There’s a line in Spike Island, Pulp’s new song – ‘The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on.’ It’s been taken as a comment on Jarvis Cocker’s and Pulp’s own popularity – after reaching the very top in 1995 / 96, they were swiftly heading back down without anyone really noticing. I can’t help feeling I let Jarvis down, ditching him for the ‘cool’ kids.
Pulp was the first band I ever related to. The songs were about the stuff I knew, I saw, I lived. A working class life. Jarvis would have loved the gossip in Hair by Melanie, my mum’s little corner shop hairdressers. She never knew I was listening, but I banked all the stories I shouldn’t have heard. Sex on pool tables after last orders, 30-year-old virgins being ‘shown the way’, customers discussing illicit affairs and inappropriate crushes.
When I first heard Babies, I thought, yep, I would have definitely hid inside that wardrobe. Talking of which, this reminds me in a roundabout way of being invited into a friend’s bedroom while she and two other girls got changed for a night out. They didn’t see me like the other lads. I was like some benign asexual being deemed to have no interest in tits whatsoever. Well, I did, and I was so shocked at seeing the much discussed breasts of Emily Craven (not real name) reflected in the wardrobe mirror, that I didn’t even tell any of my mates. I kept it to myself. Maybe it didn’t really happen.
Disco 2000. Fully experienced that. Watching the girls I had fallen for, the ones I had entertained, made laugh, supported and listened to, go off with someone with one brain cell and the personality of a sea slug. But he looks like Ryan Giggs, while I looked like Jonny Briggs, so, you know… can’t compete there.
I always felt like an outsider. I was in the Misshapes gang, for sure. I remember reading the manifesto on the insert inside the CD single and thinking, ‘I’m on your side Jarvis’ and I couldn’t be prouder. I certainly got picked on at school and outside. I wasn’t afraid to tell people that I loved art, comics and a bit of Beethoven. The only reason I probably didn’t get beaten up was because I played football. Not that I was particularly good at it. Being a nerd and into football don’t usually go together. I stopped short of ever feeling the need to properly stand out. When my dad’s Colombian girlfriend bought me a knitted rucksack, with Aztec patterns, I politely declined the gift and gave it to my sister. ‘But all the boys in Paris have them.’ Can you imagine turning up for school, in Hucknall, with that on my back? During my university years, I once went back into Hucknall wearing a long Matrix-style leather jacket. I thought I looked magnificent and fucking cool. As soon as I stepped off the bus I got called ‘gay’.
Sorted for Es and Whizz. I never had the guts to do drugs. The Leah Betts story absolutely killed that for me. (Clearly all the stories about the alcohol related deaths did not). Despite the tabloid froth it was never a celebration about drugs, hence the last line of the song. I never had any desire to go to a rave either. Being given a map and location of the said rave would only lead to me being kidnapped and my kidneys cut out and sold. I’ve never wanted to be lost. A healthy mindset, perhaps. During an overnight outdoors ‘fun’ exercise for youth groups, I, the map reader, managed to get our team lost in the dark of Sherwood Forest. We arrived at a road, no sign of the hundreds of people taking part, and I remember thinking, ‘we’re dead, we’re absolutely fucked.’ So, a rave. No thanks. What the song does remind me of is the feeling that it wasn’t long before I could escape, before life would happen for me. Listening to Sorted in the car with a mate, dark fields around us, post-industrial, post-mining, post-anything Hucknall in the distance. It would soon all be left behind for a new life.
So much has been written about Common People, rightly so. I recognised a lot in the song, but it wasn’t as poignant as when I started university. Suddenly there were proper middle-class kids who had their own cars, paid-for gym memberships, not having to work because Daddy paid for it all. No full student grant? No bother. Why do Safeway when you can go to Waitrose? I remember having to put my mum’s income into my grant forms and feeling embarrassed for her.
I wanted to be Jarvis. At Rock City’s student nights I would pretend to be him and I didn’t care what anyone thought. I saw him and Pulp at the same venue and it still remains one of my favourite gigs, just because it was him and them. It should have carried on like that, but ahem, something changed (sorry). Regrettably I fell in with the group who, at school, would have shot darts at me from the back of the class. The sort who kicks your ball over the fence. ‘Fetch that y’ twat’. We’re talking Oasis here, of course. I fell for the lure of the troublemakers. I didn’t want to miss out. It felt like the cool kids had welcomed you in. A bit like when I was invited to red base, at school, during a wet break. But like red base you never really felt like you belonged. Knebworth was a fantastic experience, but largely for reasons that weren’t Oasis. I was with my best mate John for a start, the last time we spent time together before he went to university. The last adventure. I assumed this was it for us (We’re still mates 30 years on). I also saw for the first time, the Manics and The Charlatans, two bands who still mean so much more to me than Oasis ever did.
That evening, I remember looking around as the front pen got more crowded and seeing Dennis Wise. Proof if ever than I didn’t belong with this lot. It should have finished there really. After that day. But they limped on and on. And yes, I bought Be Here Now.
Pulp released This is Hardcore during my first year at uni. I had a poster of Different Class Jarvis flicking the Vs on my wall. I bought the album as soon as it was released. It wasn’t His ‘n’ Hers or Different Class. Much darker. It reflected my mood at the time. Sad, lonely, pretty miserable. I liked it, but it wasn’t the same. I still have trouble getting through it. My interest dwindled. I didn’t bother with We Love Life. I only bought the Greatest Hits when it was on offer at HMV for a fiver. I didn’t go to the Sherwood Pines gig which looking back would have been amazing. The solo albums were ok. I loved Jarvis’ shows on Six Music or any interview he does. I even named my dog after him. His book Good Pop, Bad Pop is brilliant. An ingenious way of telling his life story through objects he’s taken from house to house in plastic bags, stored away in the attic. I’ll have to do my own version. Why I’ve kept the A-Team sticker album is a mystery.
In one of the many recent articles about Pulp’s new album (which is superb by the way) it said history has been kind to them. I think that’s true. They’re the only ones who have survived ‘Britpop’ with any real credibility.
I never thought I’d get the chance to see Jarvis and Pulp perform again. You know when you get a sweat-on trying to purchase tickets, the fear that it’s all going to crash before you hit pay? That. Take my money. I’ll look at the price later.
Dad has decided to take you to a Nottingham Forest match. It’s your first. Your debut. Why now? You’re nearly nine-years-old, you’ve been showing an interest for a year or so. You know the history, you can name the current team and you’ve been collecting Panini stickers with the faces of these men you will soon be calling your heroes. However, it’s only three years since the Bradford City fire when 56 people were killed, and only two years after the Heysel Stadium disaster when 39 Juventus fans died after they were crushed under a wall. Violence outside and inside England’s football grounds appears to be the norm. As a result, fans are caged in at matches, treated like animals, and that will lead to the one of the worst sporting tragedies ever seen. It’s not a cosy time to be introducing a child to the sport, and its surprising Mum ever let you go, but Dad believes in the positives of the game, the magic, the glory and he also knows it will bring you closer together as father and son.
It begins on a Sunday in March 1987, a home game against Leicester City. You and Dad are clearly late for the game, or so it would appear. He drives you speedily through the city to the match in his red Dodge van that he uses for work. You wish the van was black so it would like the one from The A-Team. He parks it somewhere he shouldn’t, a pub car-park designated for customers only. There is no chance of getting anywhere near the ground and he doesn’t want to pay to park. It means you have a bit of a walk.
You jump out the van. Tatty invoices, bits of electrical cable and an old coke can follow you. You pick them up and stuff them back in the footwell and then scuttle around the other side to meet Dad, who has been putting on his coat. He smiles at you affectionately and asks if you’re warm enough? You are. You’ve got a red and white scarf, that a great aunt knitted, wrapped several times around your neck. It really is stupidly long.
You hold his big rough hand that has been gripping power tools all week and then he starts to stride towards the ground, your little legs try to keep up with his. You think you’re late but then as you cross London Road the crowd walking in the same direction suddenly swells. There’s a mixture of voices, mostly happy, discussing what we need from the game. Another man just wants to see some good football. You hear swearing too but nothing you haven’t heard before.
As we approach Trent Bridge, you hear sausages and burgers sizzling on a small griddle. The vendor, a small animated man, whips the charred meat into fluffy cobs, followed by soggy onions and a squirt of tomato sauce and mustard. He moves quickly on to the next customer.Our pace has slowed now as we start to cross the bridge. The swirling, murky waters of the River Trent make you feel queasy. But you look to your left and see the City Ground and a warm feeling comes over you, it makes you skip a little. You can make out the word FOREST spelled out in white seats on the stand facing you. A mass of bodies glow orange under sodium lamps as they make their way to the turnstiles.
It gets more congested as you get nearer and you hold Dad’s hand tighter as you ease your way past people. There’s a man selling pin badges and old programmes including those from when Forest won the European Cup seven years ago. Those days are long gone but there’s much optimism. We still have the same manager, the one and only Brian Clough, who is still very much in his prime and desperate for more trophies. He’s got a good crop of talent at the club including Neil Webb, who you like best because you both share a name (you’ll later copy the way he writes Neil which will eventually form your own signature). There’s also Des Walker, a quick and at times unbeatable defender, Johnny Metgod, a Dutch midfielder with a shiny pate and a powerful right boot, Nigel Clough, the manager’s son and the club’s top scorer, and finally there’s Stuart Pearce. You’re not sure about him at first, his fixed, serious, glare scares you a little, but this man, who will later become the captain, will prove important to you. One of the greatest players ever to wear the shirt.
Dad buys you a programme, it’s 50p, and has Garry Birtles, in his second spell at the club, standing alongside Metgod, all in red with the words Home Ales across the middle of the shirt, a local brewery that will soon cease trading after 170 years of business.In Brian Clough’s column he thanks the fans for coming. He bemoans the effect colour television is having on attendances and says he’s “banging the drum for live football – the variety you see with your own eyes in lovely fresh air”. The air is certainly fresh, you would go as far as saying it’s nippy, winter hasn’t quite let go yet. But there’s an irony when you look at the back of the programme where there is an advert for John Player Superkings cigarettes – so much for fresh air.Dad ushers you through a narrow turnstyle. You hand your ticket to a man behind some red metal mesh who tears off the bit he needs and hands back the stub to you. Dad follows you and then has a quick glance of the ticket, before you both start climbing concrete steps up to the stand.
You’re sitting in the Junior Reds section. You joined the club through an advert in the Evening Post and received a package in the post that contained a letter from Brian Clough, a sheet of printed autographs, a car sticker, a badge and a t-shirt. Dad is not too far away but makes sure you know where he’ll be and tells me to stay where I am at half-time and not to wander off. He ruffles my hair and tells me to enjoy the game. I look across the luminous green pitch and even from my position five rows from the playing surface I can smell the wet turf. To my left is the Trent End, which looks like a farm building, and this is where all the early noise is coming from.
“Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, NOT-TING-UM!” they chant. The Leicester supporters, in the opposing Bridgford stand, try their own song and get a sardonic wolf-whistle in return.
You’ll remember the game in flashes. Forest score two. Franz Carr, a tricky right winger, and Nigel Clough, referred to by his father as ‘the centre-forward’, get the goals. Both from close range after some neat passing.
The game finishes 2-1 to Forest.
As you leave you walk across Trent Bridge. You turn to your right this time and it takes your breath away. The City Ground lit up is a sight to behold, almost celestial. The glow from the floodlights turns the evening sky blue, forming a dome over the stadium. White light glitters gently on the now black waters of the Trent. This scene remains a key part of the magic.
You can’t wait for Dad to bring you again.
Season after season your emotions will be all over the place, you will have such massive highs beyond compared with anything else you will experience in life. You will also be hit by the lows, you’ll get low, frustrated, lose sleep, and wish Dad had never brought you to the City Ground in the first place. But there’s no going back. All of your hopes will be invested in the custodians of that shirt, that beautiful glossy red shirt with the little white tree. You don’t know it yet but over the decades this team, whoever plays, will help you through some dark times.
The kitchen cupboards smelled the same as they always did wherever my grandparents had lived. A heady mix of opened jars of piccalilli, strawberry jam, Branston pickle and a half-eaten pack of Digestive biscuits. Clearing the cupboard evoked memories of the house they lived in when I was a child.
I spent so much time there while my parents worked. I would help my grandma, or Mama (Pronounced Mam-mar) as she was named, construct and bake meat pies. We’d play silly games we’d made up on the spot, watch Candlewick Green and Play School. Cherished memories.
Keep it together.
I shook the contents of the jars into the bin, washed them, and placed them in the recycling.
Three men, from a charity that did house clearances, arrived in two vans. The gaffer wore a black suit. He had a ponytail and a trimmed beard. He introduced himself as Sol. He reminded me of a nightclub bouncer. He directed the men into my grandparents’ ground floor flat. They obeyed him without a single word. My sister Sarah and I had already taken the TV, stereo and some of the bigger furniture away. Sol surveyed what was left, opening doors and poking his head into rooms, his expression never changing. He spied two bottles of Bell’s Whisky on a shelf in the living room.
‘What are you doing with them?’ he said.
‘Oh, would you like them?’ I said, jovially, grabbing both bottles by the neck. ‘Share them with the guys.’
‘No, no, they’re recovering alcoholics,’ said Sol, sternly, like I was supposed to know.
‘We can’t do that.’
One of the men looked straight ahead while carrying out a box. He’d clearly heard every word. I’d only bought the whisky a few days before. I always felt guilty doing so as I knew my grandad, who we’d always named Dada (pronounced Dad-dar), had a drink problem. As soon as he woke up, whether that was the middle of the night or the day, he’d pour himself a generous glass full before doing anything else. I didn’t have the heart to tackle it. What was the point?
He once called me late at night and told me he was in trouble. As my panic set in, he explained he’d run out of whisky. ‘You’ll have to wait until the morning then,’ I told him, annoyed.
Mama was just as bad. ‘We have it with lemonade,’ she’d say, defensively, like it somehow neutralised all the alcohol.
Sadly, the whisky helped soften the pain, for a few hours at least, of losing their only child, my mother.
Calling them after the ‘bar had opened’ was a much happier experience and was usually when the evening soaps had started. Before 6pm, you would get what we called her “Scooby Doo voice” – a tentative, worried, ‘hello?’, like she was expecting the worst from the person on the other end. I loved it when she realised it was me. She’d lighten up, then ask if I’d been to work, and whether Niki, my wife, and our boys were ok, and whether we’d had our tea. ‘Will they talk to me?’ she’d ask. Invariably, as small children, they’d be far too busy and while I tried to get their attention, Mama would be repeatedly cooing down the phone.
My grandparents moved from Nottingham to Ingoldmells, on the east coast, when I was 10. Until that point, they’d been living five doors down from us. They were in our lives daily. My mum ran her own hair salon at the front of our house and Mama would pop in to help out, shampooing hair and making tea. Whenever I was sick, she’d look after me. She’d make me ‘pie in soup’ for lunch, which is a recipe as simple as it sounds – a cooked steak and kidney pie placed in a bowl with hot tomato soup poured over the top. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. We’d watch any one of the Rocky films from the sofa. I’m surprised I never wanted to be a boxer I watched them so often. Mum and Dad had babysitters on call, and I remember the excitement of staying up late and watching Benny Hill, the Two Ronnies and even the Des O’Connor Show.
Life changed after Dada, a miner, was made redundant. He worked for a few years doing odd jobs – cleaning, painting and decorating, and gardening, but, still only in his fifties, he needed something else in his life. They’d both always wanted to live at the seaside and this was a good a time than any. They’d been visiting Ingoldmells, near Skegness, since they started courting. I have a photograph of them strolling up Sea Lane. Dada muscular and handsome, his hair like Elvis, and Mama pretty, slim and glamorous.
A golden couple.
They had a caravan in Ingoldmells since before I was born and we had many holidays there. It was a magical place for Sarah and me, full of colour, noise, fun and excitement. A second home. Arriving in Ingoldmells felt like Christmas Day. Always.
The day they left, we watched them drive off in my grandad’s blue Sierra. I don’t remember crying, but I did feel disconsolate. I remember thinking ‘we’re on our own, now. How will we live without them?’ My parents were barely into their thirties. It felt like my grandparents took care of us all. In those forthcoming years my parents were divorced and entered new relationships. It’s symbolic how things collapsed during the time they were away.
We did see them often while they were living in Ingoldmells. Sarah and I spent most of the school holidays with them. Sometimes mum would drive us over for the weekend, they were only a couple of hours away. They just weren’t on the same street anymore. They were there seven years before returning.
It was hastened by Dada’s heart condition. Once, within half an hour of me arriving on a bus to Ingoldmells, Mama was calling for an ambulance. He was wrapped in a blue blanket, strapped to a chair as it was lifted into the vehicle. He was pale and talking to himself. I’d never seen him that way. Mama broke down in tears.
Dada was a simple man. By his own admission he wasn’t the brightest. He left school and went straight down the pit to work. He was a coal miner for 36 years.
The hard labour made him physically strong, my dad remembers feeling intimidated by his size when they first met. However, poor conditions at the pit and laxed safety left him blind in one eye and having to use glasses. Breathing in coal dust also caused emphysema, which eventually contributed to his death. But, ask him about his life as a miner, and he would say they were the best years of his life. I was proud he was a miner. It meant a lot in the community I grew up in.
He loved football, he could have turned professional, but the risk of serious injury in the 1950s usually meant be unable to work and that meant poverty. He and Mama decided it wasn’t worth the risk. He was a Notts County fan, but he wouldn’t lose sleep over them losing. He just loved watching any game, whichever team was playing. He wasn’t much of a talker, even when it came to football, Mama usually did the talking for him. When he’d had a few, though, he was the life and soul of the party. There’s a picture of him dressed and dancing like Elvis, silver foil as trousers, and one with his mates with balloons under their tops pretending they had massive breasts.
He never told me off, I didn’t give him much cause to, but I remember feeling like I was taking a risk one night when we were walking back from a pub in Ingoldmells. I gleefully told him all the swear words I’d learned from Beverley Hills Cop II. He chuckled and guffawed as I repeated them, mimicking Eddie Murphy, acting out scenes, giving him the whole plot. All the time we were looking over our shoulders to see if anyone else was listening. There was a real warmth about him, he was kind and caring.
He did have a temper, but usually it was related to frustration and feelings of injustice. He’d apparently offered his brother John out for a fight on his wedding night, because he’d been rude about Mama. As an adult, I prevented him being knifed when some dickhead nearly ran him over. He shook his walking stick at him and the man stopped, wound his window down and started threatening him. My grandad told him to fuck off and it took every ounce of diplomacy I had from it turning into a tragedy.
Mama was one of 13 children and one of the youngest. She told me a middle-class childless couple wanted to adopt her and apparently it very nearly happened. Mama’s mother had a change of heart at the last minute.
Three of her four brothers fought in World War Two. One of them didn’t return. George Smith was on the HMS Hood when it was sunk by the German Battleship Bismarck. Only three men survived out of a crew of 1,418. Mama was only five-years-old when this happened and it was never clear that she had much memory of George, but still, his death had a profound impact on her for the rest of her life. She had a picture of him enlarged and framed. She also bought a plastic replica model of the ship from the Sunday Mirror magazine. They formed a small shrine on a brown varnished shelf as you entered the flat. We named our son, George, not with my great uncle in mind, but we allowed Mama to make that conclusion. She cried when we told her.
Hola
Her brother Walter fought the Germans with the RAF and spent a lot of time after the war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She often repeated a story about him returning and giving her a huge Easter egg because she was his favourite. He died before I was born, but my grandma stayed in touch with his wife Barbara. There weren’t many who did. She upset a lot of the family with her rudeness. Even her own daughter. Barbara later developed deafness and Mama and her communicated through a special telephone system. She often became flustered with it, having to end her sentences with ‘over to you’. But it only showed how much she cared about her whole family. It was her duty. Everyone got a birthday card. When I was clearing the flat, I found at least 20 unwritten cards in a plastic bag.
If anything, Mama cared too much. She got involved, interfered, with any family dramas she’d be told about, offering to ‘have a word’ with him or her, the so-called trouble causer. She’d also invent scenarios she was adamant were true. She’d once noticed Niki wasn’t wearing her engagement ring and created a narrative whereby the wedding was clearly going to be called off. The truth was we’d been grouting our bathroom and she didn’t want to damage it.
Towards the end of Mama’s life, her agoraphobia, and love of soap operas and crime dramas, helped create this internal fantasy world, blurring the lines of reality, where her neighbour upstairs had murdered his girlfriend (and buried her between his floor and their ceiling). She also told Sarah that Al Qaeda terrorists were training in the woods.
I’d always wondered, but was afraid to ask, why a couple who had 17 siblings between them, only had one child. I’d assumed they were happy with just Mum. But Mama, not long before she died, out of the blue, explained.
‘After your mam…’ she said.
‘We kept trying and when another one didn’t come along, I thought, well, we’ll have to wait for grandkids.’
I assumed there’d been a fertility issue and perhaps little medical help to change that in the late 1950s and early 1960s. My grandparents were only 43 when I was born. Plenty of people have children in their forties. They still could have been parents themselves.
‘When you were born, I ran through work, shouting ‘I’ve got a grandson, I’ve got a grandson!’
As touching as the story was and how my arrival had given them happiness, it was sad they never did have a second child. In later life (while this couldn’t have been predicted) following Mum’s death, it left Sarah and I as their main carers. Sarah was in a relationship and was commuting to Rutland, from Nottingham, to visit her partner. I had two small to children to prioritise. I visited as much as possible. I did what I could. I would do anything for them.
The wider family, that had been so close in the past, were now elderly themselves. The majority of my grandparents’ nieces and nephews had mostly moved around the country. They’d lost touch with the others. There were some who stayed in contact, but largely by telephone. Mama would never ask for help. Even from me at times. I wished for an uncle or aunt to take on the stress of looking after two elderly people
I once arrived at the flat once to find Mama on the floor of her bedroom. An ambulance was four hours away. Dada didn’t have the strength and so I had no choice but to lift her on to her bed. She wasn’t the lightest and it took a lot of effort. It wasn’t what either of us wanted.
*
‘Listen,’ said Sol, seriously.
‘There’s more stuff than we thought. I’m going to need another hundred.’
I knew he was right. There was much more than I had anticipated. How had they got so much into such a small flat. There were two walk-in cupboards. The right-hand cupboard in the short corridor, that led to the sole bedroom and bathroom, was stuffed with sheets, towels and blankets. On the shelves opposite were old plastic plant pots, tins of paint and varnish, tools, trays of screws, nuts and bolts. In the other cupboard were several shelves of videos (including Die Hard, The Guns of Navarone, various westerns and all the Rocky films), and cassette tapes with my grandma’s handwriting on the label – Cliff (Richard), Tom Jones, Tina Turner, Shakey (Shakin’ Stevens), Billy Fury… The videos and tapes brought back memories, which I had to shut down.
Get this done. Clean the place. Lock the door. Leave. It‘s just stuff. They’re gone.
In the kitchen were paper bags full of drugs. All prescription. Pain killers. Multi-coloured capsules. God knows what for. Geriatric junkies. I’m sure popping them with The Bells took them into another dimension, as the Prodigy song went. ‘Never get old,’ my grandma would say, heaving herself off the sofa to take her tablets. When we removed my grandad’s chair, among the crumbs, dust and nail clippings, were countless tablets he’d dropped and failed to retrieve.
Beneath the neatly folded sheets I found a large plastic bag stuffed full of photographs. I knew it would hurt to go through them, but I had to look. I pulled out one Super Snaps envelope. Inside was a sepia picture of Mum as a little girl, her eyes wide with excitement on a fairground ride. Leafing through I stopped at another picture of her posing awkwardly as a teenager in the back garden, clearly not appreciating the camera being brought out. Time travelling further forward, a photograph of her as a mother, Sarah and I smiling either side. I was wearing a t-shirt with Mr T on the front. There was also a picture of Mum on her last holiday. A walking stick betraying her frailness. She was 45. A short life in four photographs.
There was one picture in the bag I found quite disconcerting. It was of a woman at a party (held at a pub I knew well as a child) wearing a Miss Piggy mask and fake tits. Who the hell is that? I thought, before it dawned on me. My own grandmother. Why and for what reason, we’ll never know.
*
Once Sol and his men had finished loading boxes of grandparents’ possessions and furniture, he came for payment.
‘I guess you’ll sell all this,’ I said. ‘Make a bit of money for charity?’
‘There’s a few bits which might make something,’ he replied, counting the wad of cash I’d given him.
‘Most will just go in the skip.’
Clean up. Get out. Lock up.
Days before Sol and his crew showed up, two of my grandma’s remaining sisters, Barbara (not the deaf one) and Freda, came round to take some items. To my surprise they had coveted the kitsch plaster cast dogs my grandma had collected. Dead-eye westies and terrified looking terriers were heading for the bin in my mind.
‘Y’not getting rid of them dogs, are ya?’ said Barbara, outraged, like we were binning Fabergé eggs.
‘They might be worth summat.’
I sincerely doubted it. They were three for a tenner in Wilkos.
‘Take as many as you like,’ I replied.
The dog theme didn’t stop in the flat. In their car they’d had nodding dogs on the parcel shelf. It caused some mirth when my wife Niki borrowed the vehicle and pulled into the staff car park.
Dada had to give up the car in his early seventies. He’d been suffering with numbness and a lack of sensation in his feet. The doctor said it was likely caused by excessive alcohol consumption. The car would go before the whisky, though. He’d been driving like this for a while, lifting nerveless stumps between the pedals. Which terrified me every time he went out. His final drive came, according to Mama, when he mistook the brake for the “exhilarator” and nearly careered into someone’s front room. He made the sensible decision to sell the car after that. He bought a mobility scooter instead and his trips usually entailed popping to the corner shop for, well, I think you can guess.
Barbara and Freda were with Mama in her final days. A medical bed was installed for her in the front room. She’d quickly gone downhill following a spell in hospital and was sent home to die. It was an agonising few weeks watching her there, disorientated, making animal-like groans, the cancer slowly killing her. It was never clear whether Dada knew what was happening. Did he think she was going to get better? We didn’t have the heart to tell him. Perhaps he was in denial. The first time Barbara and Freda saw her like this they collapsed into tears. I was watching from the kitchen. The only way I thought I could make myself useful was by making tea and offering biscuits.
‘We’re the only ones left, Fre,’ said Barbara, holding my grandma’s hand, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
‘The last two, Barb,’ Freda replied, kissing my grandma’s forehead.
I imagined Mama suddenly sitting bolt upright, responding, ala Monty Python, ‘I’m not dead yet.’
Sarah was with her when she died. I travelled over. I kissed her already cold forehead. In truth, I’d said goodbye to her weeks before. We both knew her time was coming to an end. I wrote her a letter and told her how much she meant to me, and everything she’d done for me. Crucially, I’d explained why she should never feel guilt for moving away. It was something that ate away at her. They could have had more time with Mum. I know she appreciated the words. I found the letter during the clearance among her important documents.
We called for a nurse to confirm her death and issue a certificate. Following their visit we then contacted the funeral director. It all felt quick, but we didn’t want to leave her body there. Dada was traumatised as it was. He didn’t wait for them to arrive. He scuttled into his bedroom and wasn’t seen until the next day. Sarah stayed over and the first thing he said to her in the morning was ‘has she gone?’ before breaking down in tears.
*
Sol was on the phone again pacing outside the van. The other men slammed the back doors shut, got inside and obediently waited. I plugged in the vacuum cleaner and started with the bedroom. I paused as I looked at the carpet. An archipelago of blood stains remained from where Dada had fallen on the way to the toilet a few weeks before he’d died. His blood was so thin from the Warfarin (a blood thinning medication) it barely clotted. He was nowhere near the phone and the emergency buzzer hadn’t worked. We later discovered a cable had become stuck under a chair leg, blocking the signal.
He pulled his duvet on top of him and slept on the floor covered in blood and excrement until morning. He was discovered by workmen who were fitting a walk-in shower. One of them called me to tell me he was in a bad way and an ambulance was on its way. Dada played it down. ‘I’m alright, duck’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. You get off to work.’ I met him later at the hospital. They told me he wouldn’t be able to live on his own anymore. Plans were made, but it didn’t matter, he died a few weeks later following an asthma attack.
He’d lived for four years following the death of his beloved wife. We didn’t think he’d get past four months. I went to see him as much as I could. I usually found him watching This Morning, a glass of whisky in his hand. He never had much to say. He’d react to some of the news items, a special on ‘Killer Clowns’, for example.
‘You know what I would do if some youth dressed up like that and jumped out on me?’
Before I could reply, he continued…
‘I’d give him a good smack and break his bloody neck.’
I went round once when he was watching Rocky III. For a man suffering increasingly from dementia, he knew every word of the film. He’d say the lines before Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed uttered them on screen. He’d then chuckle to himself and have a swig from his glass.
He lived in a bubble I was slightly envious of. News couldn’t affect him; the worst had already happened. I asked him if he was going to vote in the 2015 election and he replied, ‘I’ve not heard anything about it.’
His long-term memory was unaffected, but he would often repeat his stories. The baby of his family, by at least 10 years, he would tell me how protective his mum was of him. How much she doted on him. How he used to swim in the abstracted water from coal mines, which he said was lovely and warm. But also, how abusive his dad was, kicking their jack russell if he got in his way. Dada spoke of standing up to him before running out on to the fields with the dog. He didn’t talk about Mama and Mum. Not to me, but he would with Sarah. He told her how much he missed them and wanted to be with them. Perhaps it was an old-fashioned thing of not wanting to cry in front of another man.
For 21 years the centre of my grandparents’ universe was Melanie, my mother. She was their sole reason for living, for existing. She was their focus, the source of their anxiety, their fears and worries, but above all, their happiness. She’d survived three apparent near-death experiences as a child. Once when she had measles, her temperature rocketing, another when she was nearly run over by a car following a game of chase with her cousins, and finally, after getting a boiled sweet stuck in her throat – her Uncle Walter having to shake her upside down to release it. The event made the local newspaper and Mama kept the yellowing snippet, perhaps as a reminder of a lucky escape.
The arrivals of Sarah and me, made that world a little larger. As Mum was barely out of her teens when I was born, it felt like we were all my grandparents’ children. At times I sensed a touch of jealousy from Mum that she had to share. She’d accuse us, jokingly, of being spoiled. Having no siblings, it was the first time she had to share herself. When I went to university and Sarah moved out, Mum got them back to herself again.
Tragically, it wasn’t for long.
It only recently occurred to me the reason why the death of her brother George had been so traumatic for Mama. It wasn’t memories of him that hurt so much, but more the memory of seeing how his death devastated the family, particularly her mother. Her little boy, lost at sea. Never to return.
Mama was the strongest of us all in the agonising weeks as Mum lay dying. She never gave up. She hoped for a miracle. You never give up on your children. There’s not much that will ever hurt more than seeing your mother infantilised by disease. The cancer stripping her of her mind, her dignity and finally her life. But perhaps seeing her own mother nursing her, soothing her, brushing her teeth because she couldn’t do them herself anymore, and talking to her like she would have done when she was a child, was far worse.
I didn’t want this to be a sad story. My intention was to celebrate all three lives. This small family. My favourite times were being in their company, in the front room where I was now standing, and just listening to them. The gossip, the memories and the absurdity of what they talked about. The way they discussed market traders like they were crap superheroes: the Egg Man, Potato Man, Fish Man and Meat Man. There was also the day Mum and Mama were discussing potential pets and Dada, who had been silently watching the TV, suddenly piped up, ‘I’d like a nice cock’.
I chuckled to myself, before putting the two bottles of whisky in my rucksack. I grabbed the keys, had a final look around the flat and left for the last time, locking the door behind me. I took a full black bag to the bin and collected my bike. I passed through the gate, shutting it behind me for the last time. Before cycling away, I had a quick look over my shoulder in case Mama was waving me off. It was only then after holding it in for so long the tears started to fall.
They’re all gone. They’re never coming back.
I felt gratitude too. I was proud of them. They made me who I am.
Following the riots in Nottingham, last summer, a list of names was released of those charged. One of which I recognised. His address was the same as it was when I first met him in the mid-1980s. He was part of the “far right-wing gathering” and “hurried towards a fight clearly with the intention of joining in”. After he was arrested, he swore at the arresting officer. He’s since admitted the offences.
None of this surprised me. I have memories when we were kids of him shouting in my face, bits of spittle landing on my cheek. One such incident which provoked this anger was over whether Forest winger Franz Carr was any good or not. He used to push me, punch me, and he kicked me once when I was already on the ground following a bad tackle at football training.
He was abusive to other kids, teachers, and his mum, especially his poor mum, who he called a ‘fat pig’ during a school football match. He’d stayed down after a soft tackle (my dad referred to him as the ‘turf magnet’) and she encouraged him, sweetly, to get up. The referee, who was our coach, had to intervene after he marched towards her.
The last time I saw him was in the early nineties. I walked into the newsagents close to where he lived and he was standing, silently, in the middle of the shop. Puberty had clearly hit him earlier than me. He was taller, more muscular, still intimidating. I said hello and he just stared at me. I had no idea what I’d done to provoke such hatred. As I walked towards the magazines, I could feel his eyes burning into me. He had this threatening way of looking at you, eyes narrow, head cocked to the side, bearing his front two teeth, breathing slowly, like a Pitbull before it rips your throat out.
We had been friends. He was in my class at some points. We spent time together out of school. I played at his house and he came to mine. Mostly, he was a nice kid. We’d be having a great day, but then he’d flip. He was so unpredictable. We were once playing happily in a tent in his back room and the next minute he was swearing at, and hitting his mum. At school we often saw him sprinting out of the gates with his teacher not far behind. ‘There he goes again,’ we’d say, with a lack of surprise.
A house was being built on our street and along with a few other lads we made it our playground, running around the trenches where the foundations were going in. It was fun, we weren’t doing any harm, but then he started pushing piles of bricks into the trenches, except you didn’t know he was doing this until they narrowly missed your head. When he reached this point, you knew it was time to go home. Violence would soon follow.
These days he would be diagnosed with a disorder of some kind. I expect he’d have been given medication to control his hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. But I wonder about that aggression, the anger, the way he shouted at you, how close he’d get to your face, screaming because you said something he didn’t agree with, where did that come from? Was it a behaviour he witnessed?
I had a look at his Facebook. His profile picture looks down at you with the same menace. His power pose. Reading through his posts there’s anger about immigration, foreign aid, ‘woke liberals’ and paedophiles… and a stark confession, ‘thoughts of violence, need to go to bed to sleep them off’.
My son asked why I was writing this. Good question. I guess it’s because I have an insight into his background. The roots of his personality, his violence. I suppose what scares me is that there’s lots of him about. Angry white working-class men with a hatred of everyone and everything.
There have been times in my life where Forest has saved me. I’m not exaggerating. Without The Reds in my life I don’t know where I would be.
Frank Clark and Collymore’s goals helped me come to terms with the aftermath of my parents’ divorce, in 1994; Paul Hart’s young team helped me cope with the grief of losing my mum, in 2003, and despite the season finishing in abject misery (the Yeovil one), without the escapism of the City Ground, the loss of our first son would have been harder to deal with.
I didn’t renew my season ticket at the start of the season. I didn’t exactly have the enthusiasm following what had gone before and it seemed like a good decision five games in. The other reason for not renewing was because I was about to embark on a career as a teacher. I had to take a step back from Forest Land.
After 20 years at the BBC, I quit. It was time for me to go and try something else. I’d always wanted to be an art teacher and the redundancy money helped me get on a course. Following lockdown, to suddenly be in a lecture theatre with other trainees, some of the best human beings I’ve ever met, was amazing. To be in a classroom working with brilliant youngsters who cared about art and seemed to like me, was also exciting.
Despite what was happening on the pitch I was happy. I shrugged Forest’s woes off. Of course I cared, it mattered to me but I could keep them at arm’s length. I had no control over what was happening therefore I was not going to worry about it. I was convinced we’d lose to Derby and while it was on I went for a walk, leaving behind my phone. I got the message that Brennan had equalised and while it made me momentarily happy I still thought we were doomed. But it didn’t matter, I was going to be a teacher.
Even when Steve Cooper came in and things picked up, I wouldn’t allow myself to get excited. I knew we’d be ok, we’d stay up and at that point that was all I cared about. I started to think we could do better after Bristol and then when I sat on my own in the bar of a Parkdean resort to see Jack Colback bag a late equaliser at QPR. However, due to a lack of cash and time, I avoided going. I didn’t listen to the radio, watch any games, just followed online. I didn’t want to get too excited and be let down again.
The teaching hit the skids just before Christmas. I won’t bore you with what went wrong but in January I quit. It was a devastating day. To abandon those kids I’d built up positive relationships with and the friends I’d made, it was all too much and I broke down. What a fucking failure I am, I thought. All that enthusiasm I had had somehow disappeared. But as a friend pointed out, it took me three months what it took him five years to figure out that teaching wasn’t for me.
I had no job. No idea what I wanted to do with my life. The money was running out and my wife was under pressure to keep us all fed. It wasn’t quite that bad, but I put myself under a lot of pressure to get work. I even considered becoming a Deliveroo rider. This is when I allowed myself to re-enter Forest Land. I was late to the party. I watched Forest beat Arsenal on TV and afterwards I approached one of the sponsors about a job. They gave me an informal interview and while I didn’t take it any further, it gave me confidence. Basically, I knew my stuff (media, copywriting etc) and people were willing to pay me for it.
I watched Forest beat Derby and so I was so inspired by Brice Samba’s performance (the forehead egg, refusing to give the ball back after their pen and the hands-behind-his-back trolling of Morrison) I began to draw again. I drew a picture of Samba trying to look innocent. I shared it on Twitter and it did well with fans. I realised ever since I was a kid that my art was inspired by Forest. I remember drawing a picture of Neil Webb at primary school and getting a good mark. I did a picture of Des Walker for my art GCSE and one of Bryan Roy for my A-Level. I should have known that drawing that first picture, of Samba, meant something. If I was drawing Forest players again, something good was happening at the City Ground. Everyone could feel it. We just couldn’t talk about it in case it fell apart, again. I went to the Barnsley game and wondered whether it would be like the Charlton game, after the Leeds win, but no, despite not playing that well, we won 3-0. No fist bumps. But who cares. Another three points.
While job hunting I did more drawings. I’m sure you know how desperate it is trying to find a job – the forms, the phone calls, the anguish, the knockbacks. But retreating into Forest Land made me happy. The Leicester game made me cry. We just looked so fucking good and it was simply tears of happiness. My brother-in-law is a Leicester fan and while I had no intention of rubbing his face in it, I received a message from him to say how good we were. Getting that kind of respect and following what Alan Shearer said about Forest, the low feelings I was experiencing began to evaporate. I drew Joe Worrall doing a head tackle. That’s the kind of commitment that gets a team promoted, I didn’t dare say at the time. But it is.
Further inspired, I did more drawings to the point where a friend suggested I try and make a living from it. I didn’t really have the heart for that. Making art is for me, and trying to make a living from it is a slog. I needed a job with the intention of keeping art as a hobby. Luckily everything fell into place and I started my new career the day after we lost to Liverpool. Clocking my Forest wallet, I was introduced to two of my new colleagues, ‘this is third round’ and ‘this is fourth round’ – Arsenal and Leicester. It was my first feeling that we were at the top table again. Of course, we still needed to earn our place in the Premier League and of course, we did. You Reds.
The feeling that I had failed at teaching eventually dissipated. I had given it a shot. I did my best. I would have failed had I not tried it. I don’t regret that time. I would have regretted carrying on. Saving face. And had I continued I wouldn’t have got to see Forest more, I wouldn’t have made the play-off semi-final, I wouldn’t have made it to Wembley. And that’s something I would have regretted because I had one of the best days of life.
When you start having baths in the dark, while listening to Coldplay, you know something is wrong…
No one was more surprised than me when I made up my mind to withdraw from my teaching course. It was tough, really tough, but I was enjoying it and I was getting the rewards. I loved building relationships with students and engaging with them in a positive way. They liked me. They respected me. I knew I had what it took to be a teacher. The reality was different.
The other side was being part of a cohort, building friendships with people from diverse backgrounds. Hopefully, they would turn into long-term friendships. When I knew I was going to quit I thought about them. I wanted to complete our journey together, wear the silly hats and jump about.
It sounds corny, but after Covid, being in a room with 30 people on the same path was an absolute tonic. When we had met back in July, I hadn’t been in a room of more than four people, my own house, for over a year. We need to be with other people, as singer Frank Turner sang, “we’re not designed to be alone”.
Ultimately, it was my decision to leave. Things happened that hurt and hastened that decision, which I won’t go into, but I realised it wasn’t sustainable for me and my mental health. Teaching had always been at the back of my mind as a career. Amazingly, I got the chance. There was no doubt I was going to do it. I ignored those dissenting voices. I was determined. Even when the work piled up, I was going to do it. No one could stop me.
I feel happier now. I know I made the right decision. I was worried about how people would take it. There’s a primal fear about rejection and abandonment, and that’s how I was feeling. I’d let a lot of people down; they were rooting for me and I’ve messed it up. But it couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’ve been blown away by support and I don’t know why I deserve it, but thank you to those people.
What next? I don’t really know. I have ideas and that’s exciting. It’s just weird that here I am again, in January, figuring that out. East 17’s Alright keeps popping into my head as some sort of affirmation, and I do believe I will be.
I don’t regret a thing. I did it all for the right reasons and made decisions on what I thought was right for me and my family. Above all, I made a group of new, wonderful friends and I know we’ll stay in touch.
Alright, alright Everything’s gonna be alright Alright, alright Everything’s gonna be alright Alright, alright Everything’s gonna be alright Alright, alright It’s really alright
No don’t be so sad ‘Cause love is by your side No don’t be so sad ‘Cause life is too short to live No don’t be so sad I’ll be mad if you’re this It’s alright The message that I give
If there’s a documentary, TV or radio, about Euro 96, I’ll watch it. While they always make me cry, make me think ‘what if?’, Ican’t get enough. I love it. England didn’t win, but that’s beside the point. I, along with millions of others, had the best summer ever.
England vs Germany, 26th June, 1996
Ruby Tuesdays, a bar in Nottingham, was packed, mostly with boys my age, taking up any available space in the basement where the football was being shown. Two lads perched on top of some stacked tables in the corner. Occasionally they would touch the ceiling to keep their balance, or punch it like excited chimpanzees. Angled mirrors lined the top of the walls making it appear there were even more people in there. It was already warm and muggy outside. I was wearing white chinos and a red cheesecloth shirt and Adidas Gazelles. My lank curtains stuck to my spotty forehead. I was with my best friend John and Lee, who I’d been mates with since our first year at secondary school. We got our pints and held them close, trying not to spill them as people brushed past. We gawped up at the TVs, as heavy as small fridges, but as small as microwaves. I couldn’t hear a word Des Lynam was saying, before the game, such was the raucous atmosphere. Everyone was confident that this time, we would beat the Germans. Even me. The whole tournament, the misery of the past six years, had been building to this point. It was our time; there was no way it could end in defeat. No chance. We were going to win. And then win in the final. There was no doubt. It felt like a guarantee.
Gazza after a missed chance
Ahead of the match, John found the only girl in the place and before long was snogging her. Lee had started chatting to some lads to his left, like he’d known them all of his life. All that mattered to me was the match and I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. Maybe if I looked away something would go wrong. After a few minutes, England were ahead. Shearer headed in after a flick from Tony Adams. The place erupted. There were wild, vaulting bodies everywhere, the lads on the stacked tables tumbles forward and lager rained down. Lee embraced the lads he’d met and John briefly stopped kissing the girl. It was the start everyone wanted but maybe it was too early. The best and worst of times to score.
The only commentary I could actually hear was when John Motson, at one point, screamed ‘KUNTZ!’ Not his personal feelings, of course, but the unfortunate name of the German striker. It started chants of ‘KUNTZ! KUNTZ! KUNTZ!’. And almost like he’d heard their mirth, he equalised for Germany. The rest of the 90 minutes I remember feeling tense. It was like watching two bareknuckle boxers just punching each other in the head, within in a ring of haybales. There wasn’t a great deal of respect out there, maybe because of Turin, or for the Germans, because they’d been treated like ‘Allo ‘Allo Nazis, by the tabloids. I wanted to see England win but the press’ build-up to the game had been appalling.
The atmosphere remained tense into extra-time. It was next goal wins, or golden goal as it was known, so any attack could have resulted, painfully, as game over. An awkward kinship developed in that small, sweaty, space. We were going through hell together; it was certainly as warm as hell. Lee and his new friends had their shirts off. John came up for air, occasionally. Germany scored but it was judged offside. Darren Anderton hit the post and, agonisingly, Gazza couldn’t put away a Shearer cross. I look at that chance today, and I still think he’s going to put it in. Every. Single. Time.
Penalties again. Against the Germans again. But it wouldn’t be the same again… Surely? Sadly, it was. Even after Gareth Southgate missed, I thought Seaman would save us again. But the Germans don’t miss. Andreas Moller, with his eighties mullet, his air of superiority and contempt for anyone that was not Andreas Moller, put his penalty away. Of course, he did. It left the bar in silence, briefly. I looked up at myself in the mirror and saw that I was crying. They weren’t tears of misery and sadness, they were tears of pain, frustration and disappointment. How had it happened again? Others, their arms around each other, stared at the TV. John discarded the girl, who looked dumbfounded, Lee wept with his new pals. The shot on the TV showed Moller posing, triumphantly, mocking, mimicking Gazza’s own celebratory pose. And then all hell broke loose. A lad, with long blonde hair, who had been smiling and exchanging a few words with me, minutes before, walked up to one of the televisions and punched its thick glass screen. Pint glasses and bottles then started to fly and smash into pieces against the wood panelled walls. I gestured for us to get out of there.
Gareth Southgate after his penalty miss
Outside, I entered a phone box to call Dad. He could barely speak. It was the first time I’d heard him cry. Over the years he’d hidden his emotions from me, perhaps in an old-fashioned way. Obviously, he was upset the day he and Mum told us they were getting a divorce, but maybe didn’t want to cry in front of us. The experience was tough enough as it was. The way he was, following the match, made me upset too, it was so crushing, there was little to say. However, Lee had entered the phone box next to me to call his mum. I suddenly heard him raise his voice.
“What do you mean, why am I crying?” he said, his voice high-pitched and occasionally cracking. “England have lost! Aren’t you bothered?”
I could imagine Margaret poking fun at him and telling him not to be daft, it was only football after all. The way Lee reacted made me laugh and, once I explained what was happening next door, it made Dad laugh too. This has been our default reaction ever since, whether it is England or Nottingham Forest, who have messed something up, just laugh it off.
Euro 96 had started three weeks before, on the top floor of a multi-storey car-park in the centre of Nottingham. I was in the city with my dad and my sister, Sarah, to check out the celebrations in Old Market Square, marking Nottingham’s involvement in the competition. As the rain fell, the night before England were due to play Switzerland, at Wembley, I sat in the car with the radio on, while Dad and Sarah peered over the car-park wall waiting for fireworks. Three Lions started to play and as I looked through the windscreen, rivulets of rain obscuring my view, I began to cry. The song stirred the emotions, even before a ball was kicked, but it wasn’t just that. I felt miserable. There were various personal reasons but, perhaps, mainly, I felt England were going to be rubbish in front of the world, again. However, over the course of the tournament, while they had their luck, they proved in spells they could play football.
The football against the Dutch was breath-taking. I watch it now and I feel close to tears, the hairs stand up on my neck. It was like nothing I’d seen from an England team. Gascoigne was at the heart of everything and there was not another more potent strike force than Shearer and Sheringham. Patrick Kluivert scored late on, but it didn’t matter (apart from eliminating the Scots) and suddenly expectations were high, glory was on the table, England were going to win the tournament. Yes, I got carried away. We all did. I was enjoying myself. I was having fun; it was the best time. I was happy. Everyone was. We needed it.
At 12-years-old, I’d fallen in love with the England football team in 1990 when they reached the semi-final. But following that they let me down, badly. Euro 92 was appalling. Failing to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, in the USA, was even worse. After the summer in 1996, it felt like there was talent and promise, and while there was a huge amount of disappointment, I believed the tournament would lead to us winning the World Cup. I was wrong but that was how high the optimism was at the time. Euro 96 also marked the start of a new life for me, the first part in a story that concluded two years later during the World Cup in France, when I fell in love with my wife, Niki. We watched most of the games together and when England crashed out, on penalties again, more importantly I still had her. It was happiest I had been for a long time, a far cry from that night in my dad’s car at the top of a multi-storey car-park in Nottingham.
Ididn’t really know what I was going to do after leaving the BBC. Simply, I wanted a job. Something that interested me and where I could utilise the skills I’d picked up.
However, the second, or third, lockdown happened and that plan was pretty much thrown out of the window. The jobs were there, but the kids were at home. I had to be there for them.
The good thing about this was that it gave me time to think. I didn’t rush into anything.
I started to panic though. What was I going to do with my life? Had a made a terrible mistake in leaving?
The priority for my mental health had been to get out of journalism. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Sometimes it could be brilliant. Most of the time I was writing copy, on autopilot.
“Can you write this post about a cannabis farm being discovered.”
In the words of Brenda, from Bristol, “Not another one!” was the usual, internal reaction.
I’d be asked to write something for Facebook, which I did, only to see it get changed, totally different to what I’d produced.
It was pretty demoralising. I felt worthless. I was wasting precious time, precious life.
I wanted to do something that mattered.
I saw my wife, a teacher, renewed, during lockdown because she knew what she was doing was important.
The kids needed her. She needed them too, and her colleagues.
Teaching art had always been at the back of my mind. There was a regret that I never went into the profession. I thought I’d never get the chance again.
And then it happened very quickly. I enquired about a course and the next day they called me.
Of course, they need to fill places, but they don’t just take on anyone who fancies a stab at the job. They look for potential, people they can develop and employ.
But, most of all, they loved my story and after a chat I was made to feel wanted. It gave me a confidence boost.
I flew through the interview, where I had to take a 10-minute lesson, and they decided there and then I’d got a place.
It gave me a massive buzz and to see my wife and children excited and proud of me, was even better.
I start on 31 August at a school in Nottinghamshire.
I’m excited, nervous, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, how it will impact on my family… but it’s what I want to do, it’ll be tough and we’ll be fine.
I’ve had a few negative comments (disguised thinly as jokes) but the support has come from those who matter and that’s important.
I met up with my old art teacher, last week. Mrs Owen’s had a huge impact on my life. She first taught me in 1992, when I was 14.
I knew I had talent, but I wasn’t very motivated or confident. I needed to not be afraid to show what I could do.
Mrs Owen, changed all that. She completely revolutionised the way I worked, helped me fall in love with art.
I could write many words about the impact she’s had on me and there we were, sitting outside a coffee shop, 25 years after I left my school’s sixth form college.
The irony being that she was my age now, when I collected my results.
This is the pull of going into teaching. The lifelong positive influence. Teaching matters. Now, more than ever.
Superman had a Fortress of Solitude in the middle of an icy wilderness. A place where he could escape human beings and not be called on all the time to save our asses. There, he watched old images of his dead relatives, with the aid of magic crystals, a bit like DVDs, telling him how important he was and that he was the last of his race and the humans didn’t deserve him… Luckily he was above all that and just farted around, when he wasn’t in tights, as a bumbling hack – a bit like me in my former life (not the tights bit).
In the comics he got up to all sorts in his fortress, managing an alien zoo, writing his memoirs with a massive pen, storing secrets on a mega computer, but basically, it was just somewhere to kick back and forget about stuff. A place we could all do with. It sounds appealing and if you could fly as fast as a speeding bullet, were impervious to the cold and not under lockdown*, maybe it could be an option. But you don’t have to go those lengths.
Some men have Man Caves, which I’ve always been skeptical about (or maybe jealous of) a place to escape responsibilities or do ‘private’ things away from prying eyes. I’ve seen images of men proudly sitting in their caves, on Facebook, and basically the room resembles a teenage boys’ bedroom, except one where the occupant can legally drink beer and smoke weed.
I’ve also seen Lady Rooms, in this case just exchange the beer for gin and wine and add a craft of some sort. Other women are usually invited, thus defeating the object of the solitude and therefore making you wonder whether using the living room would have saved the trouble. But like with all dens, the fun is in the building. When it’s finished you think ‘now what?’
Throughout the pandemic it has been difficult to escape one another and many of us haven’t got the space to create a fortress. In my case, the garage is an option but I haven’t got enough clothes to wear to keep warm. I did think about building a shed inside the garage but this idea was met with a look that suggested I was insane and stupid. I still might do it.
Joseph Campbell, in his book The Power of Myth, suggested creating a Bliss Station, a ‘place of creative incubation’ – if you want to create a Man Cave/Lady Room, here’s your solid and wholesome reason. But chiefly it should be a place of solitude and silence. But like me, in the absence of a physical place, it could be a time, still tricky, but an hour before bed or when everyone gets up is equally beneficial. The key thing is the silence and solitude. No smart phones, no TV or radio and definitely no news.
Whether you’ve got a Bliss room or not, or actively take time out from the family, you should not feel guilty about it. As the writer Paul McGee suggests, we all need our ‘oxygen’ before helping others. On a plane, we’re told as parents, if the oxygen masks drop down, you should sort yours first (the same goes for life jackets). This is so you’re in a position to help your child and not passed out or dead before you can. And so, in life, you need to take your oxygen before you can be your best. This can be a walk, ride a bike, a creative task…
I can certainly relate to this. During Lockdown #1, I was working from home and homeschooling the children while my teacher wife was looking after key worker kids. Supervising homework was hard enough but nothing prepared me for the hell of homeschooling. One day, despite my wife being home and we could take a child each, it got too much and I had to leave the house. Despite that feeling I had let everyone down, it was doing no one any good by staying at home. I went out on my bike, had a cup of tea with a friend in his garden and felt much happier when I returned.
Self-care is more important than ever. You need your time and space to get back to being a rational and happy parent and person. It doesn’t do anyone any good to plough on regardless. If anything it can make things worse. Remember that even Superman had to fly to the middle of the Arctic to re-calibrate, but a little walk down to ASDA would probably be enough.
Neil Heath 