I’m Not Really Here Read online

  Producing enough offspring for a five-a-side team might have fazed some women, but Mum took it all in her stride. She was a dedicated and devoted mother who lived and breathed the family, and could never do enough for her children. Mum had a remarkable life force, always rising ridiculously early in the morning to get her brood ready for school and frequently burning the midnight oil in order to Flash the lino or conquer the Mount Kilimanjaro of ironing that a quintet of kids produced.

  My father was a quiet and unpretentious man. He grafted for Britain – he was an asphalt technician – and had the sandpaper hands and the weather-beaten complexion to show for it. A proper homebody, he was never happier than when he was relaxing in the lounge watching Rising Damp with a fag in one hand and one of Mum’s brews in the other. Whilst not a noted sportsman (he’d played football during his army days, but that was the extent of it) he was a keen armchair fan who could often be found glued to the boxing from Madison Square Garden or the darts from Frimley Green.

  Dad was a very practical and proactive kind of bloke, one of those dependable handymen who could fix anything from a snapped fan belt to a faulty washing machine. He was an electrician, carpenter, builder and plumber all rolled into one; the archetypal jack-of-all-trades. I remember him building a shed from scratch one weekend – sawing, then hammering, then creosoting – and can still picture him standing in the garden when he’d finished, admiring his handiwork as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

  Not every chore gave him so much pleasure, though. I recall him once having to remove a used condom that a teenage Romeo had ceremonially draped on our front hedge.

  ‘Sheila, there’s a bloomin’ sheath on the bush,’ he’d hissed when Tracey and I had innocently pointed it out before school one morning. Dad promptly stomped into the garden armed with a bamboo cane in one hand and a bucket in the other to perform an elaborate hook-a-duck routine, while a bemused Tracey and I watched from the front room.

  ‘What’s a sheath, Dad?’ I asked him as he marched past us, fuming.

  ‘Ask your mother,’ came the reply.

  My twin Tracey and I were joined at the hip when we were kids. Our high spot of the week was the Saturday-morning trip to a local general-store-cum-newsagents, otherwise known as the Happy Shop. Not because it was sweetie heaven (which it was) but because the owner was a right miserable sod. Mr Happy was a dead ringer for the comedian Alan Carr but was certainly no fan of laughter. His hatred for children was palpable, and he would glower at us as we dithered in front of his sweet counter making the life-or-death choice between a pink shrimp or a flying saucer. Clutching our white paper bags – and a bar of Old Jamaica for Dad – Tracey and I would then scamper back to catch the last half of Tiswas.

  As I grew older, I used to adore watching the early evening wrestling on World of Sport. I’d hurry home from my Saturday afternoon football game, bursting into the lounge just as Kent Walton opened the show with his customary ‘greetings, grapple fans’. Broadcast live to the nation from some godforsaken provincial leisure centre, it featured a cast of middle-aged blokes with huge pot bellies prancing around in clammy body stockings. Kendo Nagasaki, Catweazle and Jim Breaks were my heroes – I perfected the latter’s famous submission technique after months spent pummelling Dad on the Axminster – but I also loved the tag match spectacles that pitched heavyweights like Big Daddy and Dynamite Kid against Giant Haystacks and Pat Roach. The wrestling itself was pure pantomime, of course. The fact that the bouts were so obviously rehearsed, and were no more a credible and competitive sporting event than It’s a Knockout, never detracted from my enjoyment.

  I’m sure I wasn’t the only working-class 1970s kid whose life seemed to revolve around watching telly and eating sweets. It wasn’t long, though, before something else came along to totally rule my world.

  My football fuse was lit at about 7 a.m. on Christmas Day 1974. The whole of Bowker Avenue probably heard my yelps of delight as I tore through the layers of wrapping paper to reveal – yessssss! – a beautiful, snow-white Mitre match ball. You could keep your Stretch Armstrongs and your Evel Knievel Stunt Bikes, because this precious ball, with its porcelain-smooth skin and brand-new leathery smell, was the best present I could have ever hoped for. It didn’t leave my side all day; I sat it on my knee during the morning Mass and the afternoon turkey-fest, and then spent an hour whacking it against the garage door while the family watched Billy Smart’s Christmas Special. I even took it to bed with me that night, hugging it tightly under the eiderdown so that my brothers couldn’t get their sweaty mitts on it.

  From that Christmas onwards, every spare minute was spent playing football in the park, usually with Mike and a dozen of his friends. At weekends and school holidays all the lads would meet up after breakfast at Simon Whelan’s house, heading over to Haughton Green Park armed with scuffed footballs, jumpers for goalposts and a few old Ben Shaw’s lemonade bottles filled with tap water. There we’d re-enact our own City versus United games, the goalies pretending to be Joe Corrigan and Alex Stepney and the outfield players masquerading as Colin Bell and Stuart Pearson. We’d have international matches too; staging England versus Brazil showdowns and rattling off our own John Motson-esque commentaries as we darted round the pitch (‘and it’s Zico to Falcao, Falcao to Socrates, Socrates checks inside and drives an unstoppable shot into the top corner … goooooaaaal!’). By midday we’d be ravenous, and would break off for a whistle-stop lunch at our respective houses – Mum rustling up some ham butties, a bag of salt ’n’ vinegar Chipsticks and a mug of tea – before returning to the park for the second half.

  Mike and I would invariably be the last ones standing. As dusk set in we’d still be practising aiming the ball at the crossbar, alternating between our left and right feet, since Dad had always told us that only the best footballers could kick with both. Playing in the twilight also helped to increase our concentration levels, forcing us to focus more on the ball’s flight, its touch, its bounce, even its noise (we could decipher whether a ball had been clipped, parried, driven or headed just by listening to the different sounds it made). Honing these night-vision skills definitely improved our reading of the game, and made our daytime football seem floodlit in comparison.

  We often found ourselves in hot water for staying out too late, particularly if we had school the next day, and Tracey was regularly dispatched by Mum to drag us home.

  ‘Michael, Paul, get back now – Mum’s going spare,’ she’d say, scowling at us because she’d had to miss the last five minutes of Fame to come and haul us back. More often than not Mike and I would arrive home with patties of mustard-coloured dog dirt stuck to the soles of our boots, and Dad would spend the next half-hour gouging out the muck with the aid of a kitchen knife and a squirt of Stardrops.

  I was never happier than when I was on a football pitch. Whereas other kids got their kicks by solving an equation in maths class, or doing the Rubik’s Cube in 20 flicks of the wrist, the only place I could truly express and value myself was on a football pitch. It gradually began to dawn on me that I might have a talent for the game, too. I was aware that I had decent speed, skills and stamina – I could run for hours without breaking sweat – and the pleasure that I felt as I passed, dribbled, tackled and scored was intense.

  Mike and his mates were two years my senior yet I’d often find myself streaking past them, their curses hanging in the air as I nutmegged them and sprinted towards goal. They’d often try to take revenge with a swift whack to the shins, but I had this knack of anticipating and avoiding their tackles and would further infuriate them by skipping over them or swerving past their outstretched legs.

  Having a ball at my feet seemed like the most natural thing on earth. My ability to control it, read it and pass it was wholly instinctive, and my innate sense of awareness – of my environment, of the ball, of my team-mates – stemmed from pure intuition. I didn’t quite know how, or why, I found football so easy; I just did, and that was that.

  ‘You’ve
got a gift, son,’ Dad would often tell me.

  At the age of eight I was picked for the Denton Youth FC under-12 side, playing alongside lads a couple of years older than me, including my brother Mike. Our manager was a straight-talking disciplinarian by the name of Ernie Jones, and I was thrilled when he doled out my first proper football kit, an eye-catching strip comprising black shorts and a black and yellow striped shirt with a felt number 8 on the back. That, together with my new shin pads and tape (a surprise present from Mum and Dad) made me feel like a bona fide footballer, as did the prospect of playing on a massive pitch with – get this – real nets, mown grass and proper white lines. That sense of belonging, that feeling of being a small cog in a big wheel, was incomparable to anything I’d ever felt before.

  I played in the position of an old-fashioned inside-forward and found myself thriving on the bigger stage, enjoying the opportunity to show people what I could do, putting in decent performances week-in-week-out and scoring goals for fun. I remember once bagging a wonder strike, controlling the ball in mid-air and volleying it over the keeper’s head.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it from someone so young, and on a pitch so heavy,’ a spectator said to Dad after the game. ‘He’s so exciting to watch, your lad. Always looks like he’s going to score …’

  In the summer of 1978, Denton Youth FC embarked on a football tour to Garden City in Long Island, New York State. As we had never been abroad before, it was an exciting prospect for the Lake brothers. On the day of our departure the team had its picture taken for the local newspaper, posing on the steps of the Town Hall with our long hair, pointy collars and draughty bell-bottoms, looking like the Denton branch of the Brotherhood of Man fan club.

  Each squad member was placed with a host family in the States, and Mike and I were both dispatched to the Middletons, a lovely all-American, baseball-cap-wearing family whose 13-year-old son, Chris, played for the local side, the Garden City Colts. The neighbourhood consisted of wide tree-lined avenues, flanked by pastel-coloured, timber-clad houses with verandas at the front and swimming pools at the back. Pleasant though it was, the place reminded me of the town in those spooky Hallowe’en films.

  ‘Check that flippin’ window’s locked, Mike …’ I’d whisper at bedtime, fearful of a machete-wielding Michael Myers paying us an early-hours visit.

  The majority of our tour games were played against older and bigger sides comprising teenage beefcakes with Burt Reynolds chests and Lee Marvin voices. Whilst it was often a case of men against boys, us Brits generally held our own and managed to beat the Garden City Colts on the three occasions we played them. I bagged two hat-tricks during the tour, including one against a side called Huntington. We’d been trailing 3–1 at half-time, and I came on, played out of my skin and helped Denton Youth to an unlikely 4–3 victory.

  ‘Damn, who is that kid?’ I recall hearing one fella drawl from the sidelines.

  ‘He’s staying with me,’ replied a proud Mr Middleton.

  On our last night we were invited to watch New York Cosmos play Seattle Sounders at the Giants Stadium with Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto and ex-City star Dennis Tueart gracing a starry Cosmos line-up. As if those names weren’t illustrious enough, my team-mates and I found ourselves being shepherded onto the pitch prior to the game to meet Pelé, who’d ended his career with Cosmos the previous year. As I was introduced to him I couldn’t stop grinning, imagining what Mum and Dad would say when I told them that I’d shaken hands with the greatest footballer of all time.

  A week later we returned to earth with a bump, swapping the splendour of the Giants Stadium for Stockport Road playing fields, the venue for the annual Catholic Schools’ Cup. My school team, St Mary’s RC Primary in Denton, was fortunate enough to be managed by the most inspirational teacher I’ve ever met. John Mercer ran the side with great passion and gusto, encouraging us to play to our best ability without ever compromising our enjoyment.

  ‘Look lads, we’ve got probably the most balanced team in Tameside,’ he told us before our match against local rivals St Ann’s. ‘Let the ball do the work, don’t worry about making a mistake, and always remember that there’s plenty of goals in our side.’

  He wasn’t wrong. We scored 14 that day, and I notched up so many that I was made to go in nets for the last ten minutes to spare our opponents any further embarrassment. Getting my name on the score sheet became a bit of a habit for me, and I went on to slot in over 100 goals for St Mary’s that season.

  The high point of my fledgling career was winning the 1980 Smiths Crisps Six-a-Side Championship. It was a nationwide under-11s tournament with an initial entry of over 5,000 schools, and the final was to be staged at Wembley, no less, prior to an England v Scotland international. Almost as thrilling as a trip to London was the fact that, in recognition of our achievement, each member of the St Mary’s team received a brand-new football kit as well as a big box of Smith’s Football Crazy crisps. A 1970s lunchbox staple, Football Crazy were fluorescent yellow potato puffballs with a powerful smoky bacon flavour that repeated on you for ages. Not that it bothered me, though. I used to get great satisfaction from belching out Football Crazy-flavoured burps a full two days after I’d eaten the things.

  On the eve of our Wembley showdown, the St Mary’s team – together with Mr Mercer and the head teacher, Mr Chapman – caught the train down to the capital. As we all loitered on the platform at Euston station, laden with enormous kitbags, Mr Mercer suddenly spotted a familiar figure climbing out of a carriage.

  ‘Lads, lads, look over there,’ he hissed, pointing at a stocky, balding fella in his 60s wearing a tweed suit. ‘It’s Bob Paisley.’

  We stared in awe at the Liverpool boss, who just a month earlier had steered the Reds to yet another League Championship. A totally unfazed Mr Mercer sidled up to him and, after exchanging a few words, beckoned us over. We bounded across like puppies and lined up to shake hands with Paisley, a very kindly man who happily chatted to us and wished us good luck. Even Mr Mercer, who was a diehard Manchester United fan, realised that we were in the presence of greatness.

  ‘You’ll never meet a better manager than Mr Paisley, lads,’ he said as we walked out of the station. ‘Best in the business, that fella.’

  At midday on Saturday 10 June, togged up in our new stripy black and blue kits, we trotted onto the hallowed Wembley turf. Prior to kick-off we were introduced to the guest of honour, Chelsea and Arsenal star John Hollins, who told us to expect a crowd of 70,000 that day.

  ‘Enjoy every moment, boys,’ he said with a friendly smile, ’cause you may never get the chance to play at Wembley again.’

  The grand final had pitched us against the much-fancied St Cuthbert’s School from Sunderland, who were such hot favourites that Tyne Tees TV had sent a film crew all the way down to London to cover the game. Granada TV obviously couldn’t be arsed. The Mancs weren’t fazed by the Mackems, however, and put in a masterful performance to beat them 2–1 and seize the honours. It just happened to be me who scored the winner, too, a powerful left-foot strike that I smashed into the far corner. It wasn’t long before the final whistle went and, after a team hug with a proud Mr Mercer, seven sweaty little lads – me, John Clarkson, Wayne Jefferies, Dave Ringland, Paul Kirkham, Peter Murphy and Chris O’Brien – climbed the famous steps to the royal box to be presented with the trophy.

  Flippin’ ’eck, I remember thinking. I’ve scored the winner at Wembley. What’ll Dad think of that?

  *

  By the time I’d started secondary school, I found myself playing up to four competitive matches each weekend. Dad would come and watch at least one, always standing a couple of yards behind the touchline wearing his beige Harrington jacket, sporting his Eric Morecambe glasses and puffing on an Embassy No. 6. He usually stood alone, away from the main group of parents, preferring to keep his thoughts and opinions to himself.

  Dad would often raise his eyebrows at a few of the other fathers who, thinking they were
Denton’s answer to Brian Clough, would give stern warnings to their offspring before a game.

  ‘Pick yer man up, close him down, switch the play …’ one particular father would bellow as he crouched down and gripped his son by the shoulders. During the game this bloke would scamper up and down the touchline, swearing and gesticulating, and berating his kid if he put a foot wrong. Dad loathed this – ‘empty vessels make the most noise’ was his pet proverb – and his pre-match pep-talk comprised a simple ‘do your best, son,’ followed by an affectionate ruffle of my hair. Not being put under pressure undoubtedly helped my performances, allowing me to relax and play my own game, safe in the knowledge that, win or lose, there wouldn’t be any cold shoulders or Spanish inquisitions.

  Sometimes Mum would join Dad on the sidelines. One such occasion produced my most embarrassing football moment of all-time. I was about 12 years old, playing for the school team, when an opposing defender unintentionally smashed the ball straight into my face. It stung like hell, and I squatted on my haunches for a few moments in order to compose myself. As I came to, I glanced up to see my mum galloping towards me clutching her handbag, her sheepskin moonboots dodging the divots. Barging past the players and the referee, she then proceeded to smother my nose with a large white handkerchief before loudly instructing me to ‘have a good blow, son …’

  Sniggers abounded as I, cringing with embarrassment, prayed for the turf to open up and swallow me.

  ‘What d’you go and do that for?’ I whined after the match, still smarting with shame.

  ‘You were hurt, and I’m your mum,’ was her succinct reply.

  In addition to my regular weekend games, I also made sporadic appearances for Denton Boys under-13s, a side that comprised the most promising young players in the area and staged three or four fixtures per season. It was towards the end of one of these particular matches that my dad, watching from pitch-side, felt a tap on his shoulder.