A Celt on The Gers Train

I believe to this day that they chose not to tell me that it was definitely the wrong train to get on. With hindsight I can see them on the opposite platform waving at me and trying not to laugh. They were off back home to Cambuslang, I was heading for the town to meet an old friend I hadn’t seen since I moved to London some years before.

 

They would have known that the next stop for me would have been the one where the Rangers supporters get on, they would have known that. They could see me, my so called comrades, wearing my Celtic colours waiting to get on the train which would stop at Bridgeton where the entire Rangers end would be waiting to get on.

 

Stung and sullen having been beaten two-one by their eternal foe; the week before the Pope, the anti-christ in their fevered, sectarian eyes, was due to visit Glasgow. In Bellahouston Park no less, a rosary-bead throw away from their red, white and blue lair – Ibrox Park. Goaded enough, they felt, without being confronted by the colours of the beast, sitting solitary and brave-seeming, on their train, the train that is accepted by both sides as theirs. For who else (and this is probably what saved me, apart from the bravado of being a little pished on whisky) but a madman, a psycho, an all-around hied-the- ba’ would be committing such an act.

 

“Huv ye no’ seen one before, then?” I heard myself say confronted by their astonishing number and hostile glares.

 

“You’ll help me tho’ hen, eh?” I say to the uniformed female sitting opposite.

 

“I’m no wi the police” she responded “I’m wi the fire service!!”

 

Another twist to this occurred the following evening when, sitting in my mates house in Cambuslang, the same uniformed female walks in. It’s my mates sister and I’d been sleeping in her bed while she was on shifts.

 

You couldn’t make it up...!