CHAPTER9
Mick
For as long asI could recall, I’d struggled with sleep.
In my youth, me Dad, convinced he had the second coming of David Beckham on his hands, would insist I hit the hay before nine p.m. He claimed it was because I needed to practice before he headed off to his job as a Manchester powerline worker.
Some might have thought that considerate. By the time I reached Year 6 in primary school, though, I’d sussed out it was just an excuse.
Me heading off to my room was my parents’ cue to crack open a crate of Boddingtons before engaging in a full-blown row.
“Time for bed” only meant I got to listen to their nightly shouting matches from the privacy of my bedroom.
They used to rage at each other so loud and so regular that the neighbors on both sides of our terraced house knew all the ins and outs of their various grievances with one another. Not just their son, who was supposed to be getting up early to drill his football techniques the next morning.
Yeah, unless the police showed up to tell them to shut their gobs already, it’d take me ages to drift off to sleep on the familiar soundtrack of my parents threatening to off each other.
Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night to eerie quiet, which was even worse.
Had they gone through with it this time? Carried out their threats to do each other bodily harm? Or worse?
My heart would race, and eventually, I’d have to venture downstairs to make sure they hadn’t really up and done what they were always saying they were gonna at the top of their lungs.
They hadn’t.
I’d find them both passed out on the couch, like boxers after a knockout fight, reeking of beer and sometimes piss.
After that, there was nothing left to do but shuffle back to my room, feeling like a right proper idiot.
It would take another eon to fall back to sleep with that “completely stupid” feeling swirling around my chest—only to be kicked awake a coupla hours later by Dad calling me a lazy twat for not being dressed in my trainers and ready to go at five am sharp, like he’d told me to be.
Me dad could be a right bastard when he had a hangover. And he always had a hangover during those early morning practices.
“Think yer going to make it into the starting line-up for Manchester United with that attitude, ya fuckin’ barm cake?”
He’d sneer shite like that at me if I didn’t kick the ball exactly where he pointed.
But by the time I entered secondary, I already knew I wasn’t going to make it into the starting line-up of his favorite team.
I intentionally chose to sign on with the Youth Training Scheme for FC Greenwich—the club Dad despised the most. I liked that it was down in London. Too far to commute on the daily. That meant at the age of seventeen, I got to leave home and, most importantly, my shite parents behind.
Turned out, though, that I’d left North Manchester behind but still hadn’t escaped the crappy sleep.
Initially, it was the life of a young footballer that kept me tossing and turning. Game-day anxiety and nonstop partying, whenever we got a break, wasn’t exactly a sterling recipe for the eight hours plus that the team doc recommended at my first physical.
By my late twenties, I’d gotten sick of the parties and the endless stream of women willing to go off with me just to brag they’d slept with a pro footballer.
But, all of a sudden, I began jolting awake in the middle of the night with an unexplainable ache in my chest.
I’d find meself lying there in the dark of my multi-million-dollar townhouse, wondering why I even bothered with all of that rubbish. My career, my cars, my properties… What did any of it matter when I was waking up alone in the middle of the night?
I think that might have been when my temper really started to get away from me.
I’d been a right proper bastard from the start of my career. "Nasty Andy," "Red Card Drew," "The A.M. Volcano," and "Vinnie Jones: The Sequel" were just a few of the names the British press started calling me after I gained a reputation for aggressive gameplay and on-field altercations.
Me Dad had put a massive chip on my shoulder, and I was making sure every player I encountered had to deal with it. Didn’t matter whether they were on my team or not. And somewhere along the way, I started getting angry over shite that had nothing to do with what was taking place on the pitch.
I’d seethe with jealousy toward the blokes who’d married their secondary school sweethearts. The ones with parents they didn’t hate. The ones who didn’t have to go home to an empty property in Mayfair or some corporate sponsor hotel room on the road every night.
