The reality would prove to be much darker.
As a kid you never think your parents would ever split up, even when they’re fighting a lot. A kid’s view of the world is pretty simple: Mum and Dad and siblings are there, you go to school and see your friends; sometimes there’s fun, sometimes you’re in trouble, sometimes everything’s OK. I played football, of course – the fields were right behind my house – we traded and banged marbles, and we rode bikes around Oxhey Green and Attenborough Fields. Sometimes when we got a bit daring we’d go as far as Merry Hill Wood. For a few years it was idyllic; I had a very happy childhood, all told.
And then Dad decided we had to move to Bedmond, near Hemel Hempstead. Though it was only eight miles away, we might as well have been moving to the moon. I was leaving all my friends and my school, and even though we were heading to a much better house, I freaked out. I did everything I could to stop the move – I think I even took a pair of scissors to some curtains. But Mum and Dad weren’t having it, and they outlasted my upset.
But once again I was saved by something I didn’t understand. Around that time, I had a dream about a football pitch. In the dream there was a main road, and a little lane, and a gap in the green plastic fence, and a bollard stopping cars getting in, and it was on the left – I can still see it, clear as day: the little football pitch on the left of my dream.
On my first day in Bedmond, imagine my amazement when dad sent me out to explore and I found the exact football field from my dream, across Bedmond Road, then right on Tom’s Lane. Walking along, on the left I saw the chain-link fence, and the bollard, and the wide-open expanse of green, and the posts and nets – exactly the same as the dream I’d had – and I think I knew then I’d be alright.
2
WATFORD BOYS
And I was alright, until I wasn’t.
I got picked by Watford Boys when I was about 12 years old and ended up captaining them. I played alongside a bunch of good players, too, including Nigel Callaghan, who’d go on to feature in Watford’s 1984 Cup Final team. But something was going on at home that put the kibosh on my teen years: my parents were breaking up, and it wasn’t pretty.
Luckily for me, during the days I was out playing football all the time, and when I wasn’t playing, I was watching – Watford had even given me a pass to get into any game I wanted. Everyone in the family had been so proud of me. I was good back then, head and shoulders – both physically, and skills-wise – over the other lads.
It was in my blood I suppose. I was born across the street from Vicarage Road, in the old Shrodell’s Hospital, and the second I was born my dad picked me up, took me to the window – I was maybe one minute old, apparently – and, pointing at the stadium, he said, ‘You’ll play there one day.’ My grandad was a staunch Watford supporter, all my uncles were too, and I still am. We all loved the football club.
When I was growing up, we travelled all over the country to watch them. And don’t forget what happened to that club: in 1977 we were bottom of the league – I don’t mean bottom of the old First Division, I mean the bottom of ALL the leagues, propping up the old Fourth Division. But lifelong fan Elton John came aboard and pumped some money in – he had been the chairman for a year when he signed up Graham Taylor to manage us.
Jump forward to five games into the 1982–83 season and we were top of the league – and I don’t mean the old Fourth Division, I mean the top of the old First Division. In fact, in the fourth game of that season, we’d beaten Sunderland 8–0. What a ride – in five years we’d gone from the worst to the best!
We’d all travel to Nottingham Forest, who were a top team then, and Liverpool, and West Ham, and Man United, and Southampton – I remember us beating them lot 7–1 in the League Cup in 1980 (we’d been one–nil down at half time – talk about a game of two halves!). And Elton? He said in his autobiography that Watford might have saved his life. He wrote:
I was chairman throughout the worst period of my life: years of addiction and unhappiness, failed relationships, bad business deals, court cases, unending turmoil. Through all of that, Watford were a constant source of happiness to me … For obvious reasons, there are chunks of the eighties I have no recollection of – but every Watford game I saw is permanently etched on my memory.
What a guy.
So, just like Elton, Watford is in my blood, in my case from the second I started screaming in the bassinet at Shrodell’s.
But though in my early teen years the days were filled with footy, the nights were terrible.
Dad had built us the house in Bedmond, and he’d put his heart into it, but my parents weren’t getting along – at all. At night I’d sneak into my sister Ann’s room to comfort her as they raged at each other into the wee hours; me and my sister would hug each other, praying the screaming and carrying on would soon stop. And it wasn’t as if me and Ann really got along all that well. It shows, though, how kids often try to make the best of everything. It still hurts that we were forced to care about each other like that; it still feels unfair and it left me less and less certain of people, and more and more wary – and angry.
I’d always been a sweet enough kid; I messed around, yes, but I wasn’t angry deep down, not at all. I was a scally, not a nutter. But something about listening all those nights to the angry fights, and the fact that me and my sister were left to fend for ourselves upstairs … Adult arguments are terrifying for kids, who feel out of control, scared, unable to process the complicated hurts they can hear being aired by the two people they most need to be solid and secure.
What I’m saying is, that 13-year-old that Tanya Lamont met at Sun Sports? He was getting harried by hurt into a much tougher proposition. I’m actually a sensitive little kid at heart; I’m not afraid to admit that. Talking so much about losing Tanya and being emotional about it in public has surprised some people I think; but the truth is that I’ve always been emotional. So hearing my parents’ marriage disintegrate was murder for me; it left me empty and unable to focus on football. Football? Actually, who cared? Ann and I had been up all night clinging on for dear life – so what if I missed some training here and there? Even when I did make it to training, my mind wasn’t fully on it.
The end came when I was 16 years old.
Things at home got really terrible. A friend of my mum’s had shown up at our house and admitted that, years before, she’d slept with my dad. I have no idea to this day why that woman thought she needed to get that off her chest, but she did, and it only deepened the disaster that was home. Soon after, Mum’s friends showed up to help her move out. I screamed at them, but it was no use. She went off to live in the nursing home where she worked and Dad had to sell the house he’d built to pay her.
Which left Ann and me adrift. I was mad at both my parents, but I think especially at my mum. Dad did a good job of making her the monster – understandable, but only half the story. I was still trying to get to football practices, but it was a losing battle.
One day, I was pulled into the office by Tom Walley, the legendary coach at Watford, and Bertie Mee, himself a legend from his ten years managing the Arsenal (including during the League and Cup double year of 1971). Mee was Graham Taylor’s assistant and head of scouting, meaning he basically ran the Watford youth team. When I knew him, he was in his sixties, but still as sharp as ever, a real football man.
This was the time that I was either going to be signed on real apprenticeship forms, or I was done. I thought I had a shot but Tom Walley and Bertie Mee had called me in to tell me they were letting me go. One of their reasons was that I wasn’t big enough – at the time, Watford seemed obsessed with the size of their players and for some reason they thought I was too small – which is pretty funny, given how my career panned out as a well-built Mr Hard Man. But at the time they were adamant.
That wasn’t the worst bit, though. No, what Mee said to me cut me to the bone. It’s hard to hear terrible news from anyone but especially a legend – and even more so because he
couldn’t really have known how wrong he was, and how lacking in understanding of what I was going through.
‘You treat life as a joke,’ Mee said. He also said that maybe Spurs or Coventry were interested, but his comment about treating life as a joke really hurt and shut me down for good. He couldn’t have known what I was going through at home, I suppose, but the reality was that life wasn’t much of a joke, that was for sure.
I don’t hate Bertie Mee, but I think it’s a good lesson in being careful what you say to people, especially young people. You can never know what someone’s going through. I’ve found this out a lot since Tans died. If it looks like someone is finding life to be too much of a joke, chances are something else is going on under the surface.
At about the same time, though, thank god, there was something funny happening elsewhere – Tanya’s dad, Lou, was somewhere in Watford hitting a donkey’s cock with a stick.
What had happened was that the donkey – a field-mate to Persephone – had taken a liking to the horse and whenever possible would attempt an amorous mounting, despite the difference in size and, let’s be honest, species. Clearly the donkey was hankering after giving the world one more mule – all reports suggest that, and here I quote Tans’ mum, Maureen, ‘His thing used to hang all the way to the ground; it was shocking.’ Persephone had no such plans, so it seems. Shane adds to the reminiscences with a memorable phrase: ‘My dad,’ Shane says, ‘had to regularly beat the donkey’s dongle with a stick.’
‘That bloody donkey again,’ Lou would say. Eventually, Persephone got wise to the donkey and would chase it away, but not before the donkey bit a chunk out of Persephone’s rear. Something had to give, and Tanya’s mind had moved to other things in any case, as 16-year-olds’ minds will, and Persephone was sold.
Gaddesden Crescent would never be the same. And I imagine the donkey never got over it, either.
As for me? I was done too; for the next three years, I didn’t kick a ball in anger. I had no one on my side; my dad had had to sell the house he’d built for us at Woodlands to pay mum and he was in a new relationship; Mum was living in the nursing home where she worked and had someone new too. I’d see her once in a while, but I hated it; it didn’t feel right, and Dad had a lot of anger towards her then too, which poisoned me against her for a while. It seems that there wasn’t any room left for me in anyone’s life; they all had their own shit to deal with. And Watford Boys had let me go – so what, right?
I was still living with my dad, but I was spending a lot of time with a local gamekeeper, Neil Robinson, and his ‘wife’ Andrea. (Dad had actually hired them to work on his property – he ran a local shoot – on the old-fashioned condition that they be married, which was pretty rich coming from a guy who was getting divorced. Neil and Andrea had worn rings to the interview, but it was clear to anyone with half a brain that there was no way they were married, though they eventually sneaked off to get wed and no one was any the wiser.) But Dad started to get jealous that I was spending a lot of time with Neil – I think he felt Neil was looking out for me in ways that he couldn’t and he was right – Neil was like a father figure when I needed one. For my part, I played it up a bit with Dad; I was cheeky about it as I knew it needled him and, honestly, I was deep down so hurt by everything that I don’t think I cared if I upset him.
Eventually, Dad and Neil had a huge argument about the situation. I took Neil’s side, as ever, and that might have been the end of it … but Dad wasn’t done. Right there and then he hauled off and gave me a right-hander, standing on our doorstep, knocking me through the sliding door and right back into the house.
It was the first time he’d hit me since I’d stolen that money when I was seven, but this was different. I was 16. Watford had let me go. I had quit school without sitting a single exam and I was either on the dole or doing hod-carrying work. My parents were split, I felt alone in the world and my dad had just smacked me right across my face. So I just walked into our house, my cheek still stinging, put my stuff in black bin liners – my records, my footy medals and some clothes – and walked away.
Neil and Andrea took me in for a while until they set me up with job in the kitchens at Bradfield College near Pangbourne, down in the Chilterns. I was the washer-upper; it sounds like hell I suppose, but it wasn’t all bad. I had my own room with a single bed, though it was above the kitchen, so everything stank of the cooking. As the pot washer I worked seven till seven, every day – Bradfield is a posh boarding school – but at least I had time off in the afternoon until I had to come back and get ready for the evening meal. I learned quickly to never get to work late, because the pots used to be to the ceiling if I didn’t get a good start on them. I suppose I ate OK – I’d scrounge the leftovers of those boys. And what boys they were! The college is known for putting on Greek plays – in Greek – and for running a course in the summer on how to improve your bellringing. I wonder what they’d think if they realized Vinnie Jones, the guy who grabbed Gazza by the knackers, used to work there, cleaning their pots and pans.
Needless to say, I only stuck it out for a year. I’m amazed I did that long to be honest. Greek and bellringing? Whatever.
I haven’t lived under the same roof as my dad since. Some days I can still feel that smack. Tans was always so good about helping me forgive him, for seeing his side, for making just the right excuses for the old fella, and for my mum, too. She did that for everyone.
Tans also had a very special bond with my mother, whose early life was tragic. When she was very young, my mum was taking one of her younger sisters to school and they were standing on the side of the road waiting to cross. One of their little friends waved across to them and my mum’s sister pulled out of my mum’s hand and ran into the street where she was hit by a lorry and killed. My mum’s mum, my grandmother, never forgave my mum; in fact, she put her in a home soon after. Tans knew all this and, as ever, she loved an underdog. Knowing what my mum had gone through helped her understand me, too. Tans would say, ‘Vin is a beautiful boy, very complex.’ She knew all of the parts that created me, all of the different sides of how I was raised, even when it was hurtful to me, and I couldn’t see past the pain my parents had caused.
I don’t know how she was so loving, but I was so grateful she helped me see the good in people. That’s something I think about when the grief is deep – not just what I lost when she went, but all the things I gained by just knowing her. I think trying to focus on that every day will help me get through it. She was always emotionally making the bed for everyone – making it comfortable, better, with corners that hold you tight.
So it’s no surprise to me that in her life, she was the proud owner of not just one but two hearts.
3
THE STOLEN SUZUKI
Eventually I ended up back nearer home, working on building sites when I wasn’t on the dole. At the time I was riding around on a little Suzuki motorbike. I don’t think I even owned it; some lad at work had given it to me and I was to pay him when I got my wages. I remember clearly that there was no key – you had to start it with a screwdriver – so who knows if my mate owned it either. But it got me around, and that’s all that mattered.
One night, when I was about 18 years old, I rode the bike to a pub called the Three Horseshoes in Garston, in the north end of Watford. And who should be there but Tanya Lamont? I hadn’t seen her since Sun Sports, but in the intervening few years she’d gotten even more beautiful, if such a thing was possible. I’d never seen anyone with longer, more gorgeous hair and her smile was so wide … That night, in that pub, it was like there was no one there except her; I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Fortunately, she noticed me too and said hello, calling me, as she always did back then, Vincent. We got to talking and I told her about leaving home and going away to the Chilterns and the problems with my dad and what had happened with Watford, and she was so sweet about it all. I could have talked to her all night.
At the time she was still living with her paren
ts in Gaddesden Crescent, which was only a five-minute walk away, straight across the Kingsway and through Garston Park. She told me she was allowed down the pub, but she had to be home before her dad got in. He was very protective and she, in turn, adored him. So even though it was much earlier than I was used to leaving a pub, it was the least I could do to offer to walk her home, so that’s what I did.
By the time we got to Gaddesden Crescent – five, six minutes later – I was back in love. There was no one like her and never had been. I was only 18 years old, but I knew she was the one for me. And yet, she was so out of my orbit I was certain that there was no way she could ever love me back. I was just a lad trying to get my head above water; I was flitting from couch to couch, holding down this job, that job, the other. My parents had split, I was working here and there, but I wasn’t making much of myself. I’d been at a posh school washing pots and pans and trying to get the sound of fucking bellringing out of my head. My football career had gone south and I really had no prospects. But this young woman, unlocking the front door to 75 Gaddesden Crescent … she was something else. She had poise, and she was smart and beautiful, and she was going to be something.
What was I going to do? She was everything, even then.
Suddenly, I was in her kitchen and Maureen was making a pot of tea and I couldn’t believe I was in Tanya Lamont’s house, with her. I was so punching above my weight – and that’s a feeling I had until the day she died. I had the feeling that night for certain as I chatted with her mother and Tanya before her dad got home, the three of us sitting around their Formica kitchen table, the one with the red and white checkers.
Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya Page 3
