It was one of those deals when the return ticket costs less than the single. My brief stay in Hades, however, confirmed my belief that it is a villa on the south of France – with bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot lookalikes, hot and cold running absinthe and beaucoup pain au chocolate alleviating the beaucoup pain de death – compared to the horror, the horror that is the Scottish football season.
It all ends tomorrow. Until it starts again next week with the cup final. What the Scottish fitba season lacks in quality, entertainment and the capacity to invigorate, it more than makes up for in sheer, unrelenting, enervating tedium.
I speak not of the football but of the season. The individual fan can make up his/her mind on matters on the pitch. It is the other stuff that has drained this frail and weakening body.
At the start of season 2011/2012, I was an Iron Man ready for the rigours ahead. Today, I am besieged by Simpsons fans asking for autographs and shouting "Mr Burns! Mr Burns!" I am looking drawn. But, then, every Simpsons character is drawn. This decrepitude has nothing to do with noting what system a team plays or even inserting the correct scoreline on a match report. I can sometimes do each, though rarely both.
My fatigue has everything to do with a crash course in business that has left me in a ditch with wheels spinning. One major side-effect of the Rangers crisis is that it has been a sort of Open University on economics for Scottish football journalists. I am in the remedial class, sitting at the back with a pack of well-thumbed cards and an attitude sharpened by a volatile mixture of ignorance and confusion.
The Rangers rammy has been as easy to follow as an episode of Lost dubbed with the long-lost dialect of an Inca tribe. The financial machinations have baffled many who make their living out of deciphering the intricacies of high - and low – finance. The sporting journalist has therefore been pressed just to keep up with developments.
There has been some odd moments. A discussion with one of my gaffers – there are so many – concerned the precise ramifications of the Libor rate on the Whyte takeover. History shows this was the most crucial point of the entire deal. Another search for a nugget of truth ended with a fellow journalist advising me sonorously "on the as yet undefined parameters of the Ticketus deal".
A gentle inquiry of the administrators once provided the astonishing answer that the owner of most of Rangers shares was irrelevant. And, then, he wasn't. And then he was. And then he wasn't...
So much for the past.
Accurate predictions have been impossible. Consider this. As the season kicked off with a rush, Rangers were on the brink of a new dawn with a motivated owner, a fresh manager and the Champions League to embrace. Some months on, it has been revealed that EBTs are not about phoning home, CVAs are the specialist subject of a generation of phone-in callers and PAYE is apparently optional. This, of course, has all been recorded in large type and loud voices.
The sporting implications have been chewed over and the business practices investigated and, in some cases, exposed. However, it can be said with some certainty that the Rangers crisis has more storylines to pursue than the HBO scriptwriting department.
This week has been routinely dramatic. The Tennessee Towing Tycoon – written by Merle Haggard and sung with gusto by Taylor Swift – has ridden off into the sunset.
Given the frantic and baffling developments of the past few days, one is braced for a Uzbekistani pig farmer coming in with a plan that involves the diabolical pairing of a newco and an oldco and is called bunco. At one point, there was the announcement of three new bidders, presumably they were following a star and carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The administrators seemed to have installed a revolving door as potential buyers spin in and out. Scottish football looks on in bafflement. The press pack stare goggle-eyed as a story firms up and then looks as solid as a meringue found in Sauchiehall Street on a rain-sodden Sunday morning.
The Rangers story has offered one matter of substance. It is this. Everyone has learned something and nobody knows anything.
