Assistants to an Odour,

The weekend started with a stand-off, a dispute over a free-kick at football, and ended with a stand-off, an incident which highlights the sectarianism which plagues Scottish society.

I support Celtic; I watch the games and appreciate the football. I don’t have a religion and I don’t foist any political beliefs that I have upon people. But many narrow-minded people in our society can’t accept this, they hate Catholics, they hate Celtic supporters and they let them know. It’s regular for people like me to be called “a fenian”, I don’t know what this is. There’s footballing rivalry and then there is vile sectarian bigoted hatred – this is the sort our family have been treated to for over the last few years by one nimrod and his family (the children all must be under 8 years old but already, their minds are polluted).

The incident in question involves me reversing out of my driveway just as one of them were driving into the street, seeing me halfway out of the drive, they came storming up the street (with little regard to any of the children who usually play on the road) and stopped dead in the middle of the road such that I could not carry on out of the street and given the angle of our driveway and the extent to which I had emerged onto the road, it was impossible for me to go back into the driveway and wait for them to clear. At any stage, they could have parked their car in “their” usual space but they didn’t, they chose a stand-off; a time-consuming, sectarian-motivated, needless stand-off. I decided that if they wanted to waste their time, I would let them watch a 47-point manoeuvre around them.

In between these two stand-offs, I did very little. I went to watch brother’s amateur side play their match. It was played in Springfield, their football pitches are in a far corner in grounds of a NHS mental health unit. It was like watching a game of football on another planet; only 4 spectators, excluding sheep, had bothered to venture in amongst the rolling hills of the North East Fife countryside. Controversy ensued; brother’s side won 3-1 after the other team had conceded 2 penalties and had a man sent off; it seemed out of place amidst the tranquillity and under a glorious sun.

On the whole, the weekend was not good. I blame Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan’s Blues made me depressed and from there, I became bitter at society. There’s enough in society to make me permanently bitter, but I can’t fester every minute of the day. On a more positive note, The Canadian called and I was the one to pick up the telephone.