BUDDIES, COULD YOU SPARE A RHYME?

Keep up oor honest, sonsie pace,
Great chieftains o’ the title-race!
Above them a’ we tak oor place,
Arabs, Well, Tims:
Walter’s weel wordy o’ some praise
As lang’s he wins.

Hubris. Got hubris on my mind this Burns night, troops. Well, actually, I’ve mostly got haggis, neeps and tatties on my mind but being off work on the sick all week has given me time to think about more than one thing at once, for a wee change.

When I nip out of bed for my early morning pee - ye know, the one ye have before coming back to bed for another hour before rising reluctantly to go to work - I always have a somnambulent peek oot the bedroom curtains tae see how the weather’s shaping up. Turns out I actually open the curtains a bit and don’t re-close them. It’s dark at the time so no chance of a postman or ridiculously early morning jogger being traumatised by the sight of my naked beer gut and widgit - and no chance of any incoming daylight alerting me to the fact the curtains are ajar as I re-crash into bed for my last hour of apnia.

But, ye see, being ill and allowed to stay in bed while the sun rises behind the winter clouds, I’ve lain there, looking sleepily at the bedroom window area. Too rested to sleep on, too ill to get up - I lie there for varying lengths of time, fixing my hazy, un-spectacled stare at one recurring image: Napoleon’s retreating infantry.

Mais oui.

When I was a child I thought like I do now mostly - but I was into war, soldiers, guns, airfix models and such shit as well as football when I was a kid. Mostly I was into the Second World War. Sounds pretty sick now - being “into” the Second World War is the kind of penchant usually enjoyed only by Hitler, Goering and Vera Lynn- but that was kids in the late seventies and early eighties for you: So proud of our forefathers’ sacrifice that we decided to re-enact it in over-glued and under-painted 00/H0 scale or 1:32 scale plastic whenever we got the chance.

I had, in my bedroom, the biggest build up of German and Soviet troops since the siege of Stalingrad - except I had it in several large cardboard boxes from supermarkets, individually stored in the original Airfix boxes in which these Infantry, paratroopers, Alpine troops and Afrika Korps were purchased from Woolies. Instead of Kursk, Berlin or Warsaw, my troops saw action in the book case, bedroom carpet and all over the chest of drawers: The siege of my sister’s Cindy Doll’s house was particularly prolonged and bloody - the Wermacht just couldn’t hold on and, as was usual for the plastic battles I stage-managed, anyone who surrendered was ritually executed by a Soviet firing squad. So many executions. So much plastic killed. Oh, the humanity. And oh the mess - my mum had a fucking fit!

Anyway, eventually, when I became a man, I put away childish things … under my bed and in the loft. But my mum found them and gave them to my wee cousins and various actual children. Surprisingly, the only plastic soldiers to survive this Maternal coup d’état were not from the Second World War but survivors of what must have been the briefest of forrays into Napoleonic conflict. Don’t remember ever going particularly nuts about any wars other than the 1939-45 job but I did have the odd dalliance with Waterloo and all that. Only a solitary packet of French Infantry survived. I’d painted them so beautifully - the early 19th century clobber looked well smart - that they became more ornaments than play things. They’d been chucked in a tin can at some point and ended up moving with me from house to flat to flat to house as I attempted to engage with the real world in adulthood.

Eventually I found a little bit of cardboard, painted it grassy green and glued down Napoleon Boneparte’s 00/H0 scale French infantry in formation. I parked it on the bedroom windowsill, and of a morning, they now peak through the curtains at me. But it’s not the ones reloading on their knees or their comrades standing above them to fire in unison at those fucking Prussians which take my notice as I lie in bed these mornings. It’s the ones at the back who’re jogging along with their rifles at their side, the ones who’re trudging wearily behind them and the few who are actually carrying wounded mates on their shoulders. Oh my god. There hasn’t been a sunny morning all week. The sky through my bedroom window is grey and steely cold - this is a backdrop almost as potent as hearing the 1812 overture on my radio alarm.

This isn’t an ornament. This little diorama isn’t a mere reminder of childhood innocence. This isn’t even a model of an army winning a battle: This is NAPOLEON’S RETREAT FROM FUCKING MOSCOW!!

I’m awaking every morning this week to the most hubristic sight possible. Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Adolph Northen all had their say on this monumental disaster and, unbeknowns to me, I’ve had mine too. And I bet my piece of cardboard with plastic on top beats their shitey music, books and paintings! Just as the Wermacht discovered 130 years later, the Russian winter destroys anyone who attacks mother Russia. Rangers haven’t attacked Russia - well, not since CSKA Moscow put us oot the Champions League qualifieirs a couple of seasons back - but we could be on the verge of a Hummell humbling in the midst of this all too destructive Scottish winter!!

Jsut when ye think ye’ve got over the hump - THAT’s the time ye usually get rogered. St Mirren, in their Hummell go-faster chevrons, have been playing damn well of late. They beat Hibs, Dumbarton and Motherwell in their last 3 home games - they are not a side to be messed with and, yet, we at Rangers have dared to think the LAST two games were where we proved our stickability, our championship-winning pluck.

Beware the ides of nearly the last week in January! We cannae get rid of Cousin, we cannae even get Roy Carroll out the door - something’s not going right. A dark force is gathering. If we don’t beat St Mirren tomorrow then our last two performances will be cast out of the realm of “grinding out results” and re-dressed in the robes of “just pure pish by the way”.

Yes indeed, troops. Hubris. I think it’s the name of the medicine I stopped taking before I wrote this rant.

Retreat, Eck - retreeeeeeaat …!!!