One for My Baby Read Online Free Page B

My dream of becoming a writer came from my childhood. That’s where my dream began, and it didn’t start to die until I was a young man. So that’s not too bad. It lasted much longer than most dreams.
    My father was a sportswriter on a national newspaper. His regular beat was horse racing, football and boxing, the sports he had grown up with in the East End. He also covered athletics during the Olympics, tennis during Wimbledon and pretty much anything else when he had to. Towards the end of his sportswriting career he even wrote a few pieces about the modern kind of wrestlers, those angry men in sparkling latex who look as though they have been taking steroids when what they really should be taking is acting lessons.
    My old man wasn’t a famous sportswriter. Most of the time he didn’t even get his picture printed next to his by-line. But he was always a glamorous figure to me. Other dads, the fathers of my friends, had to be in the same place at the same time every day. My dad travelled the country, interviewing people who were worshipped, and although sometimes my mum and I didn’t see him all week, I always loved it that regular office hours meant nothing to him.
    Even when I was a small child I knew that journalism wasn’t the same as two weeks in Benidorm. I understood the tyranny of the deadline, and how sub-editors can leave the last line off your piece, and how today’s newspaper is the lining for tomorrow’s cat litter. But my dad still seemed to be about as free as a man could be.
    My dad was never very fond of the slog of reporting – sitting in the press box at Upton Park, phoning in copy from ring side in the NEC Birmingham – but when he was eiven space to write about the men and women behind the results and the statistics, when he told you about the brilliant young footballer whose career had suddenly been ended by an ankle injury, or the Olympic hopeful who had just discovered a lump in her breast, his stuff could break your heart. He was a cockle warmer, my dad. He could warm your cockles in just a 1200-word, two-page spread. And when my old man warmed your cockles, your cockles stayed warm for quite a while.
    My dad was never a great sportswriter because he was never that crazy about sports. He would have had a far happier, far more successful career if he had been writing for the front pages rather than the back pages.
    But my father was my hero. And for years I wanted to go into the family business.
    Then he wrote a book. You probably heard of it. You might even have read it. Because Oranges For Christmas – A Childhood Memoir was one of those books that start selling and then never seem to stop. And after that, my dreams of writing started to seem a little ridiculous. For how could I ever compete with my father now? As a modestly successful sportswriter he had been inspiring. As a wildly successful author, he was intimidating.
    I was at teacher training college by the time my dad’s book came out, so I watched its ascent of the bestseller lists from a distance. It felt like one moment my father was what he had been forever – a journalist hanging around training grounds hoping for a few exclusive grunts from twenty-year-old footballers on thirty grand a week, and the next he was a bestselling author, cocooned by six-figure royalty cheques, regularly appearing on the artier kind of talk shows, getting recognised in restaurants.
    I know it wasn’t that easy. Oranges For Christmas took years to write. But success always looks like it has come quickly, no matter how hard the rock it is carved from. And it felt like almost overnight my father went from being an unknown sports journalist to a respected writer, doing events in book shops where he gave a reading, answered questions and signed copies of Oranges For Christmas . People actually place a value on his autograph these days, just like those fans at training grounds who wait for the twenty-year-old footballers on thirty grand a