Typical isn’t it. As the formal travel itinerary starts to take shape, the world continues its descent to self-destruction

I’ve got one of those ‘morning after’ feelings where the toxins in the brain induce feelings of apprehension, suspicion and fear.

There I was, putting my wee yellow/pink/orange/green stickers on the map of Thailand when the background buzz from BBC News 24 reads my thoughts and says “Bangkok”!!

The Airports are barricaded, the troops are out, Government and opposing forces are staring each other down, and the Prime Minister has headed to the hills in the North!

“Never mind” says I, “after all I was in Nigeria during the ‘bloodless’ coup in the late 70s and early 80s; It’ll all have blown over soon enough.”.

I looked at my list of stickers and carried on with pressing them onto the big chart.

Disappointingly I didn’t have one for Mumbai!

The disappointment metamorphosed in one brief history of time into unrivalled elation and relief as the newsreader was suddenly interrupted by the breaking news that “man’s inhumanity to man” once more showed its ugly face and an al-Qaeda style attack had led to over a hundred deaths, hundreds more injuries, hostage taking of UK and American citizens (where is that bleedin’ Irish Passport), and the attempted razing of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

I looked on as the flames roared out of the windows, firemen on giant rotating ladders rescued the occupants of the top floors, and reporters recounted the bloody battle at the main station, the assault by the Indian army against the so called ‘Deccan Mujahedeen’ and the continually increasing casualty account.

“Still” I pondered “In 1992 our London flat had burnt down on Xmas morning, as we slept, and by a miracle we had got out with nothing worse than being wired for sound for a few days, two months of scorched coughing lungs erupting with ozone unfriendly burning carbon, and black speckled spit and phlegm tasting of an untended fire grate.”

But perhaps I would go to Bangalore instead!

I looked round at some of the other stickers.

Bogota in Columbia!

“What a great idea. Probably bump into the cartel brothers’!

Australia!

“That should be fun especially if the locusts have eaten half the greenery!”

California and Mexico City!

“Must be due for an earthquake or two”.

Baku! Khartoum! Dhaka!

“What could possibly go wrong”?

Anyway. As you can see from the picture above I have at the moment over forty locations well spread around the globe. There are however a number of gaps and I am attempting to fill them through celticbars.com and the various overseas CSAs.

In the meantime, I have also built a formal project plan and Mind-Map to try and keep everything under some semblance of control and to ensure that every step is taken with at least a passing reference to our wellbeing and continued symbiotic partnership of body and soul.

The major tasks over the next couple of weeks are identifying ‘income’ opportunities, sponsorship discussions, and contacting publishers. I’ll also be in touch again with everyone who has contacted me.

One thing I have promised myself is that I need to stop working on the plan with BBC News 24 on the background!

After all we really are looking forward to the trek from Baku down through Iran and over the Gulf to Dubai.

The Slabbery Wumin has been looking forward to the azure waters, golden sun and a wee bit of houghmagandy on the beach!

I repeated to myself "What could possibly go wrong?"

Hail Hail

Matt (Estadio)

P.s. I know the picture isn't easy to read. I'll post the full list of potential destinations later.

The World

It would be dishonest to say I took the event in my stride. But it would be equally dishonest to say which of the emotional mix was dominant.

In any venture, especially a new one, and despite all the planning, anticipation, confidence and enthusiasm, there is a defining moment of dread, exhilaration, silence, humility, all glued together by a resolve to succeed.

If at that moment you can’t envisage success; give up!

As I unrolled the 103cm by 138cm, 1:22,000,000 scale, 1 inch to 347 miles world map, stuck the double sided adhesive paper on each corner, fixed the picture to my wall and stood back, I pondered and stared for more than a few minutes in silent awe!

It had been many a year since I had viewed the whole vista of our earth never mind looked at it as more than simply a picture; after all this was going to be my living room, bedroom, kitchen, study and garden for the foreseeable future!

As my eyes went from east to west, north to south, and darted here and there the enormity of what I was attempting to do froze the tumbling emotions into not only the crucial determination to succeed but also into the unbreakable faith that I would.

Names jumped out at me from the colours and the contours; many familiar and some less so, many old and many new!

I have travelled to many places in the past either following Celtic, through work or on holiday. But this was different!

After all in the past, adventurous as some of the trips had been, they were all wrapped in a cocoon of security whether by travelling with many others or having all the arrangements organised for me. I would get to the airport, sit in the business lounge, be pampered on the airline, whisked to my hotel and transported to and from work.

But what I now could see on my wall wasn’t just the places and my sketchy knowledge of the peoples and the cultures; what was shouting at me was the sheer scale of the distances, potential barriers and the unknowns that lay in getting from A to B to C.....to Z and then back to A!

The British Isles, no more than a wee set of countries just over an inch long was drowned not so much by the huge expanse of waters covering two-thirds of the earths surface, but by the sheer numbers and magnitude of the living, breathing, evolving countries and peoples making up our biosphere.

347 miles to the inch!! Just under the distance from Glasgow to London and even with a reasonably common language that would be challenging enough with only a back-pack. But thousands upon thousands of miles of mystery. This really was going to be 'something else'!

I focussed in on our own little part of the western world.

Glasgow so different from Edinburgh! Edinburgh so different from Aberdeen! Dublin, Belfast, London, Cardiff, all with their own histories, ways, ambitions and futures.

I could see Spain, Italy, Hungary, Germany, France all within a few inches and all so different but perhaps with a future that may have much more in common for the people than the bloodlust for power and domination of the past!

And yet even in their geographical size these few countries from this small postage stamp had at times dominated the world through the Greek and Egyptian fount of knowledge, the Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and British empires. Through a leading edge in the technologies adapted either for travel, commerce or warfare these small specks of power had diffused to all corners of the known earth and in one way or another had left a legacy that had created the enlightenments, the medicine, the opportunities, and the political systems which we see the influence of even today.

But look closely at that map not only in our own environment, but look at the Balkans, the expansive variety of Africa, Russia, Indo-China and think back 10 or 20 years. Think of the changes that have occurred, good and bad, since then. View this change as the society’s primordial sludge of evolution and wonder about what in 10 or 20 years time another snapshot of the world will reveal as the content of the earthly melting pot!

There is an urge within us all to know more than we do, whether that be about little things, big things, people, football, history, chemistry, or even the unknown!

But there is more to it than that; I look at the map of the world and the names that inhabit our discarded papers and quickly forgotten bulletins force themselves back into my mind’s eyes and ears. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Burma, Columbia, Chechnia, Alaska, Palestine, Israel, Zimbabw, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuala, Cuba and a hundred more!

In my head I can see the geographic features, the mountains, lakes, towns, roads, and railways; But I can also see and hear the people; I can see and hear the politicians; I can see and hear the traffic and the arguments. I can smell Life!!

But the sights, voices, sounds and smells are indistinct. I have cotton wool in my ears, motes in my eyes and my nose is blocked by the cold of unfamiliarity.

I need to go to see better, to hear better, to taste and to touch better!

But most of all I need to go to understand better; for surely understanding is the first step to respect and respect is the foundation of peace and love.

Everyone should have a map of the world on their wall. Every child should grow up with that map.

It just might make a difference.

Hail Hail

Matt

If You Know The (Hidden) History.....

How many times have we stood on the terraces, stands and even in the bowels of Celtic park and belted out the anthem with gusto, passion and belief proclaiming to the world what the history of Celtic means to us and them? But more importantly when do we take the time to peel off the veneer of the words and examine the story the history actually tells, and just why it makes the club a bit special and a bit different from most of the others?

That is no boast on my part, after all I only live in the reflected glory of giants of times gone, nor is it meant to belittle the devotion that other clubs’ supporters have for their own teams. It is simply a statement of fact that whether through blood-line, empathy, romantic attachment or sheer accident, once the embrace of this club swaddles you, the warmth welds club and soul with a strength that is as unbreakable as the steel hawsers that launched and guided so many Clyde-built leviathans.

We know so much of Brother Walfrid, Willie Maley, the club’s first breath drawn in the collapsing lungs and distended bellies of the famine, the ‘floating bridge’ of ‘heads and faces’ and the hundreds of players who have graced the turf at Celtic park. Words far more expressive and knowledgeable than any that I might fashion, have flowed like ambrosia from the pens of such as David Potter, Graham McColl, Archie McPherson, Marie Rowan, John Burrowes, Pat Woods, Peter Burns, John Cairney, Tom Greig and even a young Gerry McNee.

But rarely if at all has the hidden past, the flourishing present, and the confident future of the single most important and most influential history been adequately addressed.

The history of the fans.

Such an undertaking is impossible for any one person, any one story, or any one lifetime, but it has to be started by someone, it has to begin somewhere, it has to commence sometime.

So I and the affectionately monickered ‘Slabbery Wumin’ have sold up and we’re off to hopefully scratch that surface of Celtic’s diaspora.

In early 2009 starting in France and then over a period of time (however long it takes) we intend to make our way across Europe and Asia stopping at places where outcrops of Celtic fans have lain their hats.

Each one has a story and each story contributes a piece to the jigsaw of Celtic’s hidden and untold history.

Who are these fans? How did they get there? How do they fit into the local community? How do they maintain their connection with Celtic? Where and how do they see the games? How often do they get back to Celtic park? How large are the communities? Where do they see their future? What lessons are there for others trying to start the same type of venture? How do they view the current state of the club, the players, the organisation, and the media? What is their message to the club’s custodians?

These and a thousand other questions can only be answered by the people who matter the most. The fans.

Try as they might, the efforts of Celtic in becoming a world-club through holding friendlies in far-flung places will lead to little of any resilience. But the enthusiasm, devotion and example of the world-wide support can create a permanent oasis of romance and allegiance in a desert of opportunism.

So if you are based anywhere from Calais to Calcutta, Krakow to Kiev, Berlin to Beijing and would be interested in telling your story, just let me know.

E-mail me at msincent@yahoo.co.uk

Tell me where you are and obviously your contact details. We can then discuss the venture further. Assuming I get enough and a suitable spread of responses, I’ll then attempt to set up a schedule and itinerary.

Stare into the depths of space on a clear Glasgow night and shining back at you will be a thousand visible stars each one telling a story of the past and perhaps lighting a path to the future. But hidden from the naked eye are another billion billion stars each one unique and each one adding the totality of the universe. It is the hidden story that gives meaning to the visible spectrum and it is the hidden history that gives meaning to Celtic’s history and future.

I cant tell the whole story but perhaps I can find just a few more stars and perhaps their existence, their tales, their past and their ambitions will be the seeds that will take root in even more exotic places and ensure that Celtic has a future clothed not only in the gaudy bling of commercial necessity, but also thrives on the life-enhancing, heart-racing, blood-pumping, four-leaf-clover emblazoned hooped soul of passion!

The story of the millions of supporters across the globe needs telling, so to paraphrase

‘let the people speak,
the stories and the songs…….’!

I look forward to your e-mails, posts and failing that? Well thanks for listening

Hail Hail

Estadio (Matt)

msincent@yahoo.co.uk