When politicians say that they love to “meet the people” they’re usually lying.
I’m not a politician.
I spent last night on a small stage sandwiched between two young fellas called “Paul”.
I had better explain…
At the insistence of Celtic legend John Fallon I attended the Columba social club in Blantyre.
I had been coached beforehand by a native that the place is, in fact, called “Blant Urr”.
I’m pleased to relate that my pronunciation was complimented.
A very perceptive comment on this site stated that he was expecting Michael Palin and instead he got Marlon Brando on the Waterfront.
It was an easy bout.
There were plenty of people in the crowd who knew what the three lads with the microphones were about.
Being stuck between Paul Brennan and Paul McConnville is like playing with really good footballers as opposed to trying to mark them.
There was a timeline on stage in terms of the online Celtic story.
Paul Brennan’s “Celtic Quick News” produces online content on a daily basis that surpasses the sports desks.
McConnville, a relative arriviste to this online saga, will regularly provide a lengthy legalist treatise on each chapter of the Rangers disintegration.
I was in the middle of these two bright young things, an old propagandist with a decent hook.
It was billed as a Q&A, but there was also a revival meeting vibe to the gathering.
This was a room full of decent middle aged folk that had been born into the old Scotland with the “back of the bus” arrangements that validated the Ibrox poison.
Some of them still can’t get their head around that the citadel of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish hatred in Scotland is about to die.
They heard the same message from the three of us.
Rangers are going to die.
The old culture where Catholics with Irish surnames were despised and allocated the shitty end of the stick is at an end.
Rangers are a symbol of that old culture and it is fitting that they will soon die.
No amount of marching or shouting at an empty Hampden will change that.
At the end of the night the chairman of the club was delighted with the money raised for the Good Child Foundation and a local charity.
This online work I do is, by its nature, isolating.
Even when I check the site stats it doesn’t register that there are thousands of people reading these words.
Even meeting a couple of hundred of them is heartening and affirming.
This technology is epoch changing.
However, humans still need the company of their own and that is what I got last night.
I even got a halftime pie.
Gorgeous it was!
