Seize the Day (39 page)

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You’ve played down once before, I remember. You can’t do that twice in a season or we can claim the match by default.’

Ben has been rumbled. This could be a wasted journey.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ben.’

‘Ben what?’

Here another of our team rushes to Ben’s aid. ‘Ben Maddison.’

‘Maddison? But you’re a Maddison, you’re Dave Maddison, I’ve played against you many times.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is he a relation?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really? He either is or he isn’t.’

It’s getting tricky for Dave. He was only trying to help and now he’s in the dock. ‘He isn’t.’

‘That’s a coincidence, two Maddisons.’

Dave clutches at a straw that is blocked at both ends. ‘He’s Madison, with one D.’

The unlikely farrago hangs in the air.

‘Come on,’ says their skipper, ‘we’re already fifteen minutes late starting.’ I make a mental note to remember when we sign the score sheet at the end of the match to write Ben’s name as Madison, with one D. It’s not easy being the captain.

Mention must be made of our fourth team member that day, Tony James. A former Commonwealth athlete, when he was ten stones lighter of course, an exceptionally gifted artist and a collector of vintage cars. The trick with the cars, he says, is to have so many that your wife never knows when you’ve bought another. He was my on-court partner and a decent player, despite never knowing the score. His random idea of what the score might be baffled many an opponent as well as me, but he was my pal and if he thought we’d won the game he must be right. I’m sure we got quite a few points that way. I called him Rhino. When he charged the net, even the Saracens First XV would have taken cover, and the steam from his nostrils brought to mind an A4 4-6-2 locomotive bound for Glasgow on a frosty November morning.

It was in a delightful shop in Moreton-in-Marsh that I spotted it: a realistic model rhino. The sort you’d buy for a farm set if you were breeding rhinos. I bought five, the final destination of the odd-toed ungulates already firmly in my mind. They nestled in my tennis bag until teatime. We were playing a Sussex County match away: slap-up feed guaranteed. The timing was perfect. As Rhino popped to the loo the sandwiches and cakes emerged. The opposition gazed in wonder
as I secreted five rhinoceroses among the cakes and sandwiches. I explained the gag. We could hardly contain ourselves. Rhino returned. This man is ultimately laid back, but he must notice them. He ate a sandwich, then another. He even moved one of the model rhinos to get to a cake. This was baffling. Another cake. More tea. Eventually he leaned over very, very casually, stretched out a laconic arm, picked up one of the rhinos, examined it, replaced it, turned to the opposing players and said at length, ‘That’s a really strange coincidence, because they call me Rhino.’

Before the groundsman takes the net down and I head off to the changing rooms, I must make a confession that may see me banned from any future matches. From 2005 until 2009, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I was presenting programmes at Frinton-on-Sea for the relaunched Radio London. Unsurprisingly, I played a lot of tennis at Frinton, one of the most delightful clubs in the country. Beautiful grass courts, fantastic location, lovely people and an incredible history. My biggest thrill on court at Frinton was playing in a doubles match with Mark Cox, former world number one, against former British number one Andrew Castle and Buster Mottram, once ranked fifteenth in the world. That array of talent makes you step up to the mark.

Well, that was nearly my biggest thrill. One wet evening after a strenuous indoor tennis session we were sitting in the bar discussing how exciting it must have been when it was only the second tournament to Wimbledon. Tales were told of the days when the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, took the courts, when Winston Churchill smoked cigars at the bar and when King Zog of Albania and Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia visited the club. While we were talking about these great characters I felt words form unbidden on my lips. ‘They’ll also be talking about tonight for years to come.’

The gang looked at me as though I was mad. ‘What on earth will they say?’ someone ventured.

‘They’ll say, “Have you heard about the night they played naked tennis on the hallowed lawns of Frinton-on-Sea?”’

Accompanied by much shrieking, four of us disrobed and headed out on the moonless night with the rain driving in from the sea. We could hardly see to play so the assembled company couldn’t have seen much either. If indeed there was much to see … It was hilarious … and wet. I’d say we were soaked to the skin by the time we’d finished, but we were only in our skin. Very exhilarating and who could even guess at the score, but we did it. Word spread very quickly, especially as this was Frinton, the last bastion of gentility. The last place in Britain to get a pub, the last to get a fish and chip shop, and the first to get naked tennis. The papers carried the story, which even made the nationals and some magazines. I was asked to deny it. I couldn’t. The club got a local journalist (a good friend of mine) to write a piece for the local papers specifically saying that we’d made it up, that it was an urban myth. It wasn’t. People still ask me about it years later.

M
Y FIRST SKIING
jaunt was early in the early ’90s, taking to the slopes with Cliff Richard, another new boy on the piste, and our friend Charles Haswell. As I was still less than enamoured of flying at the time, I took the train and met them at the picturesque Austrian resort of Lech am Arlberg. Through the window of the train, I spotted small dots on the mountainsides at about 10,000 feet. People? Impossible! Well, even if they were, at least I’d never have to ski down from there. The lower, gentler slopes would be fine for me. Wrong. After one day on the nursery slope our guide had me in a chair lift heading up to the Kriegerhorn, the nearest mountain, in a pretty fierce blizzard. At the top there was a biting wind. Cliff was concerned. Not for his safety, but for his showbiz persona. His face was going numb with the intense cold. ‘I can’t smile properly,’ he shouted above the storm.

‘I’m not sure anyone’s going to notice in this weather,’ I shouted back.

‘Even so, it’s a bit worrying.’

To my surprise, I made it down the mountain without serious mishap. Well, until the last 50 yards or so, when I overegged it a
tad in the confidence department and virtually fell into the hotel, a flurry of arms, legs and one ski. I found the other ski about 100 feet away buried in snow.

The following day I spotted a guy in the hotel foyer who looked familiar. He obviously felt the same about us. ‘Hi guys, we knew you were here.’

Who was he? A spy? Superintendent of the skiing police? Press? No, he was royal protection officer Ken Wharfe. He explained that our presence was known as they had to check the other guests before the Princess of Wales and Princes William and Harry were booked in. It was all very relaxed and great fun, Diana being happy to join in our regular sessions when we got the guitars out after dinner. Don’t think me lazy or plagiaristic but let me lift one Lech session from Cliff’s book, where Diana asked if William and Harry could join the singing session one night.

There have been some extraordinary groups in the history of music, but a five-piece featuring the future King of England, the Princess of Wales, Prince Henry of Wales and the most successful British singer of all time must cap the lot. I recently had a note from William, who remembered the Lech days with great fondness.

I did make it down from 10,000 feet by the second year, but there were a few hairy moments, like a 100-yard-long ice path about two feet wide, with a mountain on the left and a sheer drop on the right. I made God all sorts of outrageous promises during those 100 yards if I came through it safely. I hope he doesn’t remember them. OK, it wasn’t the most graceful descent, but that was never part of the plan. Actually there was no plan, unless it was ‘Come down as upright as possible and if upright isn’t possible, try to slither down without being spotted’. Harry was fearless, although the royal security team kept an eye on the two princes from a discreet distance. I seem to remember the boys carrying some sort of tracking device with an alarm, so if they got into difficulty of any kind, Ken and his team would lock onto their co-ordinates and locate them within minutes.

In March 1992, Prince Charles came out to join the royal party, and he and Diana invited Cliff, Charles Haswell and me to have supper with them on the Sunday. Unfortunately, circumstances dictated otherwise. On that day, Diana’s father, Earl Spencer, died. There were already dozens of photographers outside the hotel, but that now intensified. What a ghastly situation for her and the boys. A father and grandfather passes away and you’re in a goldfish bowl until a suitable flight can be organised. It was difficult to know how to commiserate without being intrusive. I wrote a note with a small poem and slipped it under her door. Two weeks later I received the most gracious and charming letter from her, at a time when she must have had many more pressing matters to attend to. I was very touched.

Amazingly, neither did she forget the dinner. We re-convened at Charles H.’s house in Barnes some while later. Of course we sang a few songs as she’d insisted we take the guitars along. We even had a rehearsal in Cliff’s kitchen. Heaven knows why we bothered rehearsing, as we rattled through some old favourites with Ken joining us on a third harmony here and there. Someone commented that he sang like a bird, so I called him ‘Canary Wharfe’, which Diana thought was a terrific name for him. We’d all adopted daft names when skiing,
like the Count of the Mount, the Artiste of the Piste, the Lush of the Slush and the Wizard of the Blizzard.

One year, a TV crew came out to film Cliff’s antics on the slopes, so we all tried to look as professional as possible. We were instructed to ‘stand in a line and all hold one ski in the air’. Of course I slipped, and the rest went down like ninepins. Uncool.

A bonus of skiing in Lech was the indoor tennis centre, despite the higher altitude causing the ball to whizz through the air that much faster. The most magical aspect of Lech was the horse-drawn sleighs, their festive bells jangling as they pulled us up the mountain through the sharp evening air to a wooden restaurant another thousand feet up.

On one occasion, Ken Wharfe talked me into staying an extra day. He was planning to go up into uncharted territory and promised it would be rather special. Our guide knew the mountain like the back of his ski glove. Something told me to go home. I stayed. That night in the bar, the locals looked aghast. ‘You’re going up tomorrow with Gurt?’

‘That’s the plan.’

‘Gurt, the Madman of the Mountain?’ The plan wasn’t looking so hot. The place shook with laughter. ‘He is a crazy man. Sleeps all night on the mountain. Drinks lots of schnapps.’

‘Hmm.’ Thanks, Ken.

The day dawned. What could go wrong? I’d been skiing all week. It was just another day, I tried to convince myself. We went high and came down through the trees. Very pretty but very scary. Suddenly there seemed to be more trees than space in between them. Without warning, I rounded some pines, ploughed through some deep snow and collided with a stationary Wharfe. He was taking a breather. My skis slid under his, I went over backwards and one of his skis smacked me a massive crack on the head. I was poleaxed and expected our concerned guide to have me airlifted off the mountain at once.

‘Come on let’s go,’ he said.

‘Go where?’ I wasn’t sure where I was, let alone where I was going.

Ken was giving me a strange look. ‘Crikey, you’ve got a bit of a bump.’

I felt my head and there was a lump the size of a rugby ball. Well, a sizeable hen’s egg at least. Common sense, not that I’m overendowed with it, told me to discontinue the exercise and get off the mountain. I spent most of the afternoon attempting to translate stories in the local paper while I waited for the doctor and felt my lump expanding by the minute. I survived, but only just.

A move from Lech one year saw us skiing at Megève in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France. It was a superb place, turned into an alternative to St Moritz by the Rothschilds in the ’20s, but getting to the slopes from our hotel meant a trip across town. The place where we lunched, a few thousand feet up, afforded us the most fantastic view of neighbouring Mont Blanc, but the snow was beginning to melt some way down. Time and time again I skied into pools of water. Very tiring, very wet. I decided to head off earlier each day to play tennis at a local centre with their coach. Less tiring, less wet. I missed out on a trip to Aspen, but each year there’s loose talk about reviving the crack skiing team and taking to the slopes again in earnest. Now where’s my ‘Wizard of the Blizzard’ T-shirt?

I
SUPPOSE I’VE HAD
three stages of sport, football as a kid, then cricket and then tennis, although I’ve always played all three. I also enjoy croquet, a demonic game that I think is a cross between chess and snooker. An early girlfriend, Gillie Palmer, had regular croquet in her family’s garden and I also played on the island of Herm in the ’80s and ’90s, when it was owned by my friends the Woods. Rules varied of course. During one particularly tight match on the island with Rupert Wood and his sister Rosie, my ball rolled onto the pie-crust shoe of the Dean of Guernsey and lodged there. I wasn’t in the market for forfeiting a shot at that decisive stage of the game and looked hopefully at the surprised clergyman. I had to make an important decision in a nanosecond.

Step One, as Eddie Cochran once sang: I knew that Guernsey came under the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. Step Two: I supposed therefore that he wasn’t a suffragan bishop and therefore ‘Your eminence’ would be incorrect. I couldn’t afford to get this wrong. Did that make the correct address ‘Your Grace’? Step Three: An innocent upturned face and a polite ‘Your Grace?’ Nothing needed adding. Being a man of the world, or at least of the Channel Islands, he got my
drift. He nodded. I clicked the ball neatly off his shoe with my mallet and away it rolled. He smiled and spoke at last: ‘Divine intervention.’

In 1987 I was invited, with Rupert Wood, to the British Open Croquet Championship Final at Hurlingham. Worth it for the champagne breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea alone, but enhanced by many an awe-inspiring roquet, croquet, hoops run and even the odd attempt at a triple peel. After having watched the game for some while, I went in to buy a lemonade, or maybe something less appropriate. Coming away from the bar, pint in hand and with a copy of
The Times
under his arm was one of the finalists. Impossible.

‘Aren’t you actually playing in the final…?’ I began, incredulously, pointing to the great outdoors.

‘Oh yes,’ he smiled dismissively. ‘I know his game very well, he’ll be about another fifteen minutes on his turn.’

Casual, assured, British. A Francis Drake moment.

When I moved to Little Brinsbury Farm and bought a few acres of extra land I created a full-size croquet lawn with the expert help of my girlfriend Alison’s father, Stanley Jenkins. He’d been Our Man in Singapore when Wimbledon champions Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall broke their journey from Australia there, en route to defend their title in 1954, and the Foreign Office had insisted he create a court for them. His own tennis lawn had always been the benchmark of excellence. So who better for my croquet lawn? I came to look upon Stanley as a second father. He is a man equipped with humility, humour and a sense of fair play, and he makes good chips. He’d been one of the World Youth leaders with Olof Palme and Che Guevara, had worked with Mountbatten and was referred to by the head of the KGB as an ‘archimperialist fascist beast’. Maybe Khrushchev hadn’t experienced the canny Welshman’s expertise on the tennis court, or the croquet lawn. We cut, we rolled we trimmed, we marked, we encouraged the moles to colonise someone else’s land and we turned out a pretty respectable patch measuring the required 35 yards by 28 yards, virtually twice the size of a tennis court.

As well as social games, I organised a well-attended croquet tournament twice a year, when the marker flags went up, a gazebo was erected and the silverware was displayed on a table alongside all the trappings that heralded an old-fashioned afternoon tea. The names engraved on the shield, which still sits gleaming atop shelves of books, reveals that the 1997 winner was singing supremo Colin Blunstone. Many a rock star was humbled on that lawn, but not the man from St Albans with the velvet voice. Could there be a revamped Zombies album in the pipeline? ‘She’s Not There (She’s Playing Croquet)’, ‘Tell Her No (I Can’t Play Croquet)’ and ‘Time of the Season (For Croquet)’? Probably not. There seemed to be a plethora of croquet tournaments in the ’90s and while my diary might not be dominated by them, they certainly rank among the multiple entries. One classic, at Wiston House, Steyning in the shadow of the South Downs was an all MP affair … well apart from me, with Howard Flight, Tim Loughton, Peter Bottomley and Nick Gibb throwing caution to the wind and running those hoops as if they were on the campaign trail with one week to go to the elections.

Encouraged by my father, I kicked leather footballs from an early age, until getting hooked on Frido balls. These were dimpled plastic, or maybe PVC, affairs, the first cheap alternative to a leather football, and were less inclined to smash windows. The ideal way to carry them was in a plastic string bag, then you could kick them, as you walked to whichever patch of green you were going to grace, without them actually departing into the traffic or over a wall. Apart from the puncture kit, I was quite passionate about them. They were fairly susceptible to thorns and other sharp objects and while they were still serviceable when flat, the shape wasn’t ideal. The puncture kit, simple to most, was complex to me.

As mentioned earlier, my father played centre-half for one of the top amateur teams, Walton & Hersham, meaning there were always full-size leather balls around. Even at the age of five I did nothing by halves. Even if I was having a kickabout with friends in the garden
I had to dress accordingly. I had to put on the whole kit, including proper boots, or I didn’t feel properly dressed. Weird kid. As Walton played in red and white, I felt that these were the only acceptable colours and was aghast when a lad a year or two older than me turned up to play in the garden one day in a green top with green and white socks. I remember trying to send him home to change.

My father was a good player and, like all sportsmen of his era, humble. After he died I found a stack of old football programmes from some of the teams he’d played in. As well as Walton & Hersham, there were many local sides as well as The Army XI, the Combined Services XI and Guildford, who were semi-professional. He’d never mentioned it to me, but one programme mentioned that he’d been asked to turn professional on several occasions. Another declared him to be one of the most popular players in the amateur game and one of the strongest centre-halves.

My mother would embarrass him with the odd soccer story. He was standing in a doorway in Manchester, where he was stationed with the Army, sheltering from the rain, when a police car pulled up. ‘Les Read?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re wanted, sir.’

‘What am I supposed to have done?’

‘I believe it’s what you’re going to do.’

He was passed a call-up card to train with the war-torn Manchester United squad.

My father was selected for a post-war game at Gigg Lane, home of the mighty Bury FC, for which my mother was in the stand. That shows that it was early days in their relationship! Concerned at his non-appearance on the pitch, she was equally surprised when he slid into the seat next to her fifteen minutes into the match.

‘Why aren’t you on the pitch?’

‘I was held up.’

‘Tell them you’re here.’

‘No, it’s too late now, anyway someone else is already playing.’

‘You didn’t want to face their right-winger, did you?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He never did go on the pitch, even for the second half. In later life he still got annoyed when my mother told the story of how he was afraid of facing Stanley Matthews. I’ll guarantee he’s looking down as I write. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Not many mess with a tall, strapping centre-half, but in the first thirty minutes of one game he took a hard knock on the head. The game proceeded, as games do, until a brief respite midway through the second-half, when one of the team was getting dousing from the trainer’s ‘magic sponge’. During the break in proceedings, another player asked generally, ‘Does Les keep asking you the score?’

‘Actually, yes.’

‘Me too.’

‘And me.’

He hadn’t a clue where he was, or what was going on. He’d played most of the match with concussion.

I used to laugh at the story when I was a kid. Until it happened to me. I was playing in a match on Desborough Island on the Thames at Weybridge. It was a foggy, footbally type of Sunday morning. Our side were awarded a corner. And as the ball came over, we all went up for it. I connected and it went in the goal, but of that I had not an inkling. Somewhere in the melee a boot connected with my temple. I do recall someone asking me what I was doing. What did they think I was doing? I was running around in small circles behind the goal. I later discovered that some thought it might be my individual way of celebrating. It wasn’t.

I was driven to St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey and thrown into A&E. I was lying quite happily on a bed, when a doctor came in and asked me my name. I hadn’t got a clue.

‘Do you know what you’ve been doing?’

I looked down at my muddy football kit. ‘No, not really.’

I had amnesia. Nobody mentioned the word of course.

‘Can you remember anything?’

‘No.’ I have to say I wasn’t perturbed. I felt as though I’d had a couple of bottles of cheap wine. All was well. But it wasn’t. The doctor asked again. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Give me a clue.’

No clues. This game went on for a few hours. I was still unconcerned. I didn’t know who I was, where I lived, what I’d been doing or the names of any of my friends.

After what was apparently some four hours, a chink appeared. ‘Wait a minute. Call Walton-on-Thames 23806.’ I’d remembered the number of my girlfriend, Gillie. ‘Call that number. They’ll tell you who I am.’ The doctor didn’t move. I began to get agitated. ‘Go on, call that number, they’ll tell you my name.’

Of course, they already knew my name, as someone had driven me in and supplied all the necessary details. How was I to know that? I was on my own planet.

This was getting frustrating. I was trying to help and the doctor was ignoring me. Then came another doctor’s voice from the next cubicle. ‘You say you slipped on an ice cube coming out of a party at four in the morning and broke your arm.’

‘That’s right,’ which was presumably the voice of the patient.

I laughed out loud. ‘Ha … that’s really funny.’

The voice belonging to the broken arm said, ‘That sounds like young Read.’

I knew that voice. ‘Gabriel!’

‘The very same.’

Piece by piece my life started to return, although I felt as though I had a head full of jelly for a week or two. I thought I was on the mend, but there was an unexpected side-effect.

I was at the front of the queue at Tesco one day with the usual pile of tinned baked beans and sausages and tinned soup when I threw
them all down and ran out. By the time I got back to the house I was sharing, I was perspiring heavily. What the hell was wrong? I didn’t go to the doctor although my head still felt fragile and I didn’t confide in anyone. I tried to walk the 100 yards to the local record shop. Impossible. I turned back in a panic time and time again. I assumed that it was some form of agoraphobia brought on by the thump in the head from the unknown assailant on the pitch. Whenever someone asked if I was coming out to play football I made ridiculous and implausible excuses. This was crazy. Would I never go anywhere or do anything ever again? I really wished I’d never been kicked in the head.

I reasoned that although you can go to someone for help, all they can do is listen. The first and subsequent steps have to come from within. Right, that was the reasoning sorted. What was the worst that could happen? I fall over. I faint. So what? I probably wasn’t going to die from it. So I borrowed a bike, the premise being that if I panicked at least I could get home more quickly. It also gave me something to focus on in the act of cycling. That was a start, focusing on something. I imagined that the brain was a circle, and an irrational fear suddenly and completely fills all 360 degrees of it. OK, so if I was in the street and panicking and let’s say, the Queen wound down the window of her car and wished me a very good morning (which would actually happen years later), I would be so surprised that for a moment that 360 degrees would be filled with something other than irrational fear. I worked at that notion, like going to the gym.

I was asked to play in a cricket match on the green at Claygate, the home of Leverets CC, but of course playing would be impossible. What if I was fielding at slip and panicked? There would be no sympathy. But I wanted to play and decided that I’d make it a real test. I wrote my own set of rules. I’d insist on fielding on the boundary (easy escape if needed), I’d allow myself four loo breaks (sorry, skipper, too much beer, back in a second) and if things got really bad I’d feign an injury (slight if I felt I could return to the pitch, more painful if I felt I couldn’t).

I concentrated on filling the 360 degrees with as much as I could. One or two TV stars were playing, including Mick Robertson from
Magpie
. They might not have been HM but it worked to a degree. Very slowly, but very surely, I cured myself. Today the only legacy from that Sunday morning match on Desborough Island is a dislike of tall buildings. I’d wandered around the top of St Pauls taking panoramic shots of London quite happily, but I couldn’t now. Funny old game.

As a boy I’d practise keepy-uppy for hours or kick a ball against a wall if there was no one around to play with. With a tennis ball or a Frido ball, I got quite tricky. Too tricky for one of our schoolmasters, Mr Scammel, who took sport when needed. He was refereeing in the match that got me my nickname at school. When the ball arrived on the left wing (my father had taught me to play with both feet) I dribbled, I tapped it up and down on my foot and knee and was having enormous fun until a bison-like bellow echoed across the pitch. Yes, Mr Scammel, florid of face and incandescent with sporting rage. In his book the ball was to be punted upfield, not to be held up, as we’d say now. ‘Get rid of it, Twinkletoes!’ Twenty-two young players quaked in their boots. I duly got rid of it. I didn’t, however, get rid of the nickname. ‘Twinkletoes’ morphed into ‘Twinkle’, which by the schoolboy law of shortening everything became ‘Twink’.