The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta (Harper Perennial 1997)

“This must be a tough time for you,” Stan observed.

“How so?”

“You know.” He pulled the cummerbund out from under his jacket and laid it on the steps. “This thing with Phil. It must have been awful for you.”

Walter worked his cigarette like a baby sucking a bottle. “Phil was an old man. Everybody's got to go sometime.”

“Still, watching a friend die in front of you like that …”

“We had our differences,” Walter said curtly.

“What kind of differences?”

“Creative.” Walter ejected the cigarette from between his lips. It landed on the sidewalk in a small shower of sparks. “I thought the band was starting to get a little stale.”

“How long were you together?”

“Too fucking long. Thirty-three years I took orders from that sonofabitch. I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

Stan didn't bother to pretend he was shocked. He'd been a musician long enough to know how it could come to this. There “were nights when he'd lain awake writing Artie's obituary in loving detail, nights when he'd imagined committing murder.

Loose Connections by Maggie Brooks (Abacus 1984)

Harry was twenty minutes early. He located the ICA in an unlikely spot amongst some blind government buildings in the Mall. It was a white, low-lying block, like a slab of impenetrable wedding cake. He walked up and down in front of it a few times, uneasy and uncomfortable in the borrowed suit. The shadows were black and geometric in the overhead sun. He fancied the building had an Egyptian flavour to it. A parched palm tree would have looked at home.

His spirits soared momentarily. Perhaps next week he’d be in a foreign country under a foreign sun. The suit was lightweight seersucker, white with blue stripes. This morning it had seemed just the thing - rather casual and devil-may-care, a suit for someone used to travelling, crisp and cool and effortlessly elegant. Now he was not so sure. The sweat was trickling down his back and running a stream into the bunched fabric of the outsize waistband and he was increasingly aware of the way the trousers ballooned out at the knees and ended up lapping unwanted over his glistening brogues. An image of Andy Pandy in a white and blue one-piece kept humping into his mind unasked and he scowled as he felt his confidence ebbing. He swerved into the doorway before he could think better of it and lurched into the bookshop with a purposeful air. The assistants had the air of people who’d agreed to lower themselves to the task as a short-term favour and who found each contact with a customer unspeakably droll. They sparred roguishly with one another, letting out occasional hoots whilst keeping a weather eye on Harry’s spade fingers as he leafed through creamy pages of text looking for pictures. Harry turned on his heels and made for the gents, his confidence ebbing to rock bottom.

George Orwell was right, he told himself bitterly as he quarrelled with the towel roller, it’s something you give off in your pores and people have an infallible nose for it. He jutted his jaw at himself in the mirror. I may not have class, he told himself defiantly, but what I do have is boyish charm. At thirty-three this was a rare and useful tool to have in the kit. It had always served him well before and in this instance it was his only card. He had never been so determined about anything. He was going to Munich.

Steaming In: Journal of a Football Fan by Colin Ward (Simon & Schuster 1989)

The first half and the fairy tale continued. Leatherhead went two-nil ahead with Kelly scoring one, making the other goal and generally tormenting Leicester without mercy. At half-time all that could be seen was the 'Kelly Shuffle' and the drinking (and spilling) of beer. In the second half the slaughter continued for a while. Kelly went round the goalkeeper and should have scored, but the ball was stopped on the line. I can still close my eyes and remember him going round the Leicester keeper and shouting 'Goal!' I don't think Leicester would have come back from three-nil down, but as it was this was the turning point of the match. Leicester scored, then destroyed a tiring Leatherhead, finally winning three-two. Nevertheless, the cheers at the end were all for Leatherhead. We left the ground disappointed but privileged to have witnessed one of the greatest performances ever by an amateur team.

Leicester fans approached Leatherhead fans in the street, shaking their hands and saying 'Great match' and 'Cor, what a game.' Had we won the match it is more likely that they would have been waiting to smash our heads in. In an instant, we would have been transformed from the quaint amateur team who had provided entertainment into the bastards who had humiliated and knocked Leicester out of the FA Cup.

A crowd of over 37,000 had witnessed the game and those present will never forget it. To this day everyone who was there talks about Kelly's miss. That night on Match of the Day on BBC 1 Jimmy Hill interviewed Chris Kelly. 'We'll be back next year, Jimmy,' said Chris - although sadly this was not to be. Nevertheless, Leatherhead have the proud record of never having lost to a professional team on their own ground, and have since beaten Cambndge United and drawn with Colchester United and Swansea City.

XTC: Chalkhills and Children by Chris Twomey (Omnibus Press 1992)

The day after Todd arrived from San Francisco, recording got underway, concentrating on basic guitar and keyboard pans before moving to San Francisco where Rundgren had booked session musicians to work on drum-tracks and other overdubs.

Right from the off it was obvious that Todd and Andy weren't going to get on. Andy was used to having a large measure of control over everything XTC did and Todd wasn’t letting him have any say - barely paying lip service to his ideas and suggestions. Andy Partridge, the irresistible force, had finally met his match in Todd Rundgren, the immovable object. One was a producer determined to produce, the other an artist determined to resist.

Nothing Andy said or did could soften Todd or dent his arrogant demeanour. His sense of humour - often used as a way of getting people on his side - had no effect. Todd would deal Andy's jokes a fatal blow with a deadpan comment like “Stop, you're killing me", and offered none of the deference Andy was used to receiving. To Andy this was all a way of trying to break his morale. "At times he'd launch into me in an abusive fashion, ” he says. "He'd say things like Where did you get those jeans from? God, they look like you bought them from Russia! Christ look at them!' It was all a way of making you feel small so that he could stand on top and you'd accept his ideas without question. *'

On the occasions that Andy stuck by his guns and refused to give in, Todd would walk out of the studio saying, "You can dick around with this all day. I'm going up to the house, and when you've realised that my way is the right way to do it, you call me.”

After a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, Andy was ready to quit. “I’m not enjoying this,” he told the rest. "I’m thinking of knocking the album on the head. It's like having two Hitlers in the same bunker."

Dave was appalled. "Don't be daft,” he said. "Just go along with it and we ll do another record as soon as we get back. We've still got plenty of songs that Todd hasn't chosen."

Post Office by Charles Bukowski (Black Sparrow Press 1971)

I was casing next to G.G. early one morning. That's what they called him: G.G. His actual name was George Greene. But for years he was simply called G.G. and after a while “he looked like G.G. He had been a carrier since his early twenties and now he was in his late sixties. His voice was gone. He didn't speak. He croaked. And when he croaked, he didn't say much. He was neither liked nor disliked. He was just there. His face had wrinkled into strange runs and mounds of unattractive flesh. No light shone from his face. He was just a hard old crony who had done his job: G.G. The eyes looked like dull bits of clay dropped into the eye sockets. It was best if you didn't think about him or look at him.

Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney (Canongate Books 1989)

The ridiculous image of himself hiding in the Wendy House began to seem more than an accidental moment in his life. There were perhaps times, it appeared to him, when a fleeting gesture or a spontaneous stance could freeze into definition, like a head stamped on a coin, and become your essential currency. For a great footballer it might be one game or one goal. For another man, the moment of his marriage. John dreaded that for him it might be his sojourn in the Wendy House. That might become the prison of his own sense of himself. Perhaps that’s who he was – a ridiculous naked man with one sock on hiding in a cardboard house, waiting for his own true love.

Steak . . . Diana Ross: Diary of a Football Nobody by David McVay (The Parrs Wood Press 2003)

Trouble is, it can have a negative effect. I have got to the point that the ball is not my friend, I don’t want to see it or receive it for fear of another rollicking. There are hiding places, in the hole or channel cunningly lurking between a marker and your own man. You can spend a quiet half hour failing to show for a colleague if you know what you are doing. It even happens on match days, not for so long but there have been occasions when even one or two of the senior pros are taking too much stick from the crowd and grab the invisible cloak for some respite. It is not spotted by the average fan but for the reserve lads sitting in the stand, it is noticed and pointed out gleefully among the throng.