shannon2007

Pan, Wega, danny - thanks all. Hope you enjoy it as it goes on and hope I can keep up the standard

shannon2007

She sits beside me, the room in darkness bar the glow from the coal fire that burns in the hearth. Her face shines in the light of the flames, and my heart misses a beat at her radiance. We are alone in the lounge of the guest house, the others have gone to do whatever it is they have gone to do on the last night of the year, before we gather later to to celebrate the arrival of the new one. My heart is thudding, perhaps even harder than I remember. I know what I must do, even though the memory of how and why I am here are fading, the life I had once lived will soon be forgotten and all I will have is this life, this now, this peculiar journey.

We are chatting about nothing in particular. I can feel the ache in my heart, as I want to reach out and touch her, to hold her close to me and tell her I love, tell her I will protect her from the nightmare to come. But that would not do, it would probably freak her out and embarrass her and that would defeat my whole point. Yet I feel I must act, must do, say, something to tell her of my love for her, before time runs out, before the others return and the moment is gone, lost this time forever. For there can be no returning to this moment ever again, this is it, the last chance for real happiness.

Of course I could be wrong. Perhaps what I have been taking for signals that she feels the same way about me are simply misread. And what if, what if it turns out wrong? And once more my feelings of damned insecurity threaten to overwhelm me, and as Denise speaks to me I am not really listening to her words, as I look dreamily at her face, into her eyes and my heart breaks as the dire memories of a future that hopefully never will be, still plays just within the reach of my memory. It will not do, there can be no worse future than what I still know, and I have not come back here simply to allow the course of time to pan out on its familiar path.

Denise stops, clearly having said something that requires a response. I am speechless, the moment is slipping, then suddenly from nowhere I blurt out, 'Denise will you marry me!'

She laughs, a scared, confused laugh that contains perhaps an element of hope, and an element of insanity. She feels it is a joke, but as she is about to speak, she sees something in my face and halts. I have blown it for sure, too eager, too stupid by half. Why, oh why did I just say that!

'I don't mean right now' I hastily retreat with a laugh of my own, trying to bring some kind of calm, but she needs to know, I need to know and in this moment we will discover our fate.

'But Denise. There is something I need to tell you. I lo...'

And as fate would have it, the door opens, three of our friends crowd in, chatting, happy and totally unaware of the moment they have just interupted. Dejection, fear grabs me as I turn to hear what the others are saying, and the moment is surely gone now. In two's and three's the rest of our little gang come in and we make our way to the dinning room where dinner will be served. Our last meal of 1989, and I try hard not to show the tears as I sit beside my best friend Stuart with Lucy on the other side of me. The conversation is light hearted throughout dinner, my eyes trying to avoid Denise who is across the table. At moments though out eyes meet then turn away. I cannot fathom her thoughts, as she too laughs and jokes with our friends and time is running out. I must, I must, know if there is still hope and I must know before the New Year bell tolls. This I am sure, if I am sure of nothing else as my mind races and whizzes and I simply want to curl up into a ball and fall into a deep sleep and never wake up again.

shannon2007

Sixteen years have passed since the night I first asked my wife Denise to marry me. She still makes me buy her a present every New Year to celebrate what she calls our first anniversary. Women.

I cannot for the life of me even begin to wonder why I blurted out that I wanted to marry the girl I had been in love with for nigh on three years. Yet now I think I am glad I did so, I seriously doubt I would otherwise have had the courage to tell her how I felt, and Denise would probably not later have whispered to me as we danced 1989 away together, that she accepted my proposal and demanded to know where the ring was. Thankfully, she was joking. About the ring that is. It turned out she was deadly serious about the marriage.


We were eventually married in the spring of 1993, after Denise insisted I propose to her properly with a ring and the trimmings. The marriage was an occasion fit for a Princess and Denise looked stunning as her father proudly walked her down the aisle of the little church on the outskirts of Bradford. They say all brides look beautiful on their wedding day, but I doubt any could have matched my radiant Denise, and I doubt any wedding could have been as wonderful as ours.

I cannot say we have had sixteen years of perfect happiness. We have had our ups and downs, our arguments, our share of grief. And sometimes I wonder if it really has been all worthwhile. Have I given up a glittering football career at the highest level, to be with the one I love? What if I had not 'proposed' that night, would I have gone to play for Rangers, Barcelona – for Scotland at the World Cup. And sometimes, after we have had an argument over something petty, I wish I could go back and change things.

And then I look at our four wonderful children, pat the bump that is on it's way to being our fifth and I cannot help but feel that any sacrifices I may have made with my career have been well worth it. And sacrifices I have indeed made, of that I am sure. For instance, when I was eighteen I was offered the chance to sign for Rangers from my local club St Mirren, with whom I had been since I was fifteen. Denise though had moved with her family back to Bradford where her father had taken up a new parish, and she desperately wanted me to move there. As luck would have it, Leeds United were also interested in signing me and so although I really wanted to play for the team I had supported as a boy, my love for Denise won out and I moved to Leeds.

I did not have a bad career at Leeds, playing there for some twelve years before moving the short distance to play for Bradford City. Three year ago, I damaged my right knee and although I was only 30, my playing career, which had never been spectacular, was over. I wanted to move into coaching and City were happy to oblige me. A year later non league side Bradford Park Avenue were looking for a new manager, I applied and was appointed to the position. Hardly glamorous, but it pays the bills and means we can remain near to Denise's family. Which is where she wants to be and who am I to argue.

We have done quite well at the Avenue, and last season we gained promotion to the Blue Square Conference North, which promises to be quite a challenge. I am happy with my life, I have no reason not to be. Yet sometimes it still nags on me that I could have been something, that I have made too many sacrifices and if I could just go back in time..........

But no, that is impossible and if my career as a player was mediocre because of my duty to my family, then so be it. I will just have to make sure my career as a manager is spectacular. It's a long way from here to the Premiership, but occasionally I have this feeling that I too, with Denise, have come a long journey to where we are now. And when I am in my right frame of mind, I know that I would not give up this life for anything on this earth. And yet, I can't help wondering what might have been...........

retired_brianrt

Like this start a lot PM. I will be following the story with interest

retired_taja

Grest start PM7...i will be following this one with great interest

Keep up the great work

retired_gabachitalinda

Loving this start PM, really emotional & makes me think about things in my life...

KUTGW!

retired_swmchick2006

Very interested to see where this goes. As it stands, it is already a nice short story.

shannon2007

Thanks all

Actually you make a good observation attjen, and if this was a novel I would perhaps be going down varies time strands. Indeed, I might still do so!

But I just don't have a clue myself yet.

shannon2007

Any couple who tell you they live in blissful harmony are either lying to themselves, or have such a poor relationship with each other that they are afraid to disagree. It is more than true to say that my relationship with Denise has not always been one of pure and utter harmonic bliss. She is without doubt an amazing person, and my love for her has only increased in depth over the years we have been married. She is also immensely stubborn at times, and so I have to say, so am I. Usually though we can overcome our differences, what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, so they say.

Perhaps the biggest contention between us, particularly in our early years together, was that of her relationship with her family. Moving down south had not been a major problem for me – I had no family to leave behind, apart from a crabbit old Aunt who was now in a rest home. Of course, there was the whole contention itself with the fact that I personally wanted to sign for Glasgow Rangers, and although Denise did not come out and tell me that our relationship would be over if I did, she also made it quite clear she had every intention of moving with her family. She was, after all, only seventeen at the time and perhaps that was understandable, even if it did irk me a lot and for the first three months of my time at Leeds I refused to call on her at her home and insisted she meet me on my terms. Which to her great credit she did, even if as I found out later, she often incurred the wrath of her over protective – in my eyes at least – father.

It wasn't even that her family were horrible people. In fact they were the total opposite, and if truth be told I really like them. Her father David was a decent man, he seemed at times to me to have rather antiquated ideas – sending his kids to boarding school for instance was just something that even to this day I cannot fathom. I would never send my children away from me, for any reason - and he had a somewhat harsh regime in my eyes with his two daughters, even when they were in their late teens he expected them home at what seemed a very early hour. Hilary, his wife and of course the mother of Denise and her sister, was an amazing woman, who effused love and seemed to give her whole life in the service of her husband and children, and easily accepted me into the fold as one of her own. She has been a tremendous grandmother to our children, and has often helped us in our usually petty disputes, never taking sides with one or other of us. I would not want you to think though, that my whole life with Denise has been one of argument and disagreement. It has been far from it, but when we do fall out, it tends to be in a big way, although as the years have passed we are learning more and more how to cope with each others idiosyncrasies.

Denise also has a very close relationship with her sister Margaret, who is two years younger than her. Whilst Denise can be shy at times, particularly when I had first met her, she is far more outgoing than her little sister who even now positively glows red when a stranger talks to her, or if she had to do something she considers embarrasing in public – like telling off one of her misbehaving children. Yet I have always gotten on well with Margaret, she is a sweet person and I often think that if I had met the family just a few years later....... but that is an evil thought really, and I know that we would never be compatible as a couple. You might wonder then where the problem lies with such a seemingly perfect family, and the answer to me, particularly in the early days was partly that they seemed just too perfect, and mainly that I have to admit I was totally jealous of their closeness.

My own parents had died when I was just four years old. They had been out celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary, and on the way back their car had been involved in a head on collision with an out of control milk tanker. I have precious few memories of my parents, and I have no idea if they would have been good or bad, I can only imagine what life might have been like. After my parents death I was brought up by my paternal grandmother, Lilly Wakefield. Lilly was a dear woman, but she seemed to me looking back to lack a great deal of affection. She was never cruel, and I knew that she loved me dearly, she just never seemed to be able to show that in a physical way. Granny though took ill when I was eleven years old, and died two years later from cancer. She was only fifty eight years old.

From that time, until I moved to Bradford to be with Denise, I lived with my aunt Peggy. She was my grandmothers sister, and was much older. Towards the end it was clear she was losing her marbles and eventually was committed to a rest home. She was not a bad person, but she had a terrible temper, but fortunately perhaps for me she was way too old to ever do anything about it than scream at me for being an ungrateful bastard. So I never knew what a proper family life was, and I resisted being dragged into one for reasons and fears I still cannot properly disseminate. I almost had a fear of being close to people, and perhaps that was understandable. When Denise told me she was pregnant with our first child, I worried myself sick that I could not possibly be a good father. I had no experience of a father, no experience of children and I was sure I would somehow screw it up. I was also mortally afraid in case something terrible happened to the child, and I would be unable to cope. That for sure, has never changed and perhaps has even gotten worse over the years, but thankfully Denise as always there to comfort me.

I sometimes wonder what I would ever have done without her..........

shannon2007

My office is hardly plush. It is pleasantly adequate and I am adequately happy here. Two years ago, when the Chairman of Bradford Park Avenue, John Dean, asked me if I would like to take up the reigns as manager, I baulked at the prospect. I had always felt during my playing career that I could have been something. I was a decent enough player, occasionally made a Scotland squad call up without ever gaining a full cap and had turned down moves to Dortmund and Atletico Madrid amongst others. I could have been something, but I ended up with a fairly mediocre playing career. In management I wanted something special, and for sure Bradford Park Avenue were far from that something.

And yet as I deliberated over staying in my coaching role at City, something nagged in the back of my mind. Perhaps the Avenue were nothing special, but there was nothing stopping me from making them special. And besides, if I made a success of it here, a bigger club might come calling and just perhaps by now I could persuade Denise to sacrifice her family ties for the progression of my career. However unlikely that might seem at this moment in time. In the end, I decided to take the job. I cannot fathom that nagging thought, just out of reach of my conscious mind but somehow I just know this is something I have to do, and therefore do it I will.

Although Bradford City were not, at that the time of my moving to the Avenue and even less so now, what you would call a big club, there was still a world of difference. City were a full time professional football club, the Avenue were mere amateurs even by their standards, but as I walked through the main entrance of the stadium, I had an epiphany and I just knew my destiny lay here. I cannot explain at times where these thoughts and feelings come from, but I have never been let down yet by what most people might call gobbledygook.

The night before my wedding, as I lay there wondering if I was doing the right thing, I had this incredibly powerful and overwhelming vision of Denise, an aged unrecognisable Denise lying dead in a pool of blood and vomit. So vivid was that dream that I had to phone her, at 3am, just to make sure it was indeed a dream. Needless to say, she was not best pleased with me but I knew that somehow this was a warning that I could lose everything I cared about if I did not have the courage to follow through my conviction. That at least, was the only reason I could think of that the time for such an incredibly powerful vision.

So it did not seem at all strange to me when these feelings of rightness overwhelmed me and even before Mr Dean had finished the tour and explained the contract details, I was eager to sign on the dotted line. Something special could happen here, if I really wanted it too. Of course, in my more lucid moments I feel I have been a fool, that nothing special can ever come of a club who barely attract a hundred or so supporters every home match. And yet, something special has happened, and is in many ways still happening. And, hopefully, will happen even more in the future.

After a decent enough first season in the Northern Premier League, where we ended 6th, last season we clinched the title on the last day of the season to gain promotion and this season will be plying our trade in the Blue Star Conference North. I expect it will be a tough season, but then again this club has known tough season, it has known the pain of dissolution and the harshness of rebirth. They have reached this level before, a few years ago but it proved too much and they slipped back down the way.

There is a spirit here, a hope, something intangible that keeps this club alive, makes it breath. I may never be able to guide this side any higher, but even if I fail in my task, I can honestly say I am glad that I took that risk of becoming manager here. The future will if I am right, or if I am wrong. But I cannot see the future, I can only see the present. My office is far from plush. On my desk, an ordinary wooden office type desk, stand the photographs of my adoring wife, and my four precious children. Room will have to be made soon for a fifth, but room will be made for sure. Whenever I am down, whenever I feel things are getting on top of me – particularly after a bad defeat – I come to this desk and look into the eyes smiling at me from those photographs and the whole world melts, I am brought crashing back to reality. It is, after all, only a game and what really matters are the five people – soon to be six – I love the most in the world, and who inspire me on the greater things. And remind me profoundly of my real priorities.