Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (Harper Perennial 2010)

When I woke up that morning it was still pretty early. Summer had just begun and from where I lay in my sleeping bag I could see out the window. There were hardly any clouds and the sky was clear and blue. I looked at the Polaroid I had taped to the wall next to where I slept. It shows my aunt and me sitting by a river; she has on a swimsuit. She’s my dad’s sister and she looks like him, with black hair and blue eyes and she’s really thin. In the photo she’s holding a can of soda and smiling as I sit next to her. She has her arm around me. My hair’s wet and I’m smiling. That was when we all lived in Wyoming. But it had been four years since I’d seen her, and I didn’t even know where she lived anymore.

My dad and I had just moved to Portland, Oregon, and we’d been there for a week. We didn’t know anybody. Two days before my school year was done we packed the truck and moved out from Spokane. We brought our kitchen table and four chairs, dishes and pots and pans, our clothes and TV, and my dad’s bed. We left all the rest.

The Crazy Gang : The True Inside Story of Football's Greatest Miracle by Dave Bassett and Wally Downes (Bantam Books 2015)

 

Prologue

Dave Bassett

I am not surprised by these achievements, After all, if we can sell Newcastle Brown to Japan, Bob Geldof can have us running around Hyde Park, and if Wimbledon can make it to the First Division, there is surely no achievement beyond our reach. 

Text of a speech given by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher, FRS. MP, at a dinner hosted by the CBI on Thursday, 22 May 1986.

That’s what she said. I puffed my shoulders. It made me realize we were recognized as a success. Wimbledon are truly a remarkable story, perhaps one of the greatest success stories in the history of the game. Its a story that will certainly never be repeated: a homespun, cash-strapped, often down-at-heel club rising from the Southern League to the old Division One in nine years and staying for more on low crowds, even lower wages, and then winning the FA Cup.

We got criticized by the media and weak-minded opposition, hounded and accused of betraying football. What total rubbish. We fought, we planned, we analyzed, and yet were still branded a long-ball side. That was not an issue or a problem. It worked. Today, if a player hits a glorious 50-yard pass, its considered skill. We had an academy before they became fashionable, producing footballers who went on to become internationals.

We were different. I accept that. A lot of us were in the last chance saloon, but we also believed. We believed, given another chance by people who believed in us, that we could make a new life for ourselves. It was a magic, intoxicating formula that changed the face of football. We didn't hide behind the media hymn sheet. I managed and played to a style that suited us and within our own financial compass. We were fighting against the odds on average earnings of £100 a week.

All Backs Were Turned by Marek Hlasko (New Vessell Press 1964)

“Like I’ve always helped you.”

“Yes,” Israel said. “You always helped me.” Suddenly he put his face against Ursula’s breast. “Dov,” he said, “she’s alive. She’s breathing.”

He got up; Dov knelt next to Ursula’s body and placed his head on her breast. Israel held the stone ready in his hand; he had noticed it while kneeling by Ursula’s body, and he picked it up while pressing his face to her chest. He waited until he saw Dov begin to straighten up, then he hit him twice in quick succession; he circled the body to make sure Dov was really dead, then hit him a third time; only then did he toss the stone away.”

The Fallen: Life In and Out of Britain's Most Insane Group by Dave Simpson (Canongate 2008)

Like any classic long-running British soap opera, The Fall has minor characters and major characters, although even the latter can suddenly disappear and the saga just rolls on. In the bewildering Fall cast, few characters have made as much impact with their appearance and disappearance as Marc Riley – who has since gone on to other prominent roles but during his time in The Fall (June 1978 to December 1982) loomed as large over events and music as Ken Barlow in Coronation Street.

What I know about Riley is this: he joined after hanging around with The Fall and becoming one of their sporadic road crew. Thus, Riley replaced Eric the Ferret, who replaced Jonnie Brown, who replaced Tony Friel. He became the eleventh disciple to join in the first two years, his reign predating but outlasting Steve Davies. In the month he signed up, cricketer Ian Botham became the first man in the history of the game to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings of a Test match. Albums lining up against The Fall’s 1979 Live at the Witch Trials debut at the time included Prince’s debut For You, Dire Straits’ first eponymous album, Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and X-Ray Spex’s punky, saxophoney Germfree Adolescents. Margaret Thatcher was in power. It seems a world away.

As does December 1982, the month he left, when Thatcher still had years ahead of her, but the pop landscape was changing. Manchester greats like The Smiths and New Order were edging towards Top of the Pops. Neil Kinnock was elected Labour leader and Michael Jackson’s Thriller rapidly became the biggest-selling album of all time. Riley’s five-year stint was a relative lifetime in The Wonderful and Frightening World but coincides with the beginnings of The Fall’s noble ascent from indie cultdom to national institution

Up The Junction by Nell Dunn (MacGibbon & Kee 1963)

 

Out with the girls

We stand, the three of us, me, Sylvie and Rube, pressed up against the saloon door, brown ales clutched in our hands. Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultrily round the packed pub. Sylvie eyes the boy hunched over the mike and shifts her gaze down to her breasts snug in her new pink jumper. 'Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!' he screams. Three blokes beckon us over to their table.

'Fancy 'em?'

Rube doubles up with laughter. 'Come on, then. They can buy us some beer/

'Hey, look out, yer steppin' on me winkle!'

Dignified, the three of us squeeze between tables and sit ourselves, knees tight together, daintily on the chairs.

‘Three browns, please,' says Sylvie before we've been asked.

'I’ve seen you in here before, ain’t I?' A boy leans luxuriously against the leather jacket slung over the back of his chair.

‘Might 'ave done.'

‘You come from Battersea, don't yer?'

‘Yeah, me and Sylvie do. She don't though. She's an heiress from Chelsea.’

‘Really? You really an heiress?' Jimmy Dean moves his chair closer to mine, sliding his arm along the back.

‘Are yer married?'

‘Course she is. What do yer think that is? Scotch mist?' Rube points to my wedding ring.

Sylvie says, ‘Bet they're all married, dirty ginks!'

‘Like to dance?'

Rube moves onto the floor. She hunches up her shoulders round her cars, sticks out her lower lip and swings in time to the shattering music.

‘What's it like havin' a ton of money?'

‘You can't buy love.'

‘No, but you can buy a bit of the other.' Sylvie chokes, spewing out brown ale.

‘I’d get a milk-white electric guitar.'

‘Yeah and a milk-white Cadillac convertible—walk in the shop and peel off the notes. Bang ’em down on the counter and drive out—that's what yer dad does, I bet . . .'

We were crushed in the toilets. All round girls smeared on pan-stick.

‘I can't go with him, he’s too short.'

‘All the grey glitter I put on me hair come off on his cheek and I hadn't the heart to tell him.'

‘I wouldn't mind goin’ with a married man 'cept I couldn't abear him goin' home and gettin' into bed with his wife.'

‘Me hair all right?’

‘Yeah, lend us yer lacquer.'

‘Now don't get pissin' off and leavin’ me.' Rube pulled at her mauve skirt so it clung to her haunches and stopped short of her round knees.

Outside revving bikes were splitting the night.

‘Where we going?'

‘Let's go swimmin’ up the Common.'

‘We ain't got no swim-suits with us.'

‘We’ll swim down one end and you down the other. It’s dark, ain't it?'

‘Who do yer think's going to see yer? The man in the moon?'

‘Yeah and what's to stop yer hands wandering?'

‘We’ll tie 'em behind our backs.'

‘Here, I’ll never git on there I can't get me knees apart.'

‘Hitch yer skirt up under yer coat.'

‘Help, me grandmother’ll catch cold!'

The three of us climb onto the bikes, each behind a boy. We bum up Tooting Broadway and streak round a corner.

‘I did this bend at eighty once,' he shouts over my shoulder.

‘Ninety-two people bin decapitated on them iron girders, taking it too fast.’ We race across the common, then shudder to a halt under some trees. He wears jeans, black boots with double gold buckles and a fine lawn shirt beneath his unzipped jacket.

‘There are two things I'd like to be—a racing driver or a pilot. But you've gotta have money for that.'

The Invoice: A Novel by Jonas Karlsson (Hogarth 2011)

It was such an incredible amount, 5,700,000 kronor. Impossible to take seriously. I assumed it must be one of those fake invoices, the sort you hear about on television and in the papers. Unscrupulous companies trying to defraud people, often the elderly, out of their money.

It was very well done. There was no denying that. The logo looked genuine, at least to me. I don’t really know, I don’t get much post, apart from the usual bills. This one looked pretty similar. Except for the amount, of course. W.R.D., it said in large letters, and the bit about conditions of payment was very convincing. The whole thing had that dry, factual tone, just like something from a genuine organization.

But if it was genuine, there must have been a massive mistake. Some computer must have gotten me mixed up with a big company, or maybe a foreign consortium. 5,700,000 kronor. Who gets bills like that? I chuckled at the thought that someone might actually pay that amount of money by mistake and never question it.

I drank a glass of juice, dropped some advertising leaflets into the recycling box, all those offers and brochures that somehow managed to get past the “No Ads, Please” sign, then put on my jacket and went off to work.