CONSIDERING many happy evenings were spent being entertained by a girl from Tokyo in the student flats attached to their stadium, it seems rather poetic that Partick Thistle have chosen to bring something pretty and Japanese into an often uninviting corner of Glasgow ahead of my latest visit.

In this case, it is a seat cushion. The first 2000 people through the door for Friday evening’s visit of Aberdeen will be given one as part of the latest artist giveaway at the club.

If I may say so, it is very nice, indeed. Based on Katsushika Hokusai’s most famous work, ‘The Great Wave Off Kanagawa’, it reminds me somewhat of my own days spent watching the sea roll in whilst encased within the volcanic sandbaths of Ibusuki on the Satsuma Peninsula.

Either that, or the morning I woke up on the beach in Nice ahead of a Kilmarnock Cup-Winners' Cup tie to discover someone had stolen my trainers.

It remains to be seen whether it will quite be enough to entice Mad Rab McMalky and other beermonsters to leave the Maryhill Tavern half-an-hour earlier than usual, but we ought to applaud the Jags and their sponsors for bringing something fresh to our largely stagnant national game.

There is, almost certainly, an element of playing to stereotypes in this whole business. Thistle have a reputation for playing host to students, lefties and other delicate souls from West End bohemia. My experience is that their fans are just as spiteful and unruly as any others, but the club was fertile ground for such a project and it does seem to be winning favour.

The new club mascot, Kingsley, as spiky and confrontational as the Young Team full of jellies, was a masterstroke, a much-needed break from tubby oddballs wobbling around a pitch dressed as a furry animal. Having once dressed up as Roxi Bear for a game at Ibrox, I know of what I speak.

Mixed feelings over some of the ensuing giveaways, of course, are understandable. Art, like football, is all about opinions, as Pat Nevin will probably explain to you on ‘Sportscene’ some time soon.

A psychedelic football, designed by a graffiti artist called Barry McGee, was terrific. Jon Rubin’s existentialism on a scarf in the form of a slogan reading ‘You Don’t Know Who You Are’ was perhaps not everyone cup of meat extract, but it remains a perfectly functional, worthwhile item. Rather like the holder for the personal yellow card presented by visual artist, Jonathan Monk.

The idea is that you use the card “in situations on and off the pitch where you wish to advise others a line has been crossed”. Those who have brandished it in kebab shops and public houses around the West of Scotland report that said holder really is quite the thing for placing your teeth in after scrabbling around in the blood and snotters on the floor to retrieve them.

Why shouldn’t a football club based in Glasgow make art part of its identity, though? Becoming European City of Culture in 1990 regenerated the city and helped create a lasting, vibrant scene.

Football supporters are tired of being talked down to and mistreated by those who run their clubs. As falling attendances show, fans are capable of forming other interests. That Thistle are inviting their followers to flirt with higher dimensions is a refreshing leap in an arena, remember, which still tends to look at putting curry in a pie as some kind of breakthrough in human evolution.

Art and football can easily co-exist. Just ask my good friend, Eric, who marries the act of visiting football grounds worldwide with taking in performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

Tell those who have witnessed some of the Barcelona sides of the past seven or eight years or loved the Dutch sides of the 1970s that there is no longer beauty to be found in The Beautiful Game.

I will happily bore you rigid about how a footballing trip to Madrid introduced me to the claustrophobic, visceral presentation of Goya’s Black Paintings in the Prado. Even then, there remains a possibility I was more affected by the Ajax side, choreographed by Louis van Gaal, that I watched later that day.

Going to the football can bring out the boor in all of us. Why not challenge that? Would it really be so dreadful if someone picks up their cushion on Friday and goes on to immerse themselves in some of the enchanting prints and pictures of the Ukiyo-e genre Hokusai was part of?

We might soon find Jags fans standing around in public spaces, offering anguished critiques of inanimate objects. Mind you, bearing in mind some of their players over the years, there is a school of thought which suggests that might be nothing new.