There’s a moment in Game of Thrones fourth season when Tyrion Lannister, brother of the queen regent, who’s just stood trial for his life, is sitting in a dank cell with his brother Jamie. His fate will be decided in a few hours, in a trial by combat involving two noted warriors, one of whom fights for the crown, the other fighting for Tyrion himself and a very personal sort of revenge. None of that interests Tyrion in that moment; he’s thinking about his cousin Orson.
Orson was not right. As Jamie puts it “the wet-nurse dropped him on his head and left him simple.” He spent his time sitting in the garden, killing beetles with a rock. And it’s this Tyrion sits and puzzles over as he awaits his fate.
“I was the smartest person I knew,” he said. “Certainly I had the wherewithal to unravel the mysteries that lay at the heart of a moron …”
And of course it proved impossible. Tyrion and Orson were not just separated by their mental state, but on a much deeper level. “His face was the page of a book written in a language I didn’t understand, but he wasn’t mindless, he had his reasons, and I became possessed with knowing what they were.”
Sometimes I know how Tyrion feels in that moment.
There are times, reading Derek Johnstone, when it is nearly impossible not to think of Orson smashing his beetles. Some folk just live in a different dimension to us.
I read his work with a profound fascination.
He possesses none of the skills that an article writer should. He cannot construct an argument. His work flits between paragraphs which often appear only to have the flimsiest connection to each other. He repeats himself, often three or four times in a 500 word piece.
Over and above stylistic issues, he writes the worst nonsense.
I try to comprehend what planet this guy is living on at times, because he seems so far removed from the world I see.
Today is no exception.
Today he’s writing on Sevco’s transfer plans for the winter. Do they have transfer plans? They’ve already lost out on Louis Moult. One paper has them linked with a £1.2 million move for Jamie Murphy, the ex Motherwell winger who’s been down in England a while.
Where are they getting the cash for that?
Where are they getting any sort of money at all?
Even the briefest glance at their accounts and their recent behaviour reveals the nature of life at Ibrox right now. They are skint. Yet Johnstone believes they will spend if a manager is appointed in time. He writes that, “I don’t expect (Sevco) to make significant signings unless there is clarity on the managerial situation …”
Is that really all that stands in the way of them spending big? Clarity?
What about fiscal reality? Does that just not fit in anywhere?
Does it not exist at that club or for those who support it?
This really is like watching someone sitting mindlessly smashing beetles. No matter how many times you try to point out reality to these people they insist on living in their own wee world. They ignore everything else, everything they don’t like and which doesn’t conform to their own version of the truth.
I used to think Derek Johnstone was a mouthpiece for people inside Ibrox, but I realised eventually that they have professionals working for them who could do that much better than he does and more convincingly.
Now I simply see him as a moron.
He just isn’t getting it. He’s not alone.
Whoever wrote the Murphy story should be similarly slated for it.
At least Johnstone realises that without a manager the idea of making signings is farcical.
He’s not the stupidest kid in the classroom, it seems.