You may not be surprised that I want to begin by looking back at the Cup Final. What a glorious day it was and I have to be fair and say that Celtic deserved their victory. Hibs played as well as they could but it was not good enough to halt Celtic on the road to the inevitable treble. Even the weather was kind to us and we all relaxed in the sunshine in Queens Park before the kick-off. The official route we had to take in order to avoid the hooligan hordes of Soapdodgers took us through a surprisingly attractive part of Glasgow, I think we were in the Oxymoron district of the city. There was a carnival atmosphere in Queens Park and many local families were mingling happily with the Hibs fans. It has always struck me as odd that Glaswegians demonstrate a stunning lack of imagination when it comes to naming their children. To give you an example, close to where I was sitting a mother asked her male partner to collect her children from the swing park, "Haw, gonnae goan git the Waynes ower here Boab, by the way" she said. Boab returned with four girls and two boys all apparently called Wayne - a strange land indeed is the dear green place.

On the way to the stadium the streets were packed with Hibs fans singing loudly in support of our team. Occasionally we would spot a stray Celtic supporter and the noise would go up a few decibels. It was amusing to watch some of the younger element pretending they were real tough guys fron Edinburgh. How anyone thinks they look even remotely hard while wearing a bright green Harpo Marx wig mystifies me.

An unbelievable 21000 Hibs fans were in the stadium that day proudly promising to support the team evermore. This show of unconditional loyalty will of course evaporate on the first day of next season as Easter Road will have the usual 10000 Hibs fans in attendance. I think the club should make use of the fact that Cup Final tickets were all sold by post and they have the names and addresses of purchasers. Would it not be a good idea to go round to all their houses on the morning of the first home game and drag them along to the ground to honour their promise made on May 26th?

The Evil Empire seems to be consolidating its already vice-like grip on Scottish football. Rangers have opened their multi-million pound Dutch language centre and expect to produce a steady supply of local talent for their bloated first team squad. Celtic meanwhile have their own feeder club to source and acclimatise top talent from around the globe. This allows the Celtic management to concentrate their efforts on staying ahead of the game here without doing any work themselves. The name of this feeder club? Why it's Hibernian FC of course.

To digress, I am used to making telephone calls from home by sticking a pencil in the dial and turning it in order to make a connection. When I was informed that you could actually get a phone that would operate without wires I was astounded. I suddenly realised that all those people who I thought had earache and couldn't help talking to themselves were instead making telephone calls of the utmost importance. It did come as a relief to discover that the constant shouts of "I'm on the bus" were not in fact uttered by drug-crazed mentally unbalanced potential serial killers but were instead the accepted way to begin a telephone conversation. My decision to join the mobile communication age sadly ended in failure. I did some research and set out one morning to purchase a phone for myself only for it to come to a sudden end as I was roughly ejected from a Princes Street shop. All I did was ask the female assistant if she would care to show me her Nokias!

As you read this I will be poncing around la belle France on my holidays. C'est bon.