Where's The Mincemeat?

At times of strain, recently, I've found myself quietly singing "Where's the mincemeat, Alan Rough, Alan Rough, Alan Rough? It's in your pocket" to the tune of 'London Bridge is Falling Down'. It seems to comfort me.

Now, as Blogmarch's more football-astute readers will be aware, Alan Rough was a goalkeeper who made his name playing for Partick Thistle and Scotland in the 70s and 80s. As a Scottish goalkeeper, he was always a figure of fun for the unfunny, who would employ the term 'Scottish goalkeeper' instead of a joke, with the understanding that they were famously rubbish. Of course, as Blogmarch's more Scottish-football-astute readers will know, Rough got even more stick because he played for Partick Thistle, the butt of gags a plenty from Rangers and Celtic fans. Which was unfair because the seventies Thistle were a miraculous success, but was better than being the butt of butts a plenty from the same.

Anyway. The song relates to when Alan Rough did a Richard Madely, walking out of a shop without paying for an item of paltry value, in this case mincemeat. Hence a weekly serenading from opposing fans.

It's quite funny, in a disposable sort of way. But I'm not sure why it works so well to sooth my squalling brain. Perhaps because it takes me to late seventies football. Now, I'm only vaguely interested in the weekly goings on in the Premiership. But football has been around me all my life. Nowadays, I find myself boning up on the results before going home to see my parents. But the era of Steve Heighway, Pat Rice, Jim Cannon and Jock Stein, and Alan Rough, holds a deep imaginative allure for me.

In 1978 I supported Scotland during the World Cup in Argentina. 'England cannae do it cuz they didnae qualify', as the song of the time ran, after all. And so, partisan issues of my Scottish mum and English dad were temporarily postponed.

I suppose I feel the safety and certainty of childhood in the song, now with an adult, sarcastic twist that would have quite passed me by at the time. The faces of players of that era are so burnt into my psyche that I feel I can imagine the expression of mild annoyance flickering across Rough's face under a sustained barrage of phlegmy heckles.

There is something perfect about the stolen item in question, as well. The mince 'n tatties Scotsman may be as much of a stereotype as the jellied eel troughing cockney, but the idea of a Scottish crowd singing 'Where's the mincemeat?' just brings me a smile. And where's the harm in that, I asks yer?

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