Reunions

Reunions?

Actually, me and the lads have a reunion every Saturday night. It’s good getting to catch up on the crack with the old team.  Martin, the pub landlord has a tribute to us on the staircase. Every time I climb the stairs to take a slash in the Good Loo of 2010, I pass our Local Lads team photos- every year from 1965, when I joined as a lad of 15, through to the last year most of us played in the Veterans match- back in 2000.

Grand bunch of lads.

These days we’re admittedly a bit long in the tooth, and at least half the team have the dreaded footballer’s knee- you know that awful jerky twitch when you see the foot raised and kicked forward. Bobby has it real bad- you see it when he walks Lassie, his rough haired collie. Then again, theory has it that it isn’t footballer’s knee at all, but the result of getting kicked in a few sensitive places when he tried to get jiggy with the captain of the karate squad. Bit of a firebrand is Milly, and while we couldn’t blame him for trying, it’s made us a wee bit cautious.

Between the team we’ve clocked up 19 marriages, ten divorces, and then there’s Hamish- widowed last year and still greeting into his beer.

Now we sneak out for a swift half on Saturday nights and a wee get together. Alison, Sandy’s second wife says we are a right bunch of gossips.  Well, it’s a wee town isn’t it, and we’re obliged to catch up on what’s been going on.

But tonight we had a surprise. Al was back.  Back in the day, Al was the rising star of our club. At 16 he got a trial with a second division team near Dundee. We all had him down as a mummy’s boy, and predicted he’d not last the course. But last he did, moving on to play for St Mirren and later Man City before a shattered cartilage put paid to his playing career.  He moved on to coach for the  Caley jags and now, aged 60 he'd decide to moved back to his home town and settle in a swanky house overlooking the bay, to lord it over us .

And here he was, arriving in his wife (younger model, half our age ) chauffeured Jag xf.  There was a child seat in the back, but not for any grandchildren

Baby Xanthe  is two years old next week.

 

He came in full of bonhomie and was handed  a double Glenfiddich before he came over to the table. Too mean to stand his round, I thought. I could see Sandy checking his change in his pocket surreptitiously. Most of us are on the pension now and our round of drinks is a treat we only have once a week.

Getting old isn't for cissies and none of us had jobs that let us put much aside for our old age.

Our Saturday night ritual has become the highlight of our week, for me and the lads.  We nip down to the pub in the square. It used to be the Council offices, but a chain took it over, and it’s become our local. I have to say it’s better than the spit and sawdust place across the road. That's reinvented itself as a karaoke place, and its full of underage drinkers getting blootered on Red Stripe. Sometimes I dinna ken where to look. All those wee lassies wearing next to nothing puking their guts up.  No you can't beat a Harrogate Inn: gas fires, cheap grub and Sky Sports on fine big screens everywhere you look.

I dinna mind putting my hand in my pouch once a week. My pension doesn't go very far, and the odds and ends of painting work have dried up lately. So every day, I stick the change in my pocket into a jar, and by the end of the week, what's in the jar, plus the fiver I get for minding my sister's cat takes a wee walk with me to Gates.

Our evening goes something like this. If we're flush it's haddock and chips, washed down by a pint of Gates’ best heavy. Then we spread out a bit, and watch the footie on one of the screens and talk about how badly the players did, and how, back in the day we'd have played that game.  I like that kind of talk.  It's reassuring.  Mind we have to keep clear of the wifies. There's old Mrs Maitland and her daughter. The daughter is seventy three, and her mither got her telegram from the queen last year. The pair of them come in for a lemonade and a jaw with the locals. They say it keeps them going, but the auld souls keep wanting the channel changed to QVC.

Then there's the arts club. They head straight for the wee pannelled room in the back and play at being intellectuals. Think they're better than us with their red wine and g and t’s. Nae time for the beautiful game.

This night though, things changed for the worse. Al plunked himself down in the middle of our wee group, and scoffed at our talk. We had to endure two hours of how he would have done this, that or the next thing. I could see Sandy was getting a bit cheesed off. He was a good player in his day, and retired PE teacher that he was, he didn't deserve to be spoken to like that.  Like someone who'd nearer pulled on a jersey and played for his team every Saturday come hell or high water.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Bobby arrived at the back of ten and limped across to the bar for his pint of coca cola and his bowl of chips. By now Al had set a tab up at the bar, and we were taking it for granted that tonight was on him. He growled something about Bobby having a proper drink.

Bobby went pale and scowled at him. He hasn't touched alcohol for fifteen years. Not since the day he went home to find his wife had filled a removal van and taken herself and the kids to Nottingham. She'd been so pissed off with his drinking she'd taken up with a long distance lorry driver, and decided to put a bit of distance between her and Bobby. He never saw her or his lads again. Fair broke him up it did.  But Al worked his charm on him, and before we knew it, Bobby had a whisky in one hand and a pint in the other. I just knew there would be trouble ahead.

We were enjoying the sight of Wayne Rooney giving himself a hernia with a flying leap, and having a fine heat from the gas logs when Al asked after May. I should have remembered he was sweet on her when we were all at the school. Lovely woman. ‘Who did she marry? Anyone remember?’

It was heart breaking to see Hamish dissolve into tears. A big strong man like him. Our best goalie ever. ‘It was me. We were together for almost forty years.' Cancer is a cruel thing at the best of times. But a teetotal, non-smoker getting lung cancer? Beggars belief it does. Hamish wasn't in a good place. His mither died a year before May, and his brother had passed away shortly after her. Nae kids either.

So why exactly had Al bothered to come back? Was it just for the pleasure of upsetting the lads? That's when he took us into his confidence. Yon big house o his had a field at the back and a converted barn. Seems he had some grand scheme for a school for training young talent. The fitba school

Well he no sooner opened his mouth than that eejit from the local paper scooted across and had his notebook out before you could say ' who's in the chair this time?'

Al was enjoying himself. I wasn't. I don't like that reporter one little bit. He had the neck to call me a has been at my own testimonial.

That was the night that Bobby fell off the wagon big time. They found him face down in dog shite in the park the next morning. He'd gone home to take the dog for a walk and must have slipped. At least that's what he told the paramedics who came out when the paperboy called 999 thinking he'd tripped over a corpse.

Hamish turned up at church for the first time in years that day too. Turns out that Al had found God along with football fame, and talked him into going with him.  The sight of him in a suit was bad enough, but he cried off our post match cup of tea in the pub, saying he wanted time to pray.

Sandy was still cheesed off at Al, but he almost had a heart attack the week after. He went to spend a penny and when he came across to our table he was spitting nails. ' of all the damned cheek!'

Turns out that the Local Lads’ archive had been removed. Every single team photo had gone from the stairway. The landlord had consigned all the photos of the Local Lads to he disabled loo on the  ground floor. Ma Maitland wasn't pleased. Said it put her off  having to pee in front of all those pictures of men in shorts.

The stairs now had pictures of Al everywhere you could look. al with David Beckham; -with Alex Ferguson, Terry Venables and Ally Mcoist. He'd made a gift to the landlord, and now Gates was his local.

It all took the gilt aff the gingerbread  for us. Saturday nights weren't the same. A whole bunch of younger lads had started turning up for Al's Saturday seminars. They'd all be there, crowded round our favourite big screen, going on about boot design, or dynamics, or even worse, about which shampoo the striker used. And with the lads came the lassies. The night the Brora girls team turned up was a particularly low spot. They'd all been for a curry and they were drinking lager like it was going out of fashion.  I had to help the landlord change the barrels four times in a n hour

Our lads found ourselves squashed into the same corner with Ma Maitland and her daughter.  Sandy said he couldn't afford Saturday drinks any more. Not when a round included so many hangers on.  We made a wee arrangement that we'd plunk a carry out somewhere and top ourselves up. What harm was there in a couple of cans of coke or a half bottle of whisky?

It worked fine for a month, but then we got caught red handed. Oh the shame of being shown to the door with those awful words: ' you're barred!'

So nae mair Gates reunions for the lads. We tried meeting up in Bobby's place, but his telly was on the blink and it just wasn't the same. There was no atmosphere in his house. Probably the reason he liked the pub. I must have been at a low ebb when I found myself doing dishes in his kitchen.  He'd run out of washing up liquid and all. 

The lads took to turning up at my house. We managed to scrape up the price of a flat screen between six of us, and everyone took to turning up with something to drink and a bag of crisps.  No Sky sports though, and we missed the ambiance of Gates.  When Sandys missus turned up to collect him one night and wandered in to my living room, she snorted: ' just look at you! You might as well be in an old folks day centre! All that's missing are the Zimmers!'

By now Big Al's fitba academy was all over the press and the television cameras were fixed in the people coming and going round his house. Rumour had it that Beckham was coming up to give a tutorial on ball control. You should have heard what Bobby had to say about that one: he spluttered into his drink, "niver seen the likes boy !'

Come to think of it the lads were getting a bit concerned over Bobby. after years of being on the wagon, he was back to his hard drinking ways. Some of us remembered what a misogynist he was before his wife left. What was his favourite mantra? 'Keep her belly full and her purse empty?' Probably the reason she legged it.

Two things happened round about the same time. Bobby’s son Harry turned up in the town. We all thought he'd be looking for his father, but no, he was a pupil at Big Al's fitba academy. Someone reckoned he might be scoping out the lie of the land to get an idea of what Bobby was like now. Shame he hadn't seen Bobby during his sober days. The man was a right mess. Bleary red eyes, unwashed hair, dirty shirt collars. He looked as if he hadn't slept for a month and even the dog was looking seedy.

I turned up at his house one morning and the smell of dog poo hit me when he opened the door. Bobby must have fallen into bed fully dressed the night before. He was sporting a black eye. He must have made another pass at Milly.  It was the moulting season and half of Lassies coat was hanging off in tatty clumps. Now that wasn't like Bobby at all. he loved that dog ( there had been three of them in the past three decades all called Lassie, even the males) and they'd all been shown at Crufts.

In contrast, Hamish was looking a lot happier. Big Al had remembered that years ago Hamish had been his main rival for the striker's jersey and had offered him some work at his fitba academy.  The two of them could be seen laughing over a tale or two from the old days. Ma Maitland reckoned that Hamish had just needed company, and perhaps she was right. 

The minister at the kirk was a forty something widow, and she often joined the two of them at Gates, for the evening march of the day analysis. Nice looking lass, she was. I saw her when I was in the school invigilating for the exams. She was doing an assembly for the juniors and the theme was the beautiful game and why it was wrong to chant  sectarian songs and why racism was wring and such like. But then she had to spoil it by saying how much she was looking forward to a premier league where women and men were in the same team!

Now Gregory's girl was a grand film , but a mixed male and female Rangers side? I don't think so!