Yesterday I popped out briefly, to drop off a bag of clothes to a charity shop, and then into Glasgow to take a last look before the apocalypse.
When I returned home, I found a letter from HMRC waiting for me. Uh-oh, I thought. I don't trust letters from HMRC, since they're always a risk. Still, I opened it...
It was a letter saying that they'd decided I had either underpaid of overpaid taxes. Which was even more worrying. So, I started to dig through the numbers...
I checked it twice, just to be sure, but apparently they're going to send me a cheque for £16 that I have overpaid in tax. Result! Granted, I'm not sure it is worth that moment of panic when I thought I might have to pay them huge amounts of money.
Then, in the afternoon, I listened to the football, and say my fear confirmed. Motherwell lost, which meant that Celtic could win the league at Ibrox today. Since I fully expected Celtic to go and win that match heavily, and I expected a... reaction... from the Rangers fans, it seemed the apocalypse was imminent.
And yet, fortunately, it is not to be. Celtic have played really badly, Rangers have played really well. And so Celtic won't win the league today. The apocalypse is on hold.
(In the final analysis, it doesn't matter. Celtic will still win the league. But it's better it happens anywhere else, and on any other day. Also, it's rather a shame - if the league was close, this could well be a sign that Celtic might not have the mental strength to actually seal the deal. But, with what has happened to Rangers since January, it's not close, and so not as interesting after all.)
So, it's been a good weekend after all.
2 comments:
There were still 7 arrests and something like 17 people being held due to hate crime (or the potential to commit it).
Far more than is reasonably acceptable in my opinion.
I still think there should only be a single football team in Glasgow ... Glasgow United, a merger of Celtic and Rangers thus removing the ridiculous religious rivalry (that probably only exists at these games). However, I hate football so don't know/care what the consequences of that would be.
Oh, I agree it's still too many, but given what I thought would happen, I'll take it.
The notion of having a single club for the city is a good one, but I suspect it's a case of "if you want to get there, I wouldn't start from here." With 140 years of tradition on one side, and 124 on the other, I doubt we could hope to see any sort of unification. And, of course, you'd need to do the same in Edinburgh and Dundee at least (bear in mind that the infamous attack on Neil Lennon took place at a match against Hearts, not Rangers).
Besides, despite the religious trappings, I'm far from convinced the divide is actually religious in nature. To a large extent, it's based on a 'religion' that very few of the fans actually subscribe to, coupled with a notion of a 'history' that has very little to do with the real thing. For the most part, they hate each other because their fathers hated each other, because... well, because they always have.
Ultimately, it's completely absurd to invest so much rage and hatred into the question of which set of grossly overpaid foreign mercenaries can outdo the other at kicking a ball around.
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