Scotland, 4am

 I wake, bleary-eyed, at 1am. The phone is going.

"Wake up!" It's my sister. She's promised to wake me. I want to go straight back to sleep but get up and splash cold water on my face.  

The dog gets up and wants to know what I am doing. Sorry pup, I say, shutting the front door in her face, I will be back for breakfast.

It's pitch dark outside. I take a swig from a can of red bull and get in the car, drive a few hundred metres down the road and chap on a door. I don't know the inhabitants, but I moved to this small village a few weeks ago, and recently posted on the local facebook page asking if anyone wanted a lift tonight. Two guys did, and they come out. They've had a few beers.

One is wearing a tam-o-shanter. 

I drive slowly along a rural road, narrowly avoiding a badger that dashes in front of the car, and pull in to the car park of North Middleton village hall, the nearest place with a big screen tonight. Inside, residents and hall volunteers are making a good atmosphere. I order an alcohol-free beer, chat with a fellow I know from work, and we sit at a table bedecked with Scotland flags as my new friends ask questions about where we moved from, do we have a family, where do I work, who else in the village have I met so far.

In fifteen minutes, Scotland are playing Haiti at the 2026 World Cup.

Memories flood back like it was yesterday from the last time Scotland was at the World Cup. Tennent's Bar in Glasgow. Having been narrowly beaten by Brazil and drawing with Norway, all we had to do was beat Morocco and we were through. We had the high hopes of youth, confident despite knowing hardly anything about Morocco. If they were any good, we'd have heard about them, right? Like Scotland they had also only managed a draw against Norway, and had been pumped far more severely by Brazil than we had. So it appeared that Scotland might even be the slight favourite for this game... well, we know how that ended. 3-0 to Morocco who outclassed Scotland in every way. An ironic, embarassed cheerfulness in the face of a skelping infused the crowd, who spilled out pissed onto Byres Road on a warm summer night, singing and dancing and laughing. 

That was twenty-eight years ago, and here I was, a middle-aged man, in a community hall, trying to stay awake and keep my expectations tamped down and failing. Here we go!

In Boston, a local has gone viral after posting a video of Scotland fans piping a wake-up call in the street, and he ends up being drawn in to the madness and given a ticket for the next game. Craig Ferguson has walked the width of the USA to arrive in Boston for the game and raised £1 million in the process. The news and social media is full of fan encounters, policemen playing keepie-uppy, statues in Boston with traffic cones on their heads, reports of bars running out of beer. 

And it's all about this moment, right now, playing in front of us. 

And Scotland are gash.

How many chances are Haiti getting at the Scotland goal? The dominant displays against Curacao and Bolivia forgotten. Haiti are better, more up for it, the recently deadly Shankland sclaffing a couple of chances. 

But as the game wears on, it becomes apparent Haiti couldn't score in a brothel... and John McGinn can. Polite bedlam at 2:30am in the village hall, and a nerve-shredding wait for the final whistle... which comes with a 1-0 Scotland victory! Only our fifth ever at the World Cup, after Zaire, New Zealand, Sweden and the Netherlands. 

At 4am we've done it: won the must-win game. Got more points in one game than from six games in the last two Euro groups, and we've got to be happy with that. Outside it's daylight. I am greeted by the dog back at our front door. A walk? I wonder, but she's more interested in going back to bed. I head upstairs to my own. There's a blackbird outside, and it's whistling the first few notes of Scotland the Brave.