An Excerpt from the Novel ‘Checking Out of the Hotel Euthanasia’ by Gerard Graham due to be published by Ringwood Publishing 30th June 2017.
The excuse posing as the ‘beautiful game’, planned between the Communists and the Anarchists, took place on the Glasgow Green Municipal Football Parks containing six genetically modified grass football pitches with, in contrast, fetid changing facilities; a shower that didn’t work and a toilet that never flushed. There did, after all, need to be some indulgence towards a ‘traditional’ football experience. The two teams changed into their strips and headed out to the pitch to warm up. It became obvious to Rab and his Communist teammates that the Anarchists had adopted new disciplines in their brand new and crisply laundered strips with each of the players’ names printed on their backs and sponsored, (Billy McGlinchey had negotiated and received £1,000 for the privilege), by Lendabuck Loans Company. In the past, the Anarchists’ warm up consisted of the team making their way out to the pitch in dribs and drabs, standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of beer, (the matches took place at 10am on a Saturday morning). Now there was a tangible difference as, what could only be described as a group roar emanated from the Anarchists’ changing room heralding their arrival on the pitch. They entered the fray, jogging out two by two, their expensive new strips proclaiming superiority. They proceeded to undertake a group stretching session followed by five a side practice, passing routines and group sprints between cones that had magically appeared on the pitch. The team manager Billy McGlinchey, oversaw the game preparation, professionally kitted out in full football manager ‘de rigueur’ style, with hooded quilted puffer jacket with the Anarchists corporate logo emblazoned across the front and ‘Lendabuck Loans, the loan that never leaves you alone’ across the back.
The Communists, by comparison, stood dumbstruck and agog on their half of the pitch watching this precise synchronized performance unfold before their eyes. Jolted out of their stupor by the referee whistling for the start of the match, the Communists moved into their usual formation, honed over the last decade by their ‘cult of the personality’ manager Big Tam (so named, in typical Glasgow inverse humour, for the reason that he stood 5 foot 1 inch tall). Big Tam preferred having the goalkeeper operate ‘Relative Deprivation’ of goals protected by a ‘United Front’ defence who would quickly get the ball to the ‘Central Committee’ of the midfield, then to the ‘Left Wing’ to cross to the ‘Popular Front’ forwards to score an ‘Ideological’ goal. The Anarchists, on the other hand, were the opposite of the concepts of ‘Horizontalism’ and ‘Hierarchy’ now that Billy McGlinchey was the out and out leader and authority figure that delegated actions and expected responses from his team. This resulted in individuals willingly giving up their autonomy to fulfill their specific roles within the team. There was no ‘Revolutionary Spontaneity’ from any of them as they followed the specific game plan revolving around the ‘Social Centre’ half and where all players were slaves to the control of Billy. They were also joined by ‘Radical Cheerleading’ from eight attractive and disconcertingly flexible female anarchists dressed in bright blue spandex leotards performing flying leaps, jumping jacks and human pyramids at the side of the pitch. The Communists were certainly distracted by the unusual sight of eight nubile young women as they threw their hands in the air, ‘like you just don’t care’, shaking their brightly coloured pompoms and chanting, ‘One, two, three, four, who are we for, An-ar-chy! Rah! Rah! Rah!’
Needless to say the Anarchists capitalized on giving up their individual freedom for the governance, preparation and organisation of the team by Billy and quickly went three goals up to the dismay of Rab and the Communist team as their Berlin Wall of a defence collapsed and they looked as rusty as a field of tractors during Stalin’s five-year agricultural plan. The Communists were getting the run around which led at half time to a purge of recriminations, reflection and analysis of the reasons for the failure.
Author of 'Checking Out of the Hotel Euthanasia' and children's books. Artist and Musician.
