Davy Moyes, Man U, Everton, Celtic and 1-0

The acrylic yellow curtains and Venetian blinds were a clinking shutter doing a good enough job of keeping out the wintery dregs of submarine daylight. The bedroom light clicked on. ‘There’s a letter for you.’ I recognised Mum’s voice. She pushed my shoulder and shook me till my head lolloped into a semblance of consciousness. But my eyes remained steadfastly sewn shut by sleep. My molluscan body spiralling into the shock of adolescent dream deprivation was a white quivering mass, partially uncovered by light and cold, responded instinctively by burrowing deeper into the mattress shell, snuffling and sucking up the last bit of cosy heat from the three layer of blankets on my bed. I groaned in sleep language, yawned, and shook off that hefty hand. The heavy responsibility of school was waiting to happen almost every day and, I figured, would be lighter without my presence.

‘Hurry up. It’s time to get up.’ Mum targeted the bedclothes hitched around my shoulders and neck, but I’d a firm grip of them. ‘You’ve got a letter,’ she reminded me.

Cloth eared, the slip and slide of slippered feet on the linoleum moved away from me and Mum edged round the wooden footboard of my bed. My gummy eyes squinted open. Mum leaned over and shook my wee brother Bod awake and patted at his neat helmet hair.

‘Bryan!’ A halo of breathing marked Mum’s neck nuzzling of my wee brother. She hovered over him as if breathing him in, before whispering in a melancholy voice, ‘time to get up.’

Bod opened his eyes and he fell sideways, feet first, out of bed. His body unspooled and because he was so dumb, he needed no time to adjust between the sleeping world and waking. He stumbled in the linoleum strip between our beds. Mum kept at his back, hand on the baby-blue stripes of his pyjama top, guiding him down the hall and towards the toilet.

I turned over, but squirmed, unable to keep my eyes shut. I’d a hard-on and couldn’t work out if it was because I desperately needed to pee, which I did, or just had a hard-on because I’d a hard-on. Either way I needed into the toilet fast and because I slept just in Y-fronts I’d need to hug the wall and walk sideways.

The morning was like that—a hand-wrenching blur of sleepwalking nocturnal activity. In the kitchen Mum put Cornflakes out on the table for me. Scooping them up and away from my wee brother I perched on the seat near the window in the warmth of the living room, kitchen door pulled partially shut, so I could avoid listening to The Hairy Cornflake, Diddy Dave Lee Travis, on the radio and the incessant drone of Mull of Kintyre that seemed to be played after every second record and lasted longer than talk of the Second World war. My brown bomber- jacket hung on the door of the hall cupboard. I flung stuff into my Adidas holdall for PE later and added a Maths’ book and came back into the living room. I peered at the clock at the centre of the mantelpiece flanked by a chalk statue of a bearded Jesus in red and a statue of The Virgin Mary in blue on the other, but with a squinty head, because it had been knocked off a few times. The Virgin Mary didn’t seem to mind. She was used to suffering. Big Ben was put forward ten minutes to encourage us to be early, but sometimes it was fifteen, or had even been known to be twenty, which warped time and made us late, which I didn’t mind either.

A brown envelope slanted out from under one of the peeling mock- gold clock-legs. I didn’t often get letters, not official ones—not ever through the letterbox with a stamp on them. My name was nicely typed on the envelope and I held the two corners in two hands in front of me as if it was ticking. The smell of fag smoke drifted through to the living room. I craned my neck sideways to check Mum was still in the kitchen before running my index finger along the sealed edge. I picked out the white card with a thick green band with a thinner gold lying on top, the Shamrock crest and legend Celtic Boys' Club centred. I pulled open the letter and read it so many times I could have mimicked the signature at the bottom of the page.

I’d prayed and prayed and prayed I’d play for Celtic. I thanked God and the Devil and didn’t care which. I wondered whether the scout was at the game where I’d been the best player in our Guild team against St Kessog’s on their tight gravel park in Balloch and had put their big centre-forward on his arse twice. The more atheistic part of me argued that God hadn’t really been involved and it was one of my uncle’s pals that had sent me the club’s invite, as he’d drunkenly promised to do, sight unseen, but with a picture of The Sacred Heart looking down and bleeding from the living room wall, I didn’t want to dwell overlong on such heresies.

Mum came through to the living room with a scrunched dish towel wiping at her hands and an Embassy Mild tight in her lips. She didn’t have her specs on so made a face at the clock and took a quick drag before she spoke. ‘Shouldn’t you be away?’ I remained frozen footed with the letter in my hand. But she caught some of the excitement in my eyes.

‘What? What?’ she asked.

‘Celtic under fifteen’s have told me to come and play with them.’ Grinning, my head dropping modestly, as I corrected myself, waving the letter at her, ‘well, train with them.’

‘That’s great.’

Mum drew me in and I let her give me a quick cuddle, even though I was too old for that kind of malarkey. I’d a quick decko at the time over her shoulder. If I hurried I’d just get, or just miss, the twenty-to-nine bus for school. I placed the letter back on the mantelpiece under Big Ben’s luminous clock face, but slipped the card in the back pocket of my tan cords before I bolted away and out of the front door.

Three of the guys in my school team, St Andrew's, played for Celtic Boys' Club under fifteens and they came from the same area of Whitecrook. The curly haired Benny Hagen was a bit of a punk rocker, but he didn’t need to change his clothes much to be one. He jumped up and down at the St Stephen’s Guild discos to the sound of The Sex Pistols, ‘Pretty Vacant,’ and pogoed with the best of them. At football he was all left foot, but balanced on the curve of an angel’s wings and could go one way or the other. He was ballsy and tricky as Satan and I thought if anyone could make it, become a professional footballer, it would be Benny. John McKeever was called Bonny, a legacy from when he was a baby. He was still a wee guy, with shoulder length hair, but Bonny kept himself very fit, with weights and running and had a football brain. He always knew where he was on a football park and the ball was a friend. Norrie McGlinchy was sleek as a black- haired otter, but with pneumatic lips. He’d lost a couple of toes, when his foot got caught in the school gate when he was younger, but with a ball was relatively two-footed. He was a winger that was direct, whipped balls into the box and scored goals. I’d a bit of everything the Whitecrook boys had. I’d curly hair, could pogo, was stocky as Bonnie and if my left foot was removed nobody would notice when I played football. I didn’t seek any of them out to tell the good news that I’d be joining them. I fingered the card in my pocket incessantly throughout that day and the next and thought I’d surprise them, perhaps even myself by turning up at training on the Thursday night. I was determined to make a go of my God given opportunity, give it everything I had to play for my beloved Celtic, be utterly dedicated, but couldn’t remember if training at Barrowfield was the night Starsky and Hutch was on.