CONSTANT CRAVING

The bed’s a bit bigger tonight, troops. It’s a bit colder too. The wardrobes have so much more space, there’s only one pair of slippers by the bed and the y-fronts in my chest of drawers flop folornly from the top of the pile which used to be two columns wide. It’s a sad day, troops. A sad, sad day. You’re wondering why there’s been nowt new on the blog since Sunday night? Well, now you know: He’s leaving. He’s left. He’s gone. Stop all the clocks, Big Gunther went back to his mum this weekend. Train tae Prestwick, EasyJet to Dusseldorf, and a long train down to the chessboard town of Mannheim and a warm plate of bratwurst at his precious Mutti’s. Me? I’m all alone in the world once more. Only my Rothmans yearbooks, The Godfather Trilogy DVD and a big empty hoose for company. 39 years old and 22 stone wide - what’s a girl to do when life’s left her up on that structurally reinforced shelf?

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a shock. Phil Collins-like, it’s been coming in the air for a while. The final split may be painful but it was hardly unforseen. Gunther and I had our good times but Elton John and David Furnish we were not. This was a marriage built on the sandiest of foundations. His jealousies were as petty as they were destructive - in the beginning he would only start if I’d been out with some friends for a drink at the weekend but lately he’d even got it into is head that I was scampering off to the Polo Lounge when I was actually at Ibrox (”Don’t Give me ze lies, Eck - ven have Raynjurs EVER played European matches in MARCH UND APRIL??!!! Vot do you take me for??! Eine Dumpkoff??!! Vot iz his name, ze slut??!!) - but, this Saturday, I gave him incontrovertible evidence that my eye and my loyalty had indeed begun to wander with a wantonness fatal to our relationship … if you can call such a Halliwell-Orton situation a “relationship”.

This time, it wasn’t Gunther’s imagination. It wasn’t paranoia. This time the big, cuddly, Teutonic leather fetishist was right. I finally let him down but, ironically, he was there to witness it in person and, most alarmingly, while there were two fit young men involved and there was also a bit of same-sex flesh-on-flesh action, it was NOTHING that either Gunther or myself could have ever have predicted would lead to our common-law divorce.

I’d been out with friends on Friday night - work colleagues. We drank and we stayed out late and I came home very much the worse for wear. From the moment I fell through the front door Gunther started in on me with the questions: “Vere VERE yoo?” , “Vy didn’t you at least TEXT me?”, ” Whoo is zis BIG STEVEY you talk about und VY IS HE BUYING YOU EINE KEEBAP??!!”. So, to make it all go away, I popped Get Carter on the DVD and sank the half bottle of Chardonnay he’d left in the fridge. Mixing the grape with the grain, with the Michael Caine - fatal. I woke up on the sofa at 9am, my tongue a ball of fuzzy felt clinging to my velcro palate. I slouched upstairs, dropped half a paracetamol, climbed into bed just as he was getting out and I didn’t resurface til 2 pm. I’d missed Football Focus, with Motty and Lineker’s Anti-German build-up top the Euro 2008 final - but that was where my luck began and ended.

Gunther was sat next to me on the sofa, giving me the silent treatment as I let the Weetabix wash down my alcohol-coated throat as if they were so many splodges of rain-soaked dung … but not as tasty. I wasn’t really concentrating on the tennis which had just begun on the box. It’s Wimbledon, yeah, but I’m absorbed in Euro 2008. My mind’s on the final. I was looking at the TV screen but, like my fizzing partner, I wasn’t seeing anything except the inside of my own tortured thoughts. I wasn’t seeing anything on the telly … until …

Jelena Jankovic was winning her game. But she was having a tougher time than she wanted. Mainly because shed tweaked her knee when - oh dear - over-stretching to reach a particularly un-ladylike back-hand return from her production line-blonde opponent. Saturday last, as any good Serb will tell you, was Vidovdan, the feats day of St Vitus. If this, the year 1389 or the word Kosovo, doesn’t mean anything to you then so much the better for you. But, let’s just say “Bannockburn 1314″ means about a squillion times less to yer average Scotsman than Vidovdan does to yer slackest Serb. Jelena Jankovic is not a slack Serb. She is a very tight, taut, honed, sleekly athletic brunette-at-the-net of a Serbian woman. And her knee hurt.

And my head hurt.

And she asked for the physio to come on to Centre Court - and the TV cameras closed in on her, erm, knee area - and my head hurt a bit less. And the umpire agreed the physio could come on and the physio was female too. And it was very sunny at Wimbledon. And Jelena was sweating as she sat on her little chair, towelling herself down, with the physio knelt in front of her, massaging her knee … her shin … her (gulp!) thigh.

My migraine had completely cleared. My fur-ball tongue was melting.

The Physio asked Jelena to lie on the grass so she could properly massage and manipulate her leg. For medical emergencies like this it’s very lucky that so many of these tennis ladies wear very short skirts. Phew. What a relief. Nice to know Jelena can get the proper treatment, that her honed, tanned legs can be easily accessed by a female physio with gentle hands.The microphone was right by Jelenas’s little chair - empty now save for a few beads of dripped perfume dew - and you could hear the Serbian maestro - sorry - MISTRESS … you could clearly hear the Serbian mistress moaning in pain and, very disturbingly, being ever so unpleasant to the physio. “It’s too tight” she moaned. “don’t strap it up too tight” she warned. “You’re a very bad girl and you must be punished …” I think she maybe might have possibly said, in an accent genetically used to doling out threats.

God! Modern TV coverage is so AMAZING! Look at how close they can zoom in to the affected area of a player’s body. Look how clear those pictures are, of those two women, lying on the grass, one applying bandages and tape to the thigh of the other and …

“ECK, YOU BITCH!!! GOTT IN HIMMELL! I KNEW IT!!!”

Guther had been watching me almost as intently as I’d been watching the, erm, tennis. He’d been holding back all morning , all year in fact, but now the sight of my expanding pupils, my bulging eye-balls, the trail of drool from mouth to floor, all stung him into a volley of verbals. “You like WOMEN, you PERVERT! You Bitch. I knew it! - I knew there was something going on behind meine back but not vot I VANTED going on behind meine back … but ich had nae ayedeeah it voz zis! You ARE A LESBIAN!!! I’ve been living vis a lesbian!!”

And, do you know, he was right! BIg hysterical Gunther had a point - match point. All at once I realised it was true. Suddenly there was no denying it. There was a momentous movement in the nether regions … of my psyche - and I knew Gunther had me bang to rights. That’s why we’d been rowing so much. THAT’s why I’d been spending so much time in the pub, drowning the reality of my situation … of my SEXUALITY. AH PYOOR FANCY WOMEN!

By the time we’d stopped rowing - by the time I’d given up trying to deny I was obviously a raving lesbian, the Andrew Murray-Tommy Haas game had started. I inadvertantly turned to the screen and bellowed out a huge cheer of triumph to see a SCOTSMAN GIVING A GERMAN A POUNDING. I was inadvertantly celebrating my new sexual liberation but I was also striking the final nail into the coffin of Gunther and I’s world.

“You used to be ze only Scotticher Herren I liked to zee pounding eine Deutscherlander … but not any more, Eck. Nein. Mutti was right about you. GENAU! Alle ist klaar. Auf Wiedersehen meine tinky-winky fatty doompling.”

So, Gunther’s left, troops. It’s over. I’m a raving lesbian (I know some of you guys are too. Come on - let’s be honest, troops - reading between the lines of some of your posts, I’m DAMN SURE a lot of you regular posters on this blog ALSO find women sexually attractive: The time for lying is over, gents. Take my advice. Learn from my story. The time to be honest with YOURSELF, as much as anyone else, is now. You can confide in me. Don’t be afraid, lads. Don’t be victimised by your own doubts. Liking women - in “that way” - is perfectly acceptable in modern, liberal Scotland. Don’t listen to the bigots. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.) and Germany, like Rangers last season, took it to the very final moments of their big competition, Euro 2008, before breaking my heart … via my wallet (I should have backed them each-way, I know but at the time I placed the bet I’m sure I was in the midst of some Freudian denial and refusing to acknowledge anyone or anything could, ye know, “go either way”)

2008, so far, has been an emotional roller coaster. And its been full of clichéd statements like that. I’ve got to move on into my new life, my new possibilities. Rangers are moving on into theirs - into 2008/2009. I’ll blog it when it happens - but, right now, I ain’t ready. We’ve all got to accept that things move on, that things happen for a reason. I wasn’t ranting and raving at the BBC and ITV punditry because I thought they presented horrifically xenophobic covergae of EURO 2008 - I was REALLY just lashing out as my last pathetic resistance to my new-found sapphic sexuality came rising to the surface. Add to that the traumas of Manchester and Pittodrie, the unforgettable highs of Hampden, Florence, Lyon, Bremen and Lisbon and its little wonder I’m a physical and pyschological wreck. Saturday night and all day Sunday I watched Gunther pack his thongs, straps and chaps but I wasn’t really there. I zoned out. It was all too much. I focussed on the Spain-Germany game. But - being honest - once I’d posted that final post-match match rant in the early hours of Monday morning - I cried troops. I don’t mind telling you how I just sobbed and sobbed like a big girl … who likes other big girls. I tuned up thd volume on thd KD Lang CD and just let it all out - 68 Rangers games, 19 “straight” nights of European championship ranting. Highs, lows, ups, downs, anger, pain, failure, glory, joy, peace. And always - ALWAYS, love.

And now we take that love, and we move on. But first, the auld ticker needs a rest. The fitbaw never stops - thank Goram - but I do. Your credit card has been debited for the pre-season friendly with Liverpool and the champions League qualifier against Kaunas. We’ll see, at Ibrox, the guy who scored the winner in this summer’s football fiesta. It seems like only yesterday we were trouncing Chelsea as we got ready for Zeta. Everybody comes to Ibrox these days - only Hibs and Lyon win. But, no matter, Spain are suddenly the second best team in the history of the European championships (Two-times winners, one time beaten finalist - they’ve sneaked ahead of France) and I’m suddenly a lesbian and Rangers are suddenly in four competitions again.

It’ll be exciting, no matter what develops, but I’m gonnae take about three weeks off now, to absorb what’s occurred and prepare for what’s up next. I’m laying low - hopefully on some carpet! - until the friendlies begin. Feel free to batter into this thread as ye see fit, troops - I love and need yer patter - but, I’m off for a breather. And this year, I’m not getting it at Fire Island …the breather, that is.

Aye Ready, troops.

Aye Fat.

Aye Yours.

Eck.