Accidental Ironman

by Brunt, Martyn

  On the plus side, though, the sports master, Mr Jones (another Welshman, although at least this one was the real deal, having played rugby for Wales), didn’t want us lightweights getting in the way of his fit, committed, well-drilled bunch of homophobic racists. So we were spared the humiliation of having to play in the same games as them, and were instead banished to the fringes of the playing fields where we were made to play endless games of rugby, largely at walking pace and supervised by the music teacher, Mr Sutton. He was probably as uninterested in the whole process as we were – and at least we got to stand around with our hands on our knackers when it got cold, which he couldn’t do without ending up on some kind of register.

  In the summer term, thank the Lord, the school switched to cricket – which was at least a sport I liked, albeit still one I was shit at. This was a new experience for me and I recall my first feelings of frustration that here was something I liked, wanted to do, and yet couldn’t get into the school team because of a crippling lack of talent. I was bloody awful at batting – the highlight of my batting career being a match-winning stand of 51 with a lad called Jamie Walker, with him getting 50. However, I was a reasonable fielder and, dare I say it, a not entirely bad bowler, capable of maiden overs and the odd wicket. I didn’t have a particular style, although I had one delivery that was a full toss that used to lure batsmen into taking a big swing, only for the ball to suddenly drop from its trajectory like a turd dropping out the back of a cow and flop past their swishing bat on to the wicket. Around the time that I was at my most keen there was a programme on the television called Bodyline, which dramatised the controversial England victory in the Ashes in Australia when Douglas Jardine’s men started pelting Don Bradman and the Aussies in the ribs and faces. The bowling attack was led by fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, and I became obsessed with turning myself into the next Larwood. I spent hours in the back garden slinging balls at the shed, giving myself a back so hunched my mum started ironing my shirts with a wok and I had to stick my thumb up my arse to get my school tie on. This attempt at becoming the next Fred Trueman petered out eventually, leading to precisely no wickets but ending with the satisfying achievement of hitting my friend Paul Etherington squarely in the balls with a full toss that saw him plummet to the ground and vomit lavishly all over the stumps.

  I should point out at this moment that I am not a descendant of a particularly sporty line. My mum was a figure-skater and gymnast when young, making her by far the most accomplished sportsperson in the whole family, and she actually met my dad while ice skating when he swept her off her feet. I don’t mean this romantically, I mean he literally swept her off her feet by crashing into her.

  My dad’s sporting talents were less obvious. Throughout my childhood he claimed to be a tennis player of some renown and we used to play games together in my early teens. However, after he passed away a few years ago my mum debunked the myth that he was any good by saying that he was deemed the best player of their circle of friends simply because he possessed a racket with all the strings in it, had tennis balls that hadn’t had all the hair thwacked off them, and didn’t have a fag on the go while playing, unlike my Uncle Toms (plural). Throughout his whole life I never knew him to break into a run, and I only ever saw him swim once when we went on holiday to America and he swam by bobbing about face down in a San Diego swimming pool like the body from an improperly weighted Mafia hit. He did own a bike, but his idea of cycling was to pedal uphill to the next village three miles away with Uncle Tom number one, stop at the Bull and Butcher pub, and then freewheel all the way home. On the occasions that I was allowed to go along on my Raleigh Commando bike (with twist-grip gears in the handlebars no less) I was usually away off at the front on the way up the hill, made to sit outside with a lemonade during pub time, and then left for dead on the way back as they hurtled back down the hill, Uncle Tom only stopping if his Benson and Hedges went out.

  Even my wider family lacked any sporting heroes. My Grandad Jack was a physical training instructor in the army until a German machine-gunner put paid to his kneecaps, although this didn’t stop him cycling between Birmingham and Walsall every morning after the war to his job as a steam engine driver. As he said himself, all that metal around his legs made him much better at playing the spoons. Grandad Albert had played some football in his time but his real passion was gardening. He grew the largest vegetables that the Birmingham Council allotments ever saw. I would spend hours with him in his garden, watching him swapping trays of seedlings with fellow green-fingered enthusiasts to the extent that I grew up thinking that seeds and cuttings were some sort of illicit currency. Later in life he was frustrated by his inability to do the things he used to do – like bomb the Japanese.

  The only other member of my family worth mentioning is my cousin Sharon, who was so fat that if she fell on her back she’d rock herself to sleep trying to get back up again. At one point she topped 20 stone and this was back in the seventies when seeing fat biffers waddling around with their bum cracks on show was unusual enough to be worthy of comment from passers-by. We were not close as cousins due to her being a good bit older than me, and a spoilt miserable sow – you’d think if someone is going to be overweight then at least they’d have the common decency to be jolly. I well remember coming home one day from school to be met by my dad standing in the drive, looking very solemn and saying: ‘You know how your cousin Sharon was told to lose five stone or die? Well I’m very sorry to tell you that … she’s lost five stone.’

  My dad was a man of many talents, mostly associated with fine wine, jazz, elegant suits and being extremely popular. There was one sport he was committed to though, and that was golf. American comedian Robin Williams once described golf as the only time a white man can dress like a black pimp and get away with it, and my dad took this to extremes, cutting a singular figure at Coventry’s Hearsall Golf Club in his red plus-fours, argyle socks, diamond-patterned Pringle sweater and large American baseball cap. Like most club golfers he was mildly obsessed with the game and all the cupboards in our house seemed to be full of individually wrapped Slazenger golf balls. I wish I’d kept a few now because they’re dead handy for rolling around under your foot if you’ve got plantar fascitis.

  In truth, he wasn’t a bad player and reached a handicap of about 10. Once he even won a club trophy, in which Mum used to keep her sewing kit, much to his annoyance. Inevitably I was also drawn into this world and was given my first set of clubs at the age of about six, and given ‘lessons’ by my dad. Dad was not the most patient of souls, and ‘lessons’ would mostly involve watching me hack away at the ball like a lumberjack attacking a tree whereupon he would bellow ‘NOOOO! Like this!!!’, grab the club off me and then proceed to shank the ball into some trees before claiming I had ‘put him off.’

  In recalling this, I’ve just remembered the one and only time Dad tried to teach me to play cricket when I was about eight. God knows why he did this because he couldn’t play the game for toffee but he decided that he would bowl and I would bat, whereupon he launched a ball at me that Jimmy Anderson would be proud of and which cracked me so hard on the shin that it made me dry heave. Unfortunately for him, my mum had just wandered into the garden and witnessed the spectacle of her son being poleaxed, whereupon she raced across the lawn with a roar, tore one of the stumps out of the ground and flung it at my dad like a Zulu warrior, spearing him in the knee. He collapsed howling in agony and was locked out of the house while I was carried inside for ice cream and sympathy.

  Actually, I wasn’t bad at golf and managed to battle my way to a single-figure handicap, although I was never a natural and didn’t enjoy it enough to do any practising. I was capable of the odd good round and was particularly good at driving off the tee and belting the ball for miles down the fairway. The trouble was I used to putt the same way. I ended up playing most weeks with Dad from the age of about eight all the way through to my mid-thirties when he became too ill to stay out on the course
for long. I still miss those rounds with him, crushed as I was by the embarrassment of walking down a fairway next to a man in multicoloured knickerbockers and a flat cap with a bobble on it. I never won anything, and in fact the only real highlight I remember was once playing with a pro called Tim Rouse and some other friends at a course called Hollinwell in Nottinghamshire. Hollinwell was very nice and very posh, with a final hole that finished right in front of a large clubhouse with a huge conservatory and patio. I had had an atrocious round, spraying balls all over the shop and playing what was generally known as ‘Military Golf’ (left, right, left, right). Having done nothing of any note for the whole game, on the final hole I produced a shot of dazzling brilliance that pitched in the centre of the green with backspin and rolled up to about two inches from the pin. As we walked on to the green the patio was thronged with people having their evening gin and tonics, and I received a round of applause from the crowd, politely acknowledging it with a modest wave when I walked over to my ball. This led Tim to turn to me and say: ‘you wanker.’

  University is often the place where people discover or build on their sporting passions, but I continued my indifference all the way through my studies. I spent three years at Liverpool University between 1986 and 1989, having scraped there courtesy of an A-level in General Studies, which is the equivalent of being given a certificate after a pub quiz. I elected to prolong my education and be surrounded by girls and subsidised entertainment, rather than go straight to work in an office, factory or meat storage facility. During this period the only time I remember ever getting sweaty was while trying to unhook a girl’s bra, so it seems inexplicable that on returning to Coventry (Christ knows why) after my degree I decided to have another go at … football. Quite how I thought this would end I have no idea, and if I was hoping that the twelve-year gap between leaving junior school and starting work had suddenly imbued me with some kind of footballing ability, then I was in for a rude awakening.

  What happened was that I was approached by a bloke in a pub I used to drink in called the Windmill and asked if I wanted to turn out for the pub side. His name was Steve Brassington and he was trying to put a team together, having decamped there from another nearby pub called the Sportsman’s Arms (pound a pint and a stripper on a Sunday). Having been given £100 by the landlord to buy some new kit with the pub’s name on it, we promptly pissed this windfall up the wall on a night out and then turned out for our first game of the season in the old Sportsman’s kit with the name taped over. At our first training session, Brasso quickly realised the awful mistake he’d made in asking me to join the team, and I was moved from striker, to midfield general, to centre half, to right back, to substitute in the space of about five minutes flat. Pace, flair, skill and vision were just some of the traits completely absent from the team, but even in this company I stood out as a fat, lumbering oaf of no discernible use unless there was a chronic shortage of people with a pulse to turn out. Despite all this I quite enjoyed being part of the team while it lasted, chiefly because of some of the characters it featured, including:

  Tom Sefton – an alcoholic goalkeeper who used to turn up Sunday mornings shaking with the DTs and who’d say things like ‘Don’t let ’em get any crosses in lads, I’ve got a bastard of a headache.’

  Will Johnson – a ponderous striker known as ‘Shovel Foot’ for being the scourge of side-netting, or ‘Jigsaw’ because he frequently went to pieces in the box.

  Simon Dale – known as ‘Black Bess’ because he galloped fruitlessly up and down the wing in search of the ball, or ‘Gunshot’ because of his habit of shooting at goal whenever he got the ball, no matter where he was on the pitch.

  Chris Morris – Moggy was actually a good player and a lovely guy unless riled, at which point he’d turn into a combination of Vinnie Jones and Reinhard Heydrich until he’d upended someone, whereupon he’d return to being Penry the mild-mannered janitor.

  Steve Ward – Wardrobe was a somewhat static defender, also known as ‘Douglas Bader’ for being good in the air but crap on the ground.

  Greg Evans – a classy midfielder who later ended up in the clink for donning a raincoat, cap and glasses and collecting his dad’s pension for two years after he died.

  We played in the heady heights of the Bedworth and North Coventry Sunday Alliance Division One and in 1992 actually managed to go through a whole season unbeaten. I made a number of substitute appearances (the number in question being four) totalling about 25 minutes of actual play in which I managed to touch the ball a couple of times but, more importantly, I managed not to cock anything up either, which was my main goal. Sadly, after securing promotion to the Premier Division, the team fizzled out and was reincarnated as a five-a-side outfit, a game even more fast-paced and bad-tempered than ordinary football, in which my need to still keep looking at my feet to control them was horribly exposed on the one occasion I tried it.

  And that’s about it by way of sporting background and context-setting, so if you’ve picked up this book in search of the inspirational story of someone who overcame the odds to succeed, then you’re in for a disappointing read (and you may be in for one even if you aren’t looking for that). I have neither overcome odds, nor particularly succeeded. I have not challenged a disability, beaten the bullies, battled through setbacks, defeated schizophrenia by defying the voices in my head (either of them), or picked up the pieces of my shattered dreams and rebuilt them into a towering monolith of success. People do not throw rose petals at me as I walk down the street nor do I drink champagne from a golden slipper, which is probably just as well as I don’t want to die of greenfly or damp feet. I was just a nice, inoffensive kid who happened to be shit at sports. Except one …

  Chapter 3

  It is 4.45 a.m. and the bedside alarm has just gone off, producing much the same effect as if I had been blasted in the coccyx with a taser. I spend the next five minutes lying in bed in a state of advanced death until the alarm goes off again, prompting me to sit up slowly, like a zombie rising from the grave, only even more furious and incoherent.

  What follows looks like a mime artist attempting to portray the world’s most incompetent burglar as I stumble around the bedroom in the dark trying to put on socks, pants and shirt, all while also trying to stay completely silent for fear of waking my wife, Nicky. She will not be pleased if she is disturbed and can be reeeally grumpy if she doesn’t get enough sleep. I once did a radio interview in which the DJ asked how I managed to get up so early in the morning to go training, to which I joked, ‘If you’d seen my wife first thing in the morning you’d want to get out of bed as well,’ which got a laugh but boy did I get in trouble for that one.

  I sneak downstairs like a dog up to no good and slink past my dog, Patch, who really has been up to no good and who is now watching me beadily through one open eye as I try to make myself a drink and a bowl of cereal. Normally I am pretty bad at staying silent in the kitchen and this morning is no exception, although not as bad as a few nights ago when I returned home ‘refreshed’ from the pub and set about making myself an amazingly large fry-up at 2.00 a.m. using every single pan in the kitchen. Then I pad quietly outside to my campervan, trying not to wake the neighbours, and start the engine. Actually, bollocks to the neighbours … they never care whether I’m asleep or not, so I rev the engine and screech off up the road, as impressively as one can in a Mazda Bongo.

  The reason for all this creeping around is that I am off swimming with my local swimming club – or Masters Swimming Club to be precise as the adults team is known, to differentiate us from the juniors and seniors. They have separate training times away from the grown-ups lest they should have to share a changing room with us and end up running screaming from the pool at the sight of several saggy scrotums resembling the last turkeys in the butcher’s shop window.

  The swims take place in Coventry’s main sports centre, or ‘Coventry Baths’ as it is better known, which happens to be one of the few 50-metre pools in Britain despite t
he Council’s persistent attempts to turn it into some kind of tiresome splash pool. There are seven swimming sessions on offer to members of the City of Coventry Swimming Club each week, two of which take place from 5.30– 7.00 a.m., which is why I’m up with the lark and wrestling the turkey into my budgie-smugglers. The reason for starting so early is because the pool is not open to the great unwashed public until 7.00 a.m., so this way we get to have some quality training time without having to dodge round some old gimmer who blocks the lane by hanging in the water like a bloody jellyfish. The session is presided over by Allison Stoney, former international swimmer, multiple medal winner and highly respected ASA coach, who possesses the most important qualification any swim coach can have – that of having a voice like an estuary foghorn that can be heard even when your head is under water. This morning’s session involved a warm-up of 8 x 150m freestyle (yes, that’s a warm-up of 1200m!), followed by a prep set of 1,000m worth of drills, before the main set of 2,000m worth of 100m and 50m sprints punctuated by recovery swims of backstroke and fly. By the time we are done I feel as though someone has spent the past ninety minutes hitting my upper arms with a frying pan, and I have clenched my jaw so hard to achieve Allison’s target times that the enamel may have dropped off my teeth. Allison is a hardened swim coach of the old school who operates a competitive Masters team, but she doesn’t mind a few triathletes joining in with the sessions provided we also turn out for the club in relay teams in big national galas. Sharing the lane with me this morning is fellow triathlete Keith Burdett, a silver-haired freestyle powerhouse who looks like a bleached Wookie. This session is not unusually hard by Allison’s standards. No matter what she throws at us we keep turning up like we’ve all got Stockholm Syndrome.