On This Date In History

[Seven Tattoos]

Eighteen years ago today: Saturday 27 August 1988, Hibs 0-0 hertz. The third successive goalless match against the submarines since we'd ended our 17 game hoodoo the previous October. Which meant we were unbeaten in four derbies! (Worse was to follow unfortunately).

We drove up from Taffland that day, for a family holiday, staying in Linlithgow of all places. Full of phuckin hertz kantz. And that slimy toly Alex Salmond comes from there. Paul Merton once asked him (on 'Have I Got Bollocks For You') if he was Tony Slattery's Dad! Which I thought was phuckin hilarious. Salmond's deadpan reaction was even funnier. Born again sheep-shagger anyway.

But I meander off into my own mental bollocks as usual. We had tickets for the Cowshed and this was my second derby and my first at Easter Road. I don't know why the old man had got tickets there cos I watched, enviously, as the terracin swayed and gesticulated and for some reason the song that I most remember from that game is 'In Your Gorgie Slums' being chanted, vitriollicly.

The game was tight and hard-fought and there wasn't much in it. Johnny Collins got the ball in the net late on but I think the referee had already blown for some other infringement. Pat McGinlay came on as a late sub and I think I'm right in saying that that was his first appearance in a home game for Hibs. I'm sure his only other first team appearance (prior to that match) was a late sub the previous season at Pittodrie in a 1-1 draw. Again, Bobby S or Gunner could possibly put me right.

As we walked down St Clair Street after the game we passed the flats and there was a group of hertz fans at a window, waving a maroon bar scarf (sort of woollen shite-paper, tends to get twirled by big fannies at the PBS, you may be aware of it). There was also a hideous schemie radge woman standing outside the flat with a vicious, snarling Alsatian held tightly on its lead. Clearly the behaviour of the Jambos was provocative to the thousands of passing Hibbies and I'll always recall how two guys (both wearing the then new Scotland replica top for some stange reason) hurled what Aidan Smith would describe as a tremendous 'buckshot of abuse' (sound, comprehensive, local knowledge) at the woman and the occupants of the flat. hertz kantz, scum, phuck off, the usual stalwart terms when speaking to jambos. At this point the fanny with the rag, a big ginger, gormless lookin kant with an 80s tash (ginger hair is a phuckin sin anyway so why underline yer snoz with something that looks like my ex-girlfriend's minge?) started phuckin givin it large, like he was gonnae come doon and batter phuck out of the boys. One of the boys came out with what, to this day, I regard as the finest put-down ever; he told him to 'feel ma baws'! Class. You can't buy class, you've either got it or you've no.

After the match we drove back to Linlithgow and stopped at a newsagent so I could get a Pink News. This was, of course, the day that Ian Andrews let in five at Ibrox and the woman behind the counter, cockahoop (unfortunate pun!), was clearly a bluenose. Like most bluenoses she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and seeing the green and white trim of my Hibs away top (under a hideous jade Pringle I was wearing, no wonder I never got a bag-off when I was 16!) she asked me how ma team had got on, in that supercilious smart-arse way that the devils' disciples have. Instead of just tellin her to 'phuck off, shite-bag' (which would have been a far wittier response) I pointed out we'd drew with them the week before. Her face was a picture (of frozen retardness) upon realising I wasn't actually a Celtic fan. Arsehole.