One of Them

A week ago, I stood outside O’Neill’s in Glasgow and wrote about an Irish pub making room for Scotland.

Last night, I went inside looking for somewhere to sit.

I had come into the city by myself.

Celtic were playing Dundee at Paradise. I did not have a ticket. The resale prices were more than I could afford, so the plan was to find a table at O’Neill’s, order a pint and watch the match there.

I was wearing my Celtic strip beneath a sweater.

For nearly two hours, I walked through Glasgow afraid to take the sweater off.

My dad had always told me I would get bottled if I wore a Celtic top in the wrong part of the city.

That warning had crossed the Atlantic with us.

I had inherited it before I knew the streets.

Whether anyone was actually interested in bottling me that afternoon was almost beside the point. Somewhere inside me, the danger remained real.

So I kept the strip covered.

Mostly.

When I reached the Duke of Wellington, I stopped beneath the statue and opened the sweater just far enough for the hoops to appear.

A modest reminder to His Grace that the Jacobite cause never entirely died.

The history was questionable.

The insolence was not.

I took the photograph, zipped the sweater and carried on towards O’Neill’s.

Inside, I found a table by myself.

A group of men were sitting at the table next to me. After a while, they asked what I was doing there alone and insisted I come and sit with them.

Then came the questions.

Where was I from?

Why did I sound Canadian?

Why was I wearing a Celtic strip?

And did I have a ticket to Paradise?

I told them I did not.

I had been born in Glasgow and taken to Canada as a baby. I had come home less than a month earlier. I had looked for a ticket, but I could not afford the resale prices. I was going to watch the match in the pub.

Then they offered me one of theirs.

There was no negotiation.

No inflated price.

No price at all.

They simply told me I was coming with them.

I asked why.

One of them looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.

“Because Celtic takes care of their family.”

I could have wept.

A few hours earlier, I had been walking through Glasgow hiding the shirt beneath my sweater.

Now these men I had never met were offering me a ticket to Celtic Park and telling me I was coming with them.

This does not mean football has overcome the divisions carried through this city.

It has not.

I had spent two hours hiding the strip because inherited fear still had enough authority to keep my sweater zipped.

One act of generosity does not rewrite that history.

But it answered it.

My father’s warning told me the Celtic strip could make me a target.

The men at the next table saw the same strip and decided I was family.

We travelled to Paradise together.

We watched the match together.

By the end of the night, I was walking through Glasgow with brothers I had not known that morning.

I arrived in Glasgow without a ticket.

Somehow, I found my way into Paradise.

Less than a month home.

One of them.

Hail Hail. 🍀

Giff on the Way Home