes of Scarborough, Blackpool and Great Yarmouth for your near-psychotic defence of The Rangers name, it’s a real ego-burster to be forced to allow such comments to go unopposed. It’s a fucking TRAUAMA to hear someone SAT RIGHT BEHIND YOU slag the fuck out Rangers and not actually stick one on them.

Yes, STICK ONE ON THEM. I’d lose my season ticket, I’d lose my right to see my club, I’d lose what semblence of self-respect I have left. And, apart from anything else, I’d lose most of my teeth, my spleen and fuck-knows how many pints of blood (I’m a bleeder - oh yes - Big Gushy Eck! Rasputin himself couldnae save me when I start the red flow). It would NOT be the action of a true football fan to resort to such pathetically childish behaviour. You’re up in court for punching someone for SLAGGING A FOOTBALL TEAM??!! - how completely bl**dy moronic would ye feel when ye heard that charge being read out, when ye lost yer job and god knows how much money because of THAT particular offence??! I’m always the first to slag the media for even USING the phrase “Road Rage” because it almost mitigates what are nothing more or less than acts of near-indescriminate violence. There’s always an excuse for assaulting strangers but there’s rarely a justifiable explanation: Yer a bam and that’s that. Decking someone for what they’ve said about a millionaire footballer, who probably couldn’t even hear them saying it, is actually a hell of a lot more difficult to justify than slapping some git whose just rear-ended yer Ford Cortina.

But that’s what I’ve been contemplating on my last two visits to Ibrox. That’s what I SAW HAPPEN at my last but one visit to Ibrox.

I tend to be the all talk, no action type. And deliberately so. And hope I always remain so. That’s why I have the blog - so I can get this stuff off my chest before I bottle it up to the point where I will do something suicidally silly. But, as Lyon slaughtered us on the pitch, I watched another Bear act out my darkest desired response to Gers-bashing and, as his fist reigned down on the mouthy one’s coupon I realised he was just bashing Gers themselves. If yer slating a player of punching a fan - it’s still all Rangers. I don’t need to be swinging at anyone - I just need tea and sympathy, T standinging for Tennants and sympathy standing for “sober up, Eck”. As some of the respected regulars on this site have been saying in the last thread, ’twas ever thus: Football fans of every team are populated by enclaves of perma-pernicious self-haters. At Rangers, Celtic, Motherwell, Kilmarnock, East Stirling and Boca fucking Juniors (GAWN, THE LANUS!! EAT MY APERTURA!!), there’s always SOMEBODY in the crowd who knows better and SOMEBODY who just has to HATE the player or the manager every one else loves.

Why let it get to me so much this week then? Well, it is coming up for Christmas after all. I have been working extra hard at work and on other football-ranting projects, in an effort to get the boards cleared before the hols. I do have a coupe of visits to my kick-boxing, sword-wielding mother coming up. I am totally fucking knackered. I am totally fucking skint and I do hate shopping - especally if it’s not for myself. Most of all, though, it’s because of the way the Lyon result threatened to skew the progress of the last 11 months. Had we lost our first three games in this season’s Champions League Group stage no-one would have been surprised - had we then ENDED with a draw and two victories, Walter would have been seen as the Messiah of continued progress. As it is, he just fucking well might be the Messiah - the man who is making PLG look like a very naughty boy.

This time of year - the “festive” period - is always ripe for remembrance of arguments past. It’s a time for us to miss those we loved and who’re now gone. Ennui is all around. This year, I cannot help thinking about the dropping of Barry Ferguson and the leaving of Paul Le Guen, the dominant memory of last year’s holiday period. It took me six months to even begin TRYING to get over that. Walter Smith has worked nothing short of a miracle in the interim and, just as he was begining to exceed even my expectations, he starts geting the very kind of abuse I stated he would on these very pages, almost this very time last very year. Well, actually, it was Januaruy THIS year - but I always knew the true gauge of Walter’s success would be when he started getting abuse for giving us exactly what we wanted. That happened last Wednesday and last Saturday.

This, however, is The Rangers way. The more folk there are demanding the impossible and being impossibly insulting to our employees, the better we know we’re doing. I’m just finding the Myopia Loyal a bit hard to take because I’ve enough troubles of my own right now AND because the loudmouths, the perma-malcontents often seem to be the ones who tacitly run the club. Every manager they boo or deride at the top of their mealy-mouthed voices has, in the 21st century, been shown the door. We’ve qualified for Europe after Xmas for THREE STRAIGHT SEASONS NOW, under THREE DIFFERENT managers. That’s a record and it’s a bloody miracle. If we simply backed ONE of them, if we gave just ONE of those three managers an extra six months vocal backing we could maybe pull out of our domestic dry patch too. Maybe we could actually GET TO A FUCKING EUROPEAN FINAL!!! McLeish, Le Guen and now Smith were ALL most intenseley slagged by the Knee-Jerkers JUST AT THE VERY POINT THEY ACHIEVED THE ONE TRULY MEANINGFUL FEAT OF ANY RANGERS season - European respectability. This isn’t just a wee bit harsh - this is fucking SUICIDAL..

The Rangers life - no, The Football life, for any fan - is NOT real life. We all know this now. As I discussed with a very dear Celtic man and a darned sound Motherwell man at my workplace just yesterday, the Shankly quote about it being more important than life and death is itself well and truly dead. Tis sickeningly ironic that Liverpool were the club who eventually found out more brutally than most that this was one very hollow soccer aphorism. But I think I know what Bill Shankly thought he meant:

Football can be something which helps us all get through life. We need somewhere and something to which we can sublimate or exfoliate the rough end of the emotions which “real” life deals us. Cant tell yer line manager he’s fucking useless? - slag Barry Ferguson instead! Someone you love is having a rough time and you have to be the strong one? - have a good scream and a greet when yer team is gifted a last-minute winner by a ropey Hearts goalie! Can’t cope with the fact your mum can still beat ye at arm-wrestling? - threaten to punch a mouthy 12-year-old sat behind ye in the Govan Stand.

When times are tough ye sometimes want a pint or two. Yer not trying to run away by doing this - yer just trying to recharge the batteries. Some of us prefer, instead of a pint, the football and the alternative life it offers (It’s better than watching the Box set of Babylon 5!). Well, what happened to me last Wednesday and Satrday was the equivelant of someone not so much spitting in my pint, but sneezing onto its lovely frothy head and not offering an apology. Annoying but - fuck it - there’s better things to worry about.

This Sunday we’re at Pittodrie. And I have a ticket, a car and two of the Bluest-noses ever for company on the road up and back. Ya fucking beauty. Nothing pulls a nation together like a war against an evil common foe. Fuck, the news coming through on my car radio last Sunday, as I took four hours to get past the M8 turn-offs for Braehead, had me ripping a fresh sunroof in the auld vauxhall. The Gers were handed a massive boost by Caley. Celtic still have the points advantage and games in hand are always risky. We’re entering a seriously difficult round of festive games and, no matter what the smellies don’t do against other teams, if they beat us on Jan 2nd they’ve all but won the SPL. No-one loses that game and wins the league. Yet the possibility remains of us going to Parkhead for the one-year anniversary of Paul le Guen’s last game in charge of Rangers and GOING TOP OF THE LEAGUE. That that is even a possibility, and that European football in 2008 is guaranteed, and that I’m off to the sheep-dome on Sunday, has me right back where I belong: Happy in the heart of Beardom.